Corsets of steel couldn’t hold back the ‘Dangerous Women’ of the art world between the two world wars. An exhibit at Mercer County Community College pairs 70 contemporary artists with their 20th-century counterparts.
By: Megan Sullivan
A dangerous woman does not necessarily inflict pain upon others or cause intense fear and anxiety. A dangerous woman need not be a gun-toting ex-con or some kind of maniac. What makes a woman dangerous could simply be the way she chooses to live her life, a way family, friends and loved ones might not quite understand.
Tricia Fagan, curator of the Gallery at Mercer County Community College, has spent more than a decade researching fascinating historical women. A compulsive reader, Ms. Fagan has pored over books and other materials written about women who made groundbreaking contributions as visual artists, photographers, fashion designers, writers, performers and activists between the two world wars.
"I really do believe they were dangerous, though not in the way we think of as dangerous," Ms. Fagan says. "What was dangerous about them is that they broke a lot of social rules to live the way they believed they needed to live."
Ms. Fagan was so inspired by the various women she read about that she organized a Dangerous Women exhibit at Joe’s Mill Hill Saloon and the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie in 1996. The show featured 42 regional artists who made works inspired by one of these risk-taking, bold and modern women.
In the years following the show, Ms. Fagan continued to compile mini-biographies of hundreds of exceptional women. "It was a show that wouldn’t go away," she says. "Once I started finding these women, they were in my head, so every month I’m doing additional research and going, ‘I wish I could have had that woman in the show.’
"And then there were a number of women artists who I met through that show because they wrote in the (guest) book, ‘I’m a dangerous woman and I want to be a part of this too!’"
The show has finally made its return, this time with nearly 70 artists featured in Dangerous Women Two at the Gallery at Mercer County Community College in West Windsor through Oct. 6. An opening reception will be held Sept. 8 from 2 to 5 p.m.
Among the more than 100 dangerous women who made Ms. Fagan’s tri-state list are writer and poet Dorothy Parker, Precisionist painter Elsie Driggs, printmaker Minna Citron and sculptor Dorothea Schwartz-Greenbaum. The show is dedicated to four dangerous women still alive today: artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois, photographer Helen Levitt, civil rights activist Dorothy Height and fiber artist Lenore Tawney.
"The show is really about honoring recent historical artists and activists as well as challenging contemporary artists," Ms. Fagan says. "I love the modernist age, I love that time between the two world wars for women. It’s singularly, I think, the most exciting time yet for women to be alive and to be functioning. When I was reading about that period, and reading about these women, I thought, ‘They’re more modern than a lot of us are.’"
Some of the women were born into prestigious upper class families and had to rebel and break free to pursue their passion. Others came from huge hardship. "A lot of these women, their fathers died when they were very young or they were abandoned by their fathers and yet they still persevered," Ms Fagan says. "They beyond persevered."
Author and illustrator Wanda Gag (1893-1946) was the oldest of seven children and took on the responsibility of raising her siblings when she was only about 14 years old. Her father had just died and her mother was also sick, so Wanda considered herself the head of the household. She continued to go to school, kept her family together and made sure her siblings also received a proper education. (Although she grew up in Minnesota, Ms. Gag moved to Hunterdon County in 1926 and lived in Milford from 1928 until her death.)
Ewing artist Keiko Ishida decided to create a piece inspired by Ms. Gag when she discovered an important tie to her own childhood. Ms. Fagan showed Ms. Ishida some of Ms. Gag’s prints, but she had no big reaction to them. It was an image of Ms. Gag’s most famous book, Millions of Cats (a Newbery Honor book), which made Ms. Ishida jump out of her chair.
"When I was about 9 or 10 years old I lived in a rural area in Japan and was taking piano lessons, I had to wait until my time came," Ms. Ishida recalls. "There was a book shelf in my teacher’s room and that was where I found the book." Sometimes, young Keiko would even arrive early for her lessons so she could have more time to read.
While children’s books typically incorporate colorful illustrations to grab their young readers’ attentions, Ms. Gag made black and white drawings that lured Keiko in just as powerfully. "To me, it was a little bit intimidating," Ms. Ishida says. "Her drawing was a little different from the Japanese style, so it was exotic, too. Even though the drawings were still life, they are very organic. To me, it seemed it was about to move. I looked at every corner of the pictures. It was one of my favorite books."
After doing research, Ms. Ishida concluded that Ms. Gag lived between two different worlds. One was her own world where nothing disturbed her at her drawing. Her family and friends belonged to this world. The other was the outside world: Ms. Gag did not fit in well at Minneapolis School of Art and quit because she refused to apply the school’s traditional drawing methods. She rejected anything that interfered with her own art style. (That included getting married because she thought it would stifle her creative activities.)
Ms. Ishida decided to create a divider or noren, which in Japan is hung at the entrance of stores or between rooms. "It divides between Wanda’s life and my life and between her creative world and the outside world," Ms. Ishida says, "which was very demanding and different from what she was taught."
The piece was made mainly from vine and shells, and features eight different orbs hanging at different lengths from a long stick. Ms. Ishida says each of the circular structures represents Ms. Gag and her six siblings, and the extra represents herself. When walking through the divider, each of the individual parts makes different sounds because of the shells and beads within them. The artist also believes that Ms. Gag had an internal noren which enabled her to retain her strong belief for her own art.
"Wanda Gag had a strong will," Ms. Ishida writes. "I imagine it would have been more difficult for women to be independent especially as an artist in her days. I would like to be independent and confident like her. My piece is a gate that I hope I can (open to) visit her world to obtain her strong belief and strong will."
Writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) also had a difficult childhood, especially after her father moved out and left the family to fend for itself. She faced the most challenging times as an adult, however, after the birth of her first child, when she experienced what now is recognized as postpartum depression.
Princeton Junction artist Connie Tell first read works by Ms. Gilman in 1976 while an undergraduate art student in Massachusetts. The Feminist Press had recently reprinted The Yellow Wallpaper (1899), one of Ms. Gilman’s most well known short stories, and it quickly became required reading in feminist circles.
"I had a strong history with her from the beginning," Ms. Tell says. "I still have my copy of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’" That particular story, as well as other writings by Ms. Gilman, helped shape the art Ms. Tell made then and in subsequent years as her work focused increasingly on female identity and assimilation.
When Ms. Gilman sank into her depression, she was medically misguided. Doctors advised that she rest and abandon her writings. The Yellow Wallpaper is about a woman similar to Ms. Gilman: a writer who keeps a secret journal while in confinement, a treatment her physician husband thought would cure the depression she experienced after giving birth.
"The thing I noticed when rereading it was how different I look at that image now," says Ms. Tell, now that she’s married and has a family of her own. "It’s much more complicated.
"I decided to make a piece that would be illustrating that desperation," she adds.
Ms. Tell, who makes conceptually based works using a variety of materials, embroidered a poem using human hair and written in Perkins’ style for the show. The poem encircles the words "HELP ME," which are shaped using psychiatrist and therapists’ phone numbers cut from the yellow pages. The piece, titled "A May Day," was created as fiction to illustrate a woman who clearly needs help and feels such desperation that she uses her own hair to stitch the poem and designs around it.
"Hair is a strong image of identity unique to every person," Ms. Tell says. "I wrote the poem to go around the outside to illustrate the endlessness in that bottomless-ness of what’s happening in her life that she can’t escape from. It’s kind of sad, but true. "
If there is a single dangerous woman who is responsible for Ms. Fagan curating this show, she says that would be Lola Ridge. "I read about her in ‘The First Wave’ and I was like, ‘Why did I never hear about her before?’" she says. "I think all of these women that are in the show should be known."
Ms. Ridge (1873-1941), a well-known poet, was an immigrant who grew up in economically poor but ethnically diverse circumstances. Born in Dublin in 1873, she was raised in New Zealand and Australia and moved to the United States in 1907, eventually settling in New York City. Trenton artist Robin Robinson knew nothing about Ridge, but is so grateful now for Ms. Fagan’s suggestion to create a piece inspired by her. "I fell in love with her work and her words, and I was inspired by her life as well," Ms. Robinson says. "She was a really strong woman."
Ridge’s essay Women and the Creative Will (1919), which addressed the idea that women’s creativity and respect in the creative arts was stifled by the social structure of the time, especially inspired Ms. Robinson. That’s where the idea sparked to incorporate a corset into her piece, titled "Not Held In Place By The Fierce Pressure All About."
The mixed media work forms a female silhouette down the middle, over which Ms. Robinson crisscrossed pink, shimmery fabric. "It says so much about some kind of conformity that we’re supposed to fit into, yet the piece is so broken and torn apart," she says. "She’s breaking through basically." Cupped hands extend over the top of the silhouette, at the creative core of the body, and the Scrabble pieces they hold represent Ms. Ridge’s creativity with words.
Images of fire escapes extend from the asymmetrical canvas to visually represent a ghetto, weaving in one of Ms. Ridge’s most famous poems, The Ghetto (1918). The poem portrays a Jewish immigrant community in New York City and deals with the effects of capitalism, gender conflict and conflicts between generations. "She was a poet for the people and uplifting to the people," Ms. Robinson says, "so that’s a different oppression being observed in my piece."
Lastly, Ms. Robinson tried to think of a single word that would be representative of Ms. Ridge’s poetry and decided to mount gilded silver letters that spell "HER" across the piece. It represents her breaking through, and how not even a corset could hold her down.
"For me the significant thing about her, looking back on her life and history was that woman was not held down at all."
One of the most important aspects of Dangerous Women for Ms. Fagan is that people can learn about awe-inspiring human beings they never heard of before.
"There’s a million of them. I think that’s the thing with history," Ms. Fagan says. "But I do believe that you own your history when you can make a personal connection with it. And I think that all of these people become figures or characters rather than vital living people who have something to share with you.
"My hope for this show is that people will get excited by these women and get excited by what a relationship with somebody can do," she adds. "It’s like any great relationship. If you’re inspired by that person, it pushes you to do things you might not have done before."
Dangerous Women Two is on view at the Gallery at Mercer County Community College, 1200 Old Trenton Road, West Windsor, Sept. 4-Oct. 6. An opening reception will be held Sept. 8, 2-5 p.m. and a closing event will be held at Kelsey Theater, Oct. 3, 7-9 p.m. Gallery talks will be held Sept. 19, noon, and Sept. 26, 7 p.m. Hours: Tues.-Thurs. 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Fri. 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Additional evening hours Tues. 6-8 p.m. and Thurs. 7-9 p.m.; (609) 570-3589; www.mercer.edu

