Call for Papers: Who Owns Heritage?
Call for Papers: Who Owns Heritage? Local Communities and the Fight for Historical Monuments in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Masaryk University Brno, Czechia, 6 November.
SMArt Talks: "When a Woman Does It, It's a Craft But When a Man Does It, It's Art": Knitting In Folk Culture, Fashion & Art
We cordially invite you to another SMArt Talks lecture, which will be given by our colleague and member of the Centre for Modern Art & Theory, Julia Secklehner - historian of modern art, design and visual culture. The lecture will take place on Thursday, the 13th of March 2025, in Hans Belting Library at 18:00. The abstract of the lecture and the lecturer's bio can be found below.
Abstract
The most common image of knitting is likely that of a grandmother in a rocking chair, diligently working on a pair of socks. However, throughout the twentieth century – and even prior to that – it encompassed far more functions than simply serving as a domestic and utilitarian practice. Beyond its association with notions of femininity, knitting represented highly valued guilds, played a role in wartime efforts, and ignited fashion crazes in the early 20th century, before being embraced as a form of artistic activism in the 1970s, not to mention today's "craftivism" with projects such as "pussy hats", first used during the Women's March in the United States in 2017. Taking these varied functions and meanings of knitting as a not-so-domestic craft as a starting point, this presentation focuses on a medium that permeated diverse spheres of craft and art production in the 20th and 21st centuries. From the rise of the "sweater craze" in the 1920s to Marianne Jørgensen's Pink M.24 Chaffee Tank project (2006), the presentation traces the evolution of knitting from a popular craft to artistic intervention and questions its identity as a "craft" in line with its heavily gendered and classed associations. Ultimately, it argues that it is precisely knitting's role as a ubiquitous and popular activity that has allowed it to flourish not merely as a productive pastime but as an art form with political potential.
Julia Secklehner is a historian of modern art, design, and visual culture. As researcher on the project 'Beyond the Village: Folk Cultures as Agents of Modernity, 1918–1945', she investigates the role of minority folk cultures, women's craft production, and the photographic representation of folk cultures in Czechoslovakia. She is co-convenor of The Lausanne Project and has led the research series' Creativity from Vienna to the World: Transatlantic Exchanges in Design and Pedagogy'. Her recent publications include the graphic novel De la lumière à l'ombre: Lausanne 1923 (Antipodes, 2024), and Rethinking Modern Austrian Art Beyond the Metropolis (Routledge, 2024), which received the Masaryk University Science Award 2024.