‘I try to present an appearance in London (without marble dust)’: Barbara Hepworth’s Style as Self-staging 1953-1975

Sinclair, Jeanie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9823-7235 (2025) ‘I try to present an appearance in London (without marble dust)’: Barbara Hepworth’s Style as Self-staging 1953-1975. In: Dress Devolution 3: Still playing dress-up: age, clothing and costume, 3rd-4th July 2025, Falmouth University. (Unpublished)

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Abstract / Summary

Barbara Hepworth’s concern for self-presentation is evident throughout her body of creative work. Continually misinterpreted or misrepresented by the patriarchal press and paternalistic art critics, Hepworth attempted to correct these frequently misogynistic framings of her as an artist, and as a woman, by carefully presenting and representing her image through her art and writing. This paper explores how Hepworth constructed her identity and controlled her self-representation through her style and dress in the latter part of her life.
Part of ‘setting the record straight’ (Curtis, 1994:197) extended to Hepworth’s careful performance of her identity through her choice of what she wore. Always a fashionable woman, she was no less carefully controlled in how she presented herself as she got older. As arguably Britain’s most famous modernist artist, she collaborated with, and was photographed by, some of the best-known portrait photographers of the 20th century. By examining some of these carefully staged photographic portraits, such as those by Snowdon, Ida Kar, and Ander Gunn, as well as the films she co-created to share her work and ideas, I hope to show how Hepworth’s style and self-fashioning reflects and emphasises her identity as an artist and working woman.
Contrary to an image of Hepworth that has persisted as ‘cold’ and ‘aloof’ (Buckberrough, 1998:48), her letters reveal both her sense of humour and her continued enthusiasm for clothes in her later years. This paper also draws on oral histories, and intimate personal letters to her friend and jewellery designer Janet Slack, to reveal Hepworth’s anxieties around what to wear, and discusses her particular love of comissioning and co-designing jewellery.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Barbara Hepworth; Modernism; Fashion; Art History
Subjects:	Art History & Theory History, Geography & Environment > Cornish Studies Creative Art & Design > Fashion, Textiles & Costume Design History, Geography & Environment History, Geography & Environment > Heritage Studies
Department:	Falmouth School of Art
Depositing User:	Jeanie Sinclair
Date Deposited:	06 Nov 2025 12:19
Last Modified:	06 Nov 2025 12:19
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/5975

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