Type of Document	Dissertation
Author	Huebner, Karla Tonine
Author's Email Address	calypsospots@gmail.com
URN	etd-12112008-155317
Title	Eroticism, Identity, and Cultural Context: Toyen and the Prague Avant-garde
Degree	Doctor of Philosophy
Program	History of Art and Architecture
School	School of Arts and Sciences
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Barbara McCloskey Committee Chair Helena Goscilo Committee Member Kirk Savage Committee Member Terry Smith Committee Member
Keywords	gender surrealism Artificialism Czech Czechoslovakia Devetsil art
Date of Defense	2008-12-08
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract This dissertation situates the life and work of the artist Toyen (Marie Čermínová, 1902–80), a founding member of the Prague surrealist group, within the larger discourses of modernism and feminism/gender studies. In particular, it explicates Toyen’s construction of gender and eroticism within the contexts of early twentieth-century Czech feminism and sex reformism, the interwar Prague avant-garde, and Prague and Paris surrealism. Toyen’s interest in sexuality and eroticism, while unusual in its extent and expression, is intimately related to her historical and geographic position as an urban Czech forming her artistic personality during first a period of economic boom, avant-garde optimism, increased opportunities for women, and sex reformism, and then a period of economic crisis, restriction of women’s employment, social conservatism, and tension between the subconscious and the socialist realist. Toyen’s ambiguously gendered self-presentation, while again unusual, needs to be considered in light of her enthusiastic reception within three predominantly male avant-garde groups (Devětsil, Prague surrealism, and Paris surrealism). I stress that the social and cultural environment of her childhood and youth created an atmosphere that enabled her to pursue lifelong personal interests and obsessions in a manner that was unusually public for a female artist of her generation. As a case study of one artist working within a specific avant-garde movement, this project contributes to critical re-evaluation of surrealism, the Central European contribution to modernism, and the role of female artists in the avant-garde. This intervention in the history of surrealism makes its intellectual contribution by changing our perception of the movement, giving vivid evidence of the Prague group’s difference from and influence on the Paris group, and presenting a more complex and nuanced view of women’s role in and treatment by surrealism. This dissertation employs a mixed methodology that combines investigation of historical context with aspects of feminist, psychoanalytic, iconographic, and semiotic approaches. No previous study of Toyen or the Czech interwar avant-garde has been done in this manner.
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