Women Artists at VMFA
VMFA has a growing collection of works by women artists, including those highlighted here. The collection features works from across time and place. With such a vast arch across time, these works collectively underscore the dramatic shifts in the artistic, social and political landscape and their impact upon the creative expression.
Collection: African American Art, African Art, American Art, Decorative Arts after 1890, European Art, Impressionism, Modern and Contemporary Art, Native American Art Culture/Region: Africa, America, Europe Subject Area: Women Activity Type: Resource Set
Women Artists at VMFA
Two Sisters- Marguerite and Her Sister Edith
1921 , American Medium: oil on canvas Accession ID: 2013.194
Level 2, American Galleries
Celebrated for her strong sense of color and design in painting and textile, Marguerite Thompson Zorach belonged to America’s pioneering generation of avant-garde artists. Along with her husband, William, she exhibited her post-impressionist and fauve-inspired paintings in a number of important exhibitions of modern art, including the landmark 1913 Armory Show. This striking painting from 1921—an intimate portrait of Marguerite (left) and her younger sister, Edith, in a dynamic cityscape of fragmented buildings—is representative of the family themes that run throughout her career. Its simplified forms and angularity reveal the artist’s contemporary study of American folk art as well as Egyptian sculpture.
Suggested Activities
Looking to Learn: Perceive, Know, Care About (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-perceive -know-care-about/) Moving to Learn: Strike a Pose (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/moving-to-learn-strike-a- pose/) Writing to Learn: Words in Their Mouths and Thoughts in Their Heads (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/words-mouths-thoughts- heads/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/)
Mother and Child
1902 , American Medium: Bronze Accession ID: 2010.3
Level 2, American Galleries
Vonnoh, like her colleague Mary Cassatt, cultivated a successful career producing sculptures of upper-class women at different stages of life. Images of mother and child, like this one, were among her most popular works, reproduced in numerous castings. Here the artist’s modeling skills are revealed in the controlled naturalism of the figures and the graceful treatment of the drapery.
By the time she modeled Mother and Child, Vonnoh’s reputation was well established. The novelist William Dean Howells praised her for giving “the Muse of sculpture…a chance to become a fellow citizen, and to vote with the rest of us when her sex gets the suffrage.
Suggested Activities
Writing to Learn: Narrative (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-narrative /) Looking to Learn: Perceive, Know, Care About (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-perceive -know-care-about/) Sketching to Learn: Before and After (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-before -and-after/) Writing to Learn: Words in Their Mouths and Thoughts in Their Heads (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/words-mouths-thoughts- heads/)
Alexander Harrison
1888 , American Medium: oil on canvas Accession ID: 2009.2
Level 2, American Galleries
Already an accomplished painter when she arrived in Paris for further training at age thirty-three, Cecilia Beaux quickly distinguished herself with bravura works such as this: a collaborative portrait of fellow Philadelphian Alexander Harrison. It is one of two fully realized paintings she produced in Concarneau, a summer artist colony in Brittany. A transitional work that reveals her embrace of plein-air (outdoor) painting and a lightened palette – an approach Harrison encouraged – it inspired his comment that Beaux had the “right stuff” to become a serious painter, “the stuff that digs and thinks and will not be satisfied and is never weary of the effort of painting nor counts the cost.”
Suggested Activities
Moving to Learn: Strike a Pose (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/moving-to-learn-strike-a- pose/) Sketching to Learn: Beyond the Frame (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-beyon d-the-frame/) Writing to Learn: Headlines, Tweets, and Memes (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-headline s-tweets-and-memes/) Writing to Learn: Words in Their Mouths and Thoughts in Their Heads (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/words-mouths-thoughts- heads/)
Books and Pottery Vase early 1900s , American Medium: oil on canvas Accession ID: 71.23
Level 2, American Galleries At the turn of the 20th century, Hirst’s meticulous still lifes held such public appeal that, as one critic wrote, “they are apt to be hanging crooked…as people take them down so many times to hold them and look at them.” While touching art in galleries was discouraged then, as it is now, close examination was precisely the response that Hirst sought. The painter was one of a handful of Gilded Age artists – and the only female (her first name was shortened from Claudine) – to gain critical acclaim for illusionary imagery.
In this painting, Hirst presents an arrangement of old books and a ceramic pot with Asian motifs. She draws the eye to a brightly lid, opened book rendered with such precision that words can be read from its pages. The worn volume was one of the artist’s favorites: a 1795 English translation of Bernardin de Saint- Pierre’s romantic novel, Paul and Virginia. The painting’s frame – contemporary with the canvas but not original – offers its own visual surprise. The beautiful curling grain is actually painted. One trompe-l’oeil triumph supports the other.
Suggested Activities
Looking to Learn: Ten Times Two (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-ten-time s-two/) Moving to Learn: Make It Move (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/moving-to-learn-make-it- move/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/) Writing to Learn: Haiku (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-haiku/)
Child Picking a Fruit
1893 , American Medium: oil on canvas Accession ID: 75.18
Level 2, American Galleries
Child Picking a Fruit merges the subject that made Mary Cassatt famous—a young woman (possibly a mother) and child—with her more ambitious examination of “modern woman,” a topical theme at the turn of the 20th century as the women’s suffrage movement gained momentum. The image derives from the artist’s now-lost Modern Woman mural commission, produced for the Woman’s Building of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. For this prestigious world’s fair, Cassatt presented her allegorical subject in a three-panel lunette. The large central panel, Young Women Plucking the Fruits of Knowledge, featured women of different ages, clad in contemporary dress and communally harvesting fruit from an orchard.
Suggested Activities
Writing to Learn: Narrative (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-narrative /) Writing to Learn: Sensory Inventory (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-sensory-i nventory/) Sketching to Learn: Before and After (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-before -and-after/) Looking to Learn: Perceive, Know, Care About (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-perceive -know-care-about/)
War Torn Dress
2002 , Salish/Kootina Medium: Mixed media on canvas Accession ID: 2018.353a-b
Level 2, American Galleries
A profound visualization of the struggle between Native and non-Native philosophies, War-Torn Dress presents a legacy that is more cautionary than celebratory. Quick-to-See Smith often uses clothing to highlight the human element of her powerful indigenous narratives. The diptych format literally tears the dress in two, reminding the viewer of the brutal American practice of tearing Native communities from their land under the guise of civilizing them. The implication of a body inspires contemplation on lives lost and the contested spaces they occupied. Placed prominently across the dress, “Your God, My God” proposes that within the fight over whose God is greater, all people reside in the Sacred, breathe the same air, and are of the same life force. The dress is now destroyed but deploys an urgent warning. Suggested Activities
Looking to Learn: What Makes You Say That? (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-what-ma kes-you-say-that/) Sketching to Learn: Hand and Voice (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-hand- and-voice/) Writing to Learn: Headlines, Tweets, and Memes (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-headline s-tweets-and-memes/) Sketching to Learn: Contour Drawing (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-conto ur-drawing/)
Portrait of the Comte de Vaudreuil
1784 , French Medium: oil on canvas Accession ID: 49.11.21
Level 2, European Galleries
Vigée-Lebrun, daughter of a Paris pastelist, was a successful portrait painter from the age of fifteen. In 1779 she was called to court to paint Queen Marie-Antoinette’s portrait; she quickly became the queen’s favorite artist. Like the Comte de Vaudreuil, Vigée-Lebrun fled France at the beginning of the revolution, but was later invited to return, which she did briefly in 1802 and permanently in 1810. The Comte de Vaudreuil was a wealthy plantation owner who lived so grandly that he was cited as one of the causes of the French Revolution. A noted art collector, he once owned VMFA’s Finding of the Laocoön by Hubert Robert.
Suggested Activities
Looking to Learn: I See, I Think, I Wonder (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-i-see-i-th ink-i-wonder/) Moving to Learn: Strike a Pose (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/moving-to-learn-strike-a- pose/) Sketching to Learn: Beyond the Frame (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-beyon d-the-frame/) Writing to Learn: Headlines, Tweets, and Memes (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-headline s-tweets-and-memes/)
Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures ca. 1785 , English Medium: oil on canvas Accession ID: 75.22
Level 2, European Galleries
Suggested Activities
Moving to Learn: Living Tableau (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/__trashed-7/) Writing to Learn: Narrative (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-narrative /) Writing to Learn: Words in Their Mouths and Thoughts in Their Heads (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/words-mouths-thoughts- heads/) Sketching to Learn: 30-second Sketch (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-30-sec ond-sketch/)
Venus and Cupid ca. 1625-30 , Italian Medium: oil on canvas Accession ID: 2001.225
Level 2, European Galleries
Artemisia Gentileschi, who trained in Rome with her father, Orazio, was the leading female artist of the 17th century. She worked mainly in Rome, Florence, and Naples. In 1616, she became the first female member of Florence’s noted Academy of Painting.
Gentileschi’s work, which is marked by the strong contrasts of light and dark as well as unusual, bold compositions, was influenced both by her father’s painting style and that of his famous associate, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Her subject matter often consists of powerfully rendered portrayals of women – Judith, Susanna, Cleopatra, and Danäe, for example – dramatically depicted either as heroines or victims.
In this work, however, Gentileschi has created a sumptuous image of Venus, the Goddess of Love, asleep under a velvet hanging. Her bedcover is painted with ultramarine, an expensive pigment made from powdered lapis lazuli. Behind her, Cupid wields a peacock-feather fan to keep pests from annoying or waking her. At the left is a view of a mountainous landscape with a small circular temple, reminiscent of the one dedicated to Venus near Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli, just outside of Rome.
Suggested Activities
Sketching to Learn: 30-second Sketch (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-30-sec ond-sketch/) Writing to Learn: Cinquain Poem (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-cinquain- poem/) Writing to Learn: Sensory Inventory (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-sensory-i nventory/) Looking to Learn: Elaboration Game (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-elaborati on-game/)
Butterfly Whorl
2018 , Coast Salish Medium: Red cedar, copper, pigment Accession ID: 2019.48
Level 2, Evans Court
Susan A. Point (1952–) is a descendant of the Musqueam/Coast Salish people, who are indigenous to the lower mainland of Vancouver, southern tip of Vancouver Island, B.C., and northern Washington State. Coast Salish women had a distinctive weaving style, using wool spun with a large spindle with a shaft that was up to four feet long. This shaft had a wooden whorl attached that was up to eight inches across. Many Salish spindle whorls have sophisticated and powerful designs—human, animal, and geometric- carved onto the side that faced the weaver so that she saw the designs as she worked. Designs on the whorl could indicate purification and might have signified the spindle whorl’s importance in transforming wool into wealth. As the whorl turned, the designs blurred together, mesmerizing the spinner. This trance state was considered vital to the process as it gave the spinner the ability to create textiles imbued with special powers.
Point initiated the contemporary use of the spindle whorl form and her distinct style has stimulated a renewed energy and interest in Coast Salish art. Traditionally it was the men in the community who carved, and Susan remains one of the few women in her community who work on such a large scale.
In Butterfly Whorl, the central image is the butterfly, which is a minor crest animal for Susan. The design was inspired by a quiet afternoon Susan spent on her property watching the birds and butterflies. The butterfly also sometimes appears in Raven stories, acting as his scout when he wants to find something the other animals have hidden. On closer inspection, the central butterfly motif is actually made up of several hummingbirds. Point has also embedded eight three-dimensional copper elements around the exterior of the work which echo trigons found within the design. The incredible knife-work, compositional skill, and handling of the large format are all indicative of Susan’s artistic strengths.
Suggested Activities
Beyond the Sketch: Give it a Whorl! (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/beyond-the-sketch-give-it -a-whorl/) Looking to Learn: Ten Times Two (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-ten-time s-two/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/) Looking to Learn: What Makes You Say That? (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-what-ma kes-you-say-that/) ibala leSindebele (Ndebele Design)
2014 , Ndebele Medium: acrylic on linen Accession ID: 2014.225
Level 2, Evans Court In 2014 VMFA commissioned Esther Mahlangu to create two large-scale paintings to form a vibrant gateway for the African Art Galleries. The most renowned contemporary artist among South Africa’s Ndebele people, Mahlangu has transformed the art of mural painting from its historic tradition of designs on the exterior of rural houses to projects created in a global contemporary art context. Her career was propelled in 1989 when she was invited to participate in the landmark Magiciens de la Terre exhibition in Paris. In 1991 BMW commissioned her to paint a car for their Art Car program; to date, she is the only African and only female artist included in this project.
Beyond the pride Ndebele women take in their painted homes, these residences assumed new importance during the late 19th century as statements of identity and resistance against displacement from the land by white settlers. As a young girl, Esther learned the art from her mother and grandmother. For the VMFA project, her granddaughter Marriam assisted. Esther’s vision for a composition arises in her mind’s eye, and she works without aid of preliminary sketch or straight-edge tool. Techniques vary from using a single chicken feather to etch a fine line to multi-feather clusters and artist’s brushes for the broader areas of color.
Painted on linen, these works will survive indefinitely, whereas murals painted directly on building surfaces can be imperiled by renovation, overpainting, or degeneration from weather. Indeed, some of Esther Mahlangu’s most significant international mural projects now exist only through photographic documentation.
Suggested Activities
Sketching to Learn: Hand and Voice (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-hand- and-voice/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/) Esther Mahlangu @ VMFA (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/esther-mahlangu-vmfa/) Sketching to Learn: Beyond the Frame (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-beyon d-the-frame/) Kovsh
1908-17 , Russian Medium: silver-gilt, enamel, Siberian hardstones Accession ID: 98.16
Level 2, Fabergé
A kovsh is a traditional Russian boat-shaped drinking cup or ladle. This form was popular in the late 19th century as Russians looked for a national cultural identity. Old Slavic forms and folk motifs provided inspiration for many of the artists and designers who created decorative objects in the Old Russian (or Neo-Russian) style.
Although women often worked in family-owned Russian decorative arts workshops in the late tsarist era, very few registered their own hallmark or owned their own business Maria Semenova, who produced this intricately patterned kovsh, was the daughter of Vasilii Semenov, a moderately successful Moscow-based silversmith, known for producing silver objects with dark niello decorations. Following her father’s death, which took place around 1896, Semenova took over the workshop and registered new marks using her own initials.
She revamped the workshop and began to specialize in silver gilt objects enameled in brilliant colors. She particularly favored the kovsh form, which was thought to be distinctly Russian in origin. The fine quality of her creations met Karl Fabergé’s exacting standards—and her enameled objects were offered for sale in his retail stores. Her workshop was undoubtedly one of the many workshops that were nationalized after the 1917 Revolution in Russia—although no specific record of her later life has yet been found.
Suggested Activities
Looking to Learn: Elaboration Game (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-elaborati on-game/) Looking to Learn: I See, I Think, I Wonder (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-i-see-i-th ink-i-wonder/) Sketching to Learn: 30-second Sketch (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-30-sec ond-sketch/) Sketching to Learn: Contour Drawing (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-conto ur-drawing/)
One Night at Jimmy's We Saw the Supremes on Color Television ca. 1965-67 , American Medium: Liquitex on canvas Accession ID: 67.15.4
Level 2, Mid to Late 20th–Century Galleries
We’re living in an exciting period—a period of change. Value patterns are changing and to me it’s fascinating. —Willie Anne Wright
Of the same generation as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Wright finished her MFA in painting at Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University) in 1964, just as Pop Art began to take hold outside New York. Here Wright quotes Matisse with bold, overlapping floral motifs and a domestic scene, but unlike Matisse’s Parisian interiors, Wright’s setting is distinctly American with a TV as its focal point. When network television converted from black and white to color in 1965, the Supremes were a favorite musical group on The Ed Sullivan Show and other widely viewed programs. A keen observer of popular media and an avid fan of soul music, Wright translates this “period of change” into a singular visual composition.
Suggested Activities
Artist Profile: Willie Anne Wright (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/artist-profile-willie-anne- wright/) Writing to Learn: Words in Their Mouths and Thoughts in Their Heads (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/words-mouths-thoughts- heads/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/) Moving to Learn: Living Tableau (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/__trashed-7/) The Night Vigil
1981 , American Medium: enamel on canvas Accession ID: 85.526
Level 2, Mid to Late 20th–Century Galleries
"The self-portrait is really an inquiry, an introspective process of asking myself where am I coming from."—Joan Brown
Brown was a second-generation member of the Bay Area Figurative School—a movement of San Francisco-area artists that included Richard Diebenkorn, David Parks, and Wayne Thiebaud. The movement, which started in the 1950s, abandoned the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism.
Brown’s bright colors, fantastical imagery, and personal symbolism were based in real and imagined events in her life. In the late ’70s, increasingly interested in spirituality, she became an adherent of Sathya Sai Baba and traveled often to India. The sacred cow, veiled figure with forehead bindi, and Sanskrit text about male/female duality reflect these interests, while the figure’s mummy-like form and stiff frontal pose convey her interest in Egyptian art.
Suggested Activities
Looking to Learn: I See, I Think, I Wonder (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-i-see-i-th ink-i-wonder/) Sketching to Learn: Hand and Voice (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-hand- and-voice/) Sketching to Learn: 30-second Sketch (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-30-sec ond-sketch/) Writing to Learn: Haiku (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-haiku/)
Io
1990 , American Medium: cast bronze Accession ID: 91.3
Level 2, Mid to Late 20th–Century Galleries Many of Michele Oka Doner’s works—from site-specific installations to more intimate, functional objects such as Io—reference the natural world. The title, Io, refers to Jupiter’s innermost moon, which has a perfectly circular orbit. Doner saw the pictures, take by one of the Voyager spacecrafts, of Io’s seven active volcanoes. The bench’s texture alludes to what those photographs captured, while its circular shape comes from Io’s orbit and from the artist’s idea that a bench should be “a gathering point—a focus.
Suggested Activities
Sketching to Learn: Contour Drawing (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-conto ur-drawing/) Writing to Learn: Creative Comparisons (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-creative- comparisons/) Writing to Learn: Simile and Metaphor (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-simile-an d-metaphor/) Looking to Learn: I See, I Think, I Wonder (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-i-see-i-th ink-i-wonder/)
No. 3 - 1957
1957 , American Medium: Oil on canvas Accession ID: 58.13.5
Level 2, Mid to Late 20th–Century Galleries
"New York seemed to me at the time like a giant carousel in continuous motion—on many levels—lines approaching swiftly and curving back again forming an intricate ballet of reflections and sounds." —Hedda Sterne
Sterne grew up in the midst of the Romanian avant-garde in the 1920s. She traveled to Paris frequently in the 1930s, immersing herself in Surrealism before relocating to New York in 1941. There she quickly became active in the circle of exiled European artists and the younger generation of American artists who later became Abstract Expressionists. In the early 1950s, Sterne began painting with the newly invented aerosol spray, discovering that its speed and ease of movement paired with the paint’s diffuse, blurred edges effectively translated the sensation of the pulsating city environments she depicted.
Suggested Activities
Writing to Learn: Sensory Inventory (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-sensory-i nventory/) Writing to Learn: Creative Comparisons (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-creative- comparisons/) Looking to Learn: What Makes You Say That? (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-what-ma kes-you-say-that/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/)
Untitled (No. 25)
1960 , American Medium: welded steel, canvas, copper wire Accession ID: 85.364
Level 2, Mid to Late 20th–Century Galleries
“My concern is to build things that express our relationship to this country—to other countries—to this world—to other worlds . . . to glimpse some of the fear, hope, ugliness, beauty, and mystery that exist in us all.” —Lee Bontecou
Between 1959 and 1967, Bontecou made works using canvas wired to a welded-steel framework. These wall-mounted constructions questioned the boundary between painting and sculpture, an issue the artist explored further by using raw canvas as a sculptural material. Bontecou meant her works to defy easy interpretation. Their gaping voids, backed with black, simultaneously invite and repel.
The canvases call to mind army fatigues, laundry bags, or tarps; the wire that attached them suggests sutures closing a wound. Bontecou’s use of common materials allies her with the Assemblage approach of artists like Robert Rauschenberg, and her pared-down materials and interest in geometry hint at Minimalism. But her works’ strong emotions and political and cosmic allusions set her apart from both these movements. Suggested Activities
Looking to Learn: I See, I Think, I Wonder (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-i-see-i-th ink-i-wonder/) Looking to Learn: What Makes You Say That? (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-what-ma kes-you-say-that/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/) Sketching to Learn: Hand and Voice (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-hand- and-voice/)
Mother Goose Melody
1959 , American Medium: Oil on canvas Accession ID: 85.387
Level 2, Mid to Late 20th–Century Galleries
"The painter makes something magical, spatial, and alive on a surface that is flat and with materials that are inert. That magic is what makes a painting unique and necessary. Painting, in many ways, is a glorious illusion."—Helen Frankenthaler
In Mother Goose Melody, Frankenthaler combines the gestural splashes and drips of Abstract Expressionist painting with the innovative stained-canvas technique she helped pioneer in 1952. The array of colors, shapes, and lines makes this composition rhythmic and dynamic. The spiraling red form on the right counters the dense area of color on the left, while the broad yellow band stretching across the bottom unites both. The artist noted that the three brown shapes could refer to herself and her two sisters, and that the red and black lines “made a sort of stork figure—the whole thing had a nursery- rhyme feeling.”
Suggested Activities
Sketching to Learn: Hand and Voice (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-hand- and-voice/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/) Writing to Learn: Sensory Inventory (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-sensory-i nventory/) Sketching to Learn: 30-second Sketch (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-30-sec ond-sketch/)
Chrysalis Four
2014 , American Medium: Silk thread (Kibiso) Accession ID: 2015.255a-k
Level 2, 21st–Century Galleries
"Fabric itself can become more intellectually challenging and I like that kind of surprise in human beings too, when you get to know each other. It is kind of nice to have layers and layers of human experience come out. That is what I enjoy very much about life and cloth. "—Kiyomi Iwata
Iwata began her career in the arts after taking a batik-dying class at VMFA’s Studio School in 1967. In the early 1970s she moved to New York where she studied weaving and textiles at the New School of Social Research. Primarily a fiber artist, Iwata uses her medium—most often silk—to push the boundaries between painting and sculpture and explore the intersection of Japanese and American artistic traditions
Chrysalis Four marks her transition from using woven silk to form volumetric structures, like boxes, to treating kibiso thread as lines in a two-dimensional composition. Kibiso is the rough, thick silk thread produced by silk worms before they begin to make the smooth thread traditionally used in textiles. Here the loosely woven kibiso references the life stages of a silk worm, forming the shape of eleven cocoons. The transparency of the forms, however, allows each thread to cast a bold shadow, creating an intricate drawing behind the three-dimensional object.
Chill
2011 , American Medium: Acrylic, pencil, oil, and enamel on canvas Accession ID: 2018.397
Level 2, 21st–Century Galleries
"Having run away from seemingly inadequate definitions for abstract painting, I find myself immersed in a relationship that tracks, exchanges . . . there is no more picture; there is only painting."—Candida Alvarez
Alvarez is an abstract painter whose works integrate pop art, color theory, and memory. The artist draws upon her Puerto Rican heritage through her use of complex, vibrantly layered compositions. Moving between abstract and figurative forms, she often cites pop culture, historical and modern art references, current affairs, and personal memories.
In Chill, Alvarez employs silhouettes of white and a gray against pops of bold, bright colors. The work is as much about the wintery landscape of Chicago, where the artist resides, as it is about a fascination with the aesthetics of cartoons, kitsch, and hand-crafted objects. The painting evokes the monochrome, rich with texture, yet disrupted with pops of color. Alvarez discusses the work as one in which shape and color dominate. The process of how paint is applied to the canvas becomes focal to the viewer’s eye. For the artist, notions about abstractions being devoid of figuration is debunked in this gestural wintery landscape.
Suggested Activities
Writing to Learn: Creative Comparisons (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-creative- comparisons/) Looking to Learn: What Makes You Say That? (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-what-ma kes-you-say-that/) Sketching to Learn: Contour Drawing (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-conto ur-drawing/) Sketching to Learn: 30-second Sketch (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-30-sec ond-sketch/) Interior: Two Chairs and Fireplace
2011 , American Medium: acrylic and oil enamel with rhinestones on panel Accession ID: 2014.371
Level 2, 21st–Century Galleries
"What’s so great is that Matisse looked at Manet. And Romare Bearden looked at Matisse and Manet. And I’m looking at all three; it’s a lineage."—Mickalene Thomas
Thomas explores traditional notions of femininity and beauty, as well as female empowerment, through paintings portraying provocative, glamorous African American women. She begins her three-part process by building sets redolent of 1970s domestic interiors, where she then poses and photographs her model. Finally, she paints the image on a much larger scale, incorporating materials such as glitter and sequins.
Thomas’s dialogue with art history is evident in this painting, which, unusually for her, presents a setting without the figure. The rich profusion of patterns plays on Henri Matisse’s paintings, while the illusion of torn and pasted fragments recalls Romare Bearden’s collages.
Suggested Activities
Sketching to Learn: Beyond the Frame (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-beyon d-the-frame/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/) Writing to Learn: Sensory Inventory (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-sensory-i nventory/) Sketching to Learn: Hand and Voice (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-hand- and-voice/)
Stadia III
2004 , American Medium: ink and acrylic on canvas Accession ID: 2006.1 Level 2, 21st–Century Galleries
"I’m interested in describing this as a system. . . a whole cosmos, and that is the overall painting, while the little minute detail marks act more like characters, individual stories. Each mark has agency in that sense—individual agency."—Julie Mehretu
Mehretu’s monumental paintings address contemporary themes of power, colonialism, and globalism with dramatic flair. She adopts imagery from architecture, city planning, mapping, and the media. At the same time, her bold use of color, line, and gesture makes her works feel like personal expression.
Stadia III belongs to a series of three Stadia paintings dealing with the theme of mass spectacle. Conceived in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the series reflects Mehretu’s fascination with television coverage that transformed the war into a kind of video game—as many at the time commented—and in the spectrum of nationalistic responses that she witnessed during travels to Mexico, Australia, Turkey, and Germany. The series also reflects her interest in the international buildup to the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.
Suggested Activities
Interactive Exercise: DJ the Artwork (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/interactive-exercise-dj-th e-artwork/) Writing to Learn: Sensory Inventory (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-sensory-i nventory/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/) Writing to Learn: Haiku (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-haiku/)
Projection screen (Black Onyx)
2007 , American Medium: black onyx Accession ID: 2008.46a-b
Level 2, 21st–Century Galleries
"Although I think of myself as a conceptual artist, I give a lot of importance to the sensual and sensorial aspects of engagement."—Teresita Fernández
Fernández often takes elemental, natural phenomena like fire, water, ice, and smoke as her starting point. She then makes highly distilled illusions that invoke both the thing itself and blatantly artificial representations of these phenomena. In this way, her work addresses her overlapping interests in problems of perception and in the cultural fabrication of “nature.” In Projection Screen, hundreds of tiny polished halfspheres of black onyx affixed directly to the wall yield a rectangular dark form surrounded by a paler aura. The effect demonstrates a phenomenon, well known since the late 19th century, in which our brains consolidate many and diverse pieces of information into a greater whole. At the same time, the form seems to resist such cohesion, as if caught in the process of expanding or contracting.
Suggested Activities
Writing to Learn: Creative Comparisons (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-creative- comparisons/) Sketching to Learn: Hand and Voice (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-hand- and-voice/) Sketching to Learn: 30-second Sketch (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-30-sec ond-sketch/) Sketching to Learn: Beyond the Frame (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-beyon d-the-frame/)
Queen of Hearts (for Hous'hill, Catherine Cranston's residence, Glasgow, Scotland)
1909 , Scottish Medium: wood, paint, gesso Accession ID: 85.143.3
Level 3, Decorative Arts Galleries
Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, wife of Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, created numerous stenciled and gessoed pictures for the tearooms that her husband designed for Catherine Cranston in Glasgow. Later Macdonald Mackintosh assisted her husband in the interior decoration of Hous’hill, Miss Cranston’s Glasgow residence. These four panels, originally set into the walls of the Card Room in Cranston’s house, depict the queens of the four card suits flanked by two court pages. Macdonald Mackintosh’s use of gesso to create a high-relief linear style was characteristic of her work during the period.
Suggested Activities
Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/) Moving to Learn: Strike a Pose (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/moving-to-learn-strike-a- pose/) Writing to Learn: Haiku (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-haiku/) Sketching to Learn: Contour Drawing (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-conto ur-drawing/)
Pirogue Chaise Longue
1919 - 22 , French Medium: Lacquer, wood, silver leaf, replacement fabric Accession ID: 85.112
Level 3, Decorative Arts Galleries
This unusual chaise longue, inspired by Polynesian and Micronesian dugout canoes, known in Frances as pirogues, is lacquered and silvered. Very similar to one that Gray designed in 1919-20 for Madame Mathieu Lévy, a successful Parisian fashion designer known as Suzanne Talbot, it is among the most celebrated examples of furniture in the Art Deco style.
Suggested Activities
Sketching to Learn: Contour Drawing (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-conto ur-drawing/) Writing to Learn: Creative Comparisons (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-creative- comparisons/) Sketching to Learn: Hand and Voice (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-hand- and-voice/) Sketching to Learn: 30-second Sketch (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-30-sec ond-sketch/)
Dragonfly Lamp before 1906 , American Medium: leaded glass, bronze Accession ID: 85.160a-c
Level 3, Decorative Arts Galleries
After starting work for tiffany in 1888, Clara Driscoll became head of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department in 1892 and designed the majority of Tiffany’s lamps. Her design for the dragonfly shade was among Tiffany’s most popular lamps. An article in The New York Daily News (April 1904) profiled Driscoll as one of a group of American women who earned $10,000 or more annually. Although Louis Comfort Tiffany kept all the names of his workers anonymous, that article identifies Driscoll as the designer of one of the most iconic lamps for Tiffany Studios. A variant of VMFA’s dragonfly shade was first publicly shown in French art dealer Siegfried Bing’s exhibition L’Art Nouveau at the Grafton Galleries in London in 1899. A year later, another version of Driscoll’s dragonfly lamp shade won a prize at the World’s Fair in Paris. A third example of Driscoll’s dragonfly lamp shade was on display at the Exhibition of Modern Decorative Arts in Turin, Italy, in 1902.
Suggested Activities
Looking to Learn: I See, I Think, I Wonder (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-i-see-i-th ink-i-wonder/) Looking to Learn: Elaboration Game (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-elaborati on-game/) Sketching to Learn: Contour Drawing (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-conto ur-drawing/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/) Cherry Tree
1930s , American Medium: oil on board; wood, carved, gessoed, and painted Accession ID: 56.26
Artmobile
Early in the 20th century, Adèle Clark established her reputation in Richmond, Virginia, as an artist, teacher, and social activist. An ardent suffragist, she attracted crowds on Broad Street with her outdoor easel only to deliver seemingly impromptu"Votes for Women" speeches. In the 1930s, she served as state director for the federally sponsored WPA arts projects. She was also instrumental in the establishment of the Virginia State Art Commission and an active leader in the Richmond Academy ofthe Arts-the forerunner of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
While her politics were somewhat fiery, Clark's painting style was conservative for the time. Here, with short, broken brushstrokes, she captured the shimmering impression of a cherry tree blooming in her Chamberlayne Avenue garden. Never varnished, the work retains the dry, chalky surface beloved by impressionist painters, including William Merritt Chase, with whom she studied at the New York School of Art.
Suggested Activities
Writing to Learn: Sensory Inventory (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-sensory-i nventory/) Looking to Learn: Elaboration Game (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-elaborati on-game/) Sketching to Learn: Beyond the Frame (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-beyon d-the-frame/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/)