The Aesthetics of Disaffection

Informed by a feminist perspective, how can biographical research facilitate greater understanding of Riding,
Frankfurther and Mendelssohn's agency and originality, as well as their lived constraints?
How does Riding, Frankfurther and Mendelssohn's work respond to the paradox of the female vanguard artist-
simultaneously aspiring towards, refusing and being denied affiliation-relative to the artistic communities that they
traversed?
What is the relationship of politics to Riding, Frankfurther and Mendelssohn's work, and what impact may their work
have had on the politics of the 20th century?
As first and second generation Holocaust survivors, how can Riding, Frankfurther and Mendelssohn's work inform
contemporary debates about the presence of Jewish culture in artistic scenes and publications?
Research Background
In the case of Laura (Riding) Jackson, her ambitions for poetry set her work apart from her contemporaries. This
project will explore Riding's rejection of the 'masculine authorial mauvaise fois' deemed to characterise the early
part of the 20th century (Malcolm, 2009, 67) and her development of an archetypal feminine perspective in
response. Riding's alliance of what is authentic with the feminine, and the recurrence in her work of a 'figurative
woman whose language is procreative' (Malcolm, 2009, 63), positions her as actively opposed to a 'male world construct' (Jacobs, 2018, 39) and anticipates the emergence of Écriture féminine.
The resolve to escape constraint is a recurring theme in Mendelssohn's work and influences her deliberate refusal
of the lyric speaker as an instrument of self-confession-further distancing Mendelssohn from expectations placed
upon women writers during second wave feminism (Crangle, 2020). Yet this also seems part of Mendelssohn's
'oppositional aesthetics' more broadly (Crangle, 2020, 34), as a response to a political past to which she often felt
reduced and a resistance to language that by imposing a particular reality can deny the existence of a speaking
subject (Rowe, 2021). This is shown by her poetry's figurative refusal of 'normal spatial logic' (Rowe, 2021, 2) and
Mendelssohn's rejection of material standardisation: namely, the interweaving of different genres (poetry, music and
visual art) and the varying materials that she employs (pen and ink, oil, water colour, pastel, felt-tips, coloured
pencil and collage) (Crangle, 2020, 26).
This project requires a broad appraisal of Riding, Frankfurther and Mendelssohn's output to determine which
elements inform and respond to my research questions, and to consider the potential formal and thematic
comparisons between their work. To carry this out, I will draw extensively on the The Laura (Riding) Jackson
Archive, Nottingham Trent University, and the Laura (Riding) Jackson and Schuyler B. Jackson Collection at Cornell
University Library, as well as the catalogue of Eva Frankfurther's work presented online and managed by the Ben
Uri Gallery. The Anna Mendelssohn Archive, housed by the University of Sussex Special Collections at The Keep,
will be vital, as will the archive held by Sussex's Centre for German-Jewish Studies.
I anticipate that Riding and Mendelssohn's correspondence will inform my study of their relationships with the
writers and artistic communities around them. In the case of Frankfurther-whose correspondence is not accessible
to the public-this question will be addressed in part by looking at the connections that have been made between
her work and those of other artists (such as the 'Kitchen Sink School' represented by artists like John Bratby and
Jack Smith). The art history of this period presents a gap in my knowledge and I expect to address this with the
support of my co-supervisor, Professor Clarke.