The Visual Politics of the Female Form in 1920s Canada

In 1920s Canada, new tropes of the female form emerged in response to evolving ideas of nation, modernity and the female body. Reccurring use of images of women formed tropes that bolstered nationalism in their use as allegories for nation and their communication of ideals of citizenship, modern motherhood and propriety. The visual feast of female imagery that emerged in these years sprung from the intersections of modernity, nationalism and the female form in new and modern ways. At times artists expressed the modern in ways that spoke directly to popular international tropes and other times sought representations that were thought to be uniquely Canadian and nationalistic. This dissertation examines these visual images, exploring how artists used of the female form in high art, magazines and feature films in 1920s Canada. It asks what political work did the female form do in an era when Canada was developing its own identity as a nation state on the world stage? Did ‘woman’ matter to constructions of nation when nation was being articulated through modernist forms or as a modern project and did it take particular national form as ‘Canadian’? This research project explores how the female form was taken up by artists to express ideas of nation and modernity in the 1920s.
This project draws from hundreds of visual images of the female body produced across a number of mediums. An examination of paintings, sculptures, prints, high art photographs, advertisements and feature films created by Canadian artists form the source base for this project and provide a cross medium view of image production that illuminates the parameters and complexities of using the female form in different contexts. It argues that artists in 1920s Canada used and manipulated the female body to communicate ideas about the growing nation, modernity and to bolster the nation-building project of the interwar years.