Artists and Suffragists

From the cover page to the content, Elain Weiss' book reflects, captures, or displays visual images that contain suffragist ideologies (e.g. the colors on the front page, the flowers the suffragists used, posters, political cartoons, propagandized creative content, etc.), which made me inquire who created these images, what suffragists operated at the intersection of design and politics, and how visual content influenced and/or perpetuated ideas. Although not entirely encompassing of these questions (but in other ways, more-so), this article here explains "the role of artists in promoting the cause of women's suffrage". Many female artists joined the cause after experiencing discriminatory injustices within their own field, as male artists earned more, had access to better art classes, received access to networks, etc. Interestingly, the suffrage movement awas occurring at the same time as the arts and crafts movement was happening in the art world. "But the Arts and Crafts Movement was also political and its enlightened socialist attitudes began to permeate the art institutions and the small, female-run collectives that operated on the peripheries of the artistic establishment. Students discussed politics and read Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and a women’s debating society was established in 1864. This learning brought into existence a cohesive and radically simple idea: if fine art was closed to women, then the domestic arts must be subverted to their advantage and used to gain female emancipation." Thus, progressive artistic, social, and political attitudes intersected at the same time. Aesthetics could therefore easily be used political tools, so it makes sense now why we've been exposed to a plethora of artistic images with embodied ideologies.