University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Graphic sensations: Vogue and the politics of the body, 1930-1945

White, Rachel Roseborough

Content Files
WHITE-DISSERTATION-2019.pdf

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/105033

Description

Title
Graphic sensations: Vogue and the politics of the body, 1930-1945
Author(s)
White, Rachel Roseborough
Issue Date
2019-04-17
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Weissman, Terri
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Weissman, Terri
Committee Member(s)
  • Rosenthal, Lisa
  • Romberg, Kristin
  • Reagan, Leslie
Department of Study
Art & Design
Discipline
Art History
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Date of Ingest
2019-08-23T20:35:56Z
Keyword(s)
  • magazines
  • photography
  • design
  • 20th century art
  • gender studies
Abstract
This dissertation analyzes the visual program and material body of American Vogue magazine, a publication dedicated to the modern woman, during two tumultuous decades before the mid-century. In the 1930s, images of the female body, as well as the composition of the page, radically changed, as snapshots, streamlined design, and modern dress reform energized the look and experience of reading Vogue. As the next decade brought war, Vogue documented men and women in the American Armed Forces stationed in Europe and transmitted images of burned, mutilated, and broken bodies back to readers at home. Cover photographs of active, healthy women in the 1930s would shift to highly stylized, fractured images of the female form in the 1940s. The visual modifications to Vogue in the 1930s and 1940s were not merely aesthetic, but heavily inflected by shifting cultural, social, and economic norms during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Analyzing images by key Vogue photographers such as Toni Frissell, Lee Miller, and Erwin Blumenfeld in relation to page layouts, typography, clothing design, and popular culture, this project uncovers how photography and design promoted new strategies to connect with white female communities and articulate evolving definitions of the body and subjectivity. I argue the photographers and art directors under consideration here enhanced the concept of the magazine as a haptic medium by creating visual forms that privileged sensorial connections. Whereas fashion magazines have traditionally been undervalued in academic scholarship, this dissertation draws on feminist theory and studies of materiality to situate Vogue as a crucial object for understanding how the politics of the body shaped mass media, as the magazine fashioned new perceptual experiences for engaging with, and translating, modern women and forms of femininity.
Graduation Semester
2019-05
Type of Resource
text
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105033
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2019 Rachel Roseborough White

Owning Collections

Graduate Dissertations and Theses at Illinois PRIMARY
Graduate Theses and Dissertations at Illinois
Dissertations and Theses - Art History