Sixteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Biographies of artists normally produce either externalist or internalist accounts: that is, the artist is interpreted in their own terms or fitted in to pre-existing narratives. This study uses Field Theory of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu to go beyond both approaches. It examines artistic biography and work in terms of habitus and cultural capital and the field of cultural reproduction. I use the life and work of the British Surrealist Ithell Colquhoun to offer a field analysis of her activities within artistic and esoteric communities. The paper presents synchronic accounts of Colquhoun at ‘critical moments’ in her life trajectories, detailing the breadth and focus of her influence with respect to the capitals they involved: social, cultural and economic. Such analyses are set against exemplars from her painting as a way to compare the development of esoteric aesthetic with her biographical experience. In particular, I am interested in the provenance and destiny of avant-gardes, especially those apparently at their margins. The account challenges conventional narratives of her work and explores the surrealist, feminist and esoteric elements within it. It seeks to demonstrate the relationship between personal creative aesthetics and the social conditions of their production in order to develop a reflexive understanding of the expressive impulse as it is manifested in trans-historic fields and the necessity of human creativity immanent within them.