ABSTRACT
In 1949 Mademoiselle magazine declared Honore Sharrer "Woman Artist of the Year". Reception marks a fundamental change in Sharrer's style, subject matter, and narrative mode after the early 1950s, which mirrors seemingly similar changes made by other artists marginalized in this hostile political and artistic environment. If Reception takes a shrewdly rebellious aim at the power dynamics of Cold War politics, in doing so it also takes a similarly subversive swipe at the art world that colluded with such exclusionary politics. The carrier of social and political criticism in Reception is the feminine, which compels the viewer, male or female, to engage in a feminist strategy of reading against the dominant grain, of deciphering codes in a mode counter to the more immediate reading, in order to connect fully with this criticism. A significant reason abstract expressionism exclusively came to define the post-war art world was its serviceability for broader Cold War political agendas.
