ABSTRACT
The vogue for virility in early twentieth-century art is but one aspect of a total social, cultural and economic situation that women artists had to overcome. It was, however, a particularly pernicious aspect. As an ethos communicated in a hundred insidious ways, but never overtly, it effectively alienated women from the collective, mutually supportive endeavor that was the avant garde. However, if the artist is willing to regard women as merely a means to his own ends, if he exploits them to achieve his boast of virility, he in his turn must merchandise and sell himself, or an illusion of himself and his intimate life, on the open avant-garde market. He must promote the value of his special credo, the authenticity of his special vision, and—most importantly—the genuineness of his antibourgeois antagonism. The relationship between the collector and the artist may be read in the monographs that art historians and connoisseurs so often write about painters of nudes.
