Off-campus UMass Amherst users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your UMass Amherst user name and password.
Non-UMass Amherst users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Dissertations that have an embargo placed on them will not be available to anyone until the embargo expires.
Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9443-9142
AccessType
Campus-Only Access for Five (5) Years
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
History
Year Degree Awarded
2022
Month Degree Awarded
May
First Advisor
Jon Olsen
Second Advisor
Andrew Donson
Third Advisor
Jonathan Skolnik
Fourth Advisor
Jason Moralee
Fifth Advisor
Karen Kurczynski
Subject Categories
History
Abstract
My dissertation paints an intimate and nuanced portrait of a twentieth-century art network, which at the core included German émigrés Jane Sabersky, Curt Valentin, Mathilde (Quappi) Beckmann, and Max Beckmann as well as Americans Jane Wade and Perry Townsend Rathbone. While their relationships originally began on professional terms and were fueled by discussions of artwork, the crucial sustaining factor was much more complicated: a synergistic web of support that connected the individuals within this circle. My goal is to understand the story of this group in a way that describes the nature of connections, how they were sustained, and the layers of memory that exist as a result. This group inhabited a space where professional and personal relationships blurred. They shared more intimate, personal stories, while simultaneously curating public caricatures, both of which are nuanced and layered, functioning synergistically. The memory narratives that existed in the private bled into the public representations, and vice versa. Each person’s role and memory was nuanced, and my research looks at the ways interpersonal relationships contributed to these identities, which continue to be reworked. Through my dissertation, I highlight how certain stories become cemented as part of reiterated narratives, while others require conscious uncovering to emerge.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/28615093
Recommended Citation
Febrizio, Jenna Marie, "Social Connections and Memory Dimensions: A Layered Portrait of a Twentieth-Century Art Network" (2022). Doctoral Dissertations. 2518.
https://doi.org/10.7275/28615093
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2518
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.