DOCSLIB.ORG

12 the Female Cool School

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
12 the Female Cool School us less primed to notice when the The Female women are dominating in the present. It was an L.A. gallerist who first pointed out to me the “badass Cool School lady painters” working in Los Angeles. right now. “Something’s going on with that,” he said, adding that he was Usually, art movements or “schools,” giving me a scoop, which he was. As acquire names for reasons of soon as their badassery had been expedience. Critic Irving Sandler singled out, I couldn’t help seeing named Color Field Painting, because Sarah Cain, Allison Miller, Laura he needed a title for the chapter Owens, Rebecca Morris, and Dianna on Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Molzan as a cohesive group, female and Mark Rothko in his book The artists whose coexistence in the same Triumph of American Painting. Critic region is consequential rather than Jules Langser and his friend Peter coincidental. Because they’re based in Selz coined Hard-Edge Abstraction Los Angeles, and tied together by an because they needed a name for a aesthetic attitude, they remind me of show linking Lorser Feitelson, John the The Cool School posse from Los McClaughlin, and Karl Benjamin— Angeles’ midcentury heyday—Irwin, all California artists with a preference Moses, Bell, Altoon, et al.—studio for sharpness and clarity. The term rats united by a moment and a certain Light and Space emerged similarly spirit. The Cool School, though, is an from a group exhibition’s title. Many of all-male frame of reference, so maybe these schools consisted mostly of men it’s better to adhere to no frame. (Selz and Langser notably left female Born between 1969 and 1979, hard-edger Helen Lundeberg out of all of these female L.A. painters have their exhibition); the catch-all Feminist self-possessed, un-heroic approaches Art Movement being the exception. to mark making, mixed with quiet Just this summer, Yale University rebelliousness and full-on dedication. Press published what they called The work reads as easygoing, but “a long-awaited survey,” Women of that’s deceptive. Leaving things un- Abstract Expressionism—every time finished or loosely formed on purpose I see the title, I think of a scene in Ann often seems easy or nonchalant even Rower’s book about Lee Krasner and if it’s really something else, such Elaine De Kooning, Lee & Elaine (1988). as deep aversion to hierarchy (aka Rower closes her eyes and tries to patriarchy). And being routinely, imagine that Lee and Elaine did it first, methodologically breezy undermines that their husbands copied them, and stereotypes of feminine flightiness then lied about it. But even with eyes so effectively, it’s hard in the moment closed, she feels the overshadowing to remember they exist. force of Jackson and Willem. Books These painters have crossed like Yale’s new survey, and shows like paths and exhibited together in Hauser, Wirth & Schimmel’s recent piecemeal—Cain and Morris in a Revolution in the Making: Abstract two-person Chinatown show in 2009, Sculpture by Women function almost as correctives, acknowledging female- identified artists as important and Catherine Wagley writes about art and visual culture in Los Angeles. She is currently art critic for influential too. Maybe that ongoing LA Weekly and frequently contributes to a number preoccupation with correcting makes of other publications. 12 Catherine Wagley Owens and Morris appearing in the a rule; recognizable imagery does 2014 Whitney Biennial, Cain and appear occasionally. Miller in a show in a former bank in The artists have no qualms 2013, Molzan, Cain and Owens all about taking up space, though Feature curated into Variations: Conversations doing so does not read as an aim in in Abstraction at LACMA in 2014, and itself. Their lack of ambivalence and so on—but no curator has ever invited disinterest in outright expressionism them all to show together at once. means they’re not really aligned with When I imagine them shown the Provisional Painting Raphael together, I see the exhibition clearly: Rubinstein outlined in 2009,1 and only Sarah Cain’s Supreme Being, massive peripherally with gestures of refusal and and bordered in gold leaf, hangs on Ab-Ex reliant “fakery” Mark Godfrey a wall that thankfully isn’t white. It’s described in a 2014 essay (in which he cracked, stained concrete, not at actually did discuss Owens).2 all pristine. In Cain’s painting, loose Other female L.A. painters are pink and gray graffiti-like marks clear kindred spirits, though they appear above the gold leaf and then, aren’t in my imagined exhibition for suspended on top of the graffiti, is a reasons related to imagery and paint- frame of painted stripes lined with erly mannerisms: Alex Olson, Mari cut-out fringes along the bottom. Eastman, Monique Van Gendersen, Cain made this in 2009, and it hangs Caitlin Lonegan, and Mary Weather- a few generous feet away from Allison ford. Fewer men working right now Miller’s Hour (2015), in which blue and would fit as easily in. Bart Exposito red half-moons appear on a light pink might be a vague kindred, as might surface that has been punctured with New York-based Zak Prekop, or Matt holes. The half-moons, which look like Connors. This gender divide is likely watermelon slices or disoriented rain- circumstantial, the result of histori- bows, line up at regular intervals until, cally different relationships to power. abruptly, the pattern stops and fades Curator Helen Molesworth tried to into an expanse of white interrupted locate such a different relationship only by a very light pink circle. Miller’s in an essay on New York painter painting, while significantly smaller Amy Sillman in which she discussed than Cain’s, holds its own. On the unknowability as a feminist virtue, a opposite wall is a new untitled reaction against authority and mas- painting by Laura Owens, impasto tery. 3 Abstraction has been described swooshes of teal, green, blue, purple as “unknowable” before (in terms of and red overlaying a cartoon image all-black canvases, or seeking out that includes a sheep. Next comes the unperceivable), but here, in the Untitled (#04-13) (2013) by Rebecca context of feminist mark-making, “un- Morris, an army green circle broken knowable” has a more pragmatic use. by geometric incisions, hovering A gesture that isn’t predetermined is casually above lots of black specks. less likely to adhere to already estab- Then there’s Untitled (2009) by Dianna lished patterns and expectations. Molzan, a hazy wash and splotches In a 2013 Artforum interview, of color on linen that doesn’t stretch Laura Owens pondered what it meant all the way to the bottom of the to inhabit her gesture completely. frame. Painterliness in all the work “Isn’t it interesting that a male orgasm is intermittent, a choice rather than has a DNA imprint that will replicate a methodology. Abstraction too is itself over and over again, reinforcing a functional preference rather than itself the way language or naming 1. Rubinstein, Raphael, “Provisional Painting,” Art in America, May 2009. 2. Godfrey, Mark, “Statements of Intent,” Artforum, May 2014. 3. Molesworth, Helen, Amy Sillman: One Lump or Two. New York: Pressel, 2013. might,” she mused, “but the female “[T]here has to be a degree of orgasm has no use, no mark, no the unknown for me to proceed with a locatability? It can’t even be located painting or body of work, or else it is in time. […] I want to think about how just execution without discovery,” said that can be the model for a new ges- Molzan in 2011.7 Space for discovery ture.” She added, “That sounds really means unexpected results, Miller gendered, but it’s not—”4 This new said in 2011: “Since there is no real gesture, she tried to explain, would planning involved in the making of be distanced from the signature and the paintings, they are as much a narrative of the artist, more about the surprise to me as to anybody looking experience of the process and object, at them.”8 Morris spoke in 2013 about for artist and viewer. Her version of how the process of painting involves process art sounded less like Robert translating what one wants internally Morris’ “means over ends” approach, into an external form, and how some- more like Eva Hesse’s desire to push times, when they emerge, her wants against “singleness of purpose” in aren’t what she expected. “I don’t like favor of something less goal-oriented, planning too much in advance,” she “to achieve by not achieving.”5 said, “because I want to be fully open Sarah Cain also talked about to that moment—to that transition avoiding goals in a 2013 interview with from the inside to its manifestation in MOCAtv, in which she grappled with the outside world.”9 gender. “I’ve been owning up to the The results of this unplanned-ness, super femme idea recently and going unsurprisingly, differ across all five really big with femininity,” Cain said, artists’ work. The quietness of Miller’s “which is about a lot of things, but intuitive language can’t be mistaken I think it’s also a way of processing for Owens’ assertiveness, or for Cain’s what it means to be a woman, what femme-informed graffiti. But still, power means.” She explained that choices appear contingent, made in she would enter a zone, processing relation to each other (i.e., unplanned). femininity via her manipulation of Artist Penny Slinger, a radical to the materials and generating an instinc- core, has talked about how frustrating tive sort of language for the work that she found 1970s feminism—her peers might seem “really dumb” at first, to trying to take for themselves the viewers and even to her.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Finding Aid to the Lucy R. Lippard Papers, 1930S-2007, Bulk 1960-1990
    A Finding Aid to the Lucy R. Lippard Papers, 1930s-2007, bulk 1960s-1990, in the Archives of American Art Stephanie L. Ashley and Catherine S. Gaines Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art 2014 May Archives of American Art 750 9th Street, NW Victor Building, Suite 2200 Washington, D.C. 20001 https://www.aaa.si.edu/services/questions https://www.aaa.si.edu/ Table of Contents Collection Overview ........................................................................................................ 1 Administrative Information .............................................................................................. 1 Biographical / Historical.................................................................................................... 2 Scope and Contents........................................................................................................ 3 Arrangement..................................................................................................................... 4 Names and Subjects ...................................................................................................... 4 Container Listing ............................................................................................................. 6 Series 1: Biographical Material, circa 1960s-circa 1980s........................................ 6 Series 2: Correspondence, 1950s-2006.................................................................. 7 Series 3: Writings, 1930s-1990s...........................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Tate Papers Issue 12 2009: Lucy R. Lippard
    Tate Papers Issue 12 2009: Lucy R. Lippard http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/09autumn/lippa... ISSN 1753-9854 TATE’S ONLINE RESEARCH JOURNAL Landmark Exhibitions Issue Curating by Numbers Lucy R. Lippard Cultural amnesia – imposed less by memory loss than by deliberate political strategy – has drawn a curtain over much important curatorial work done in the past four decades. As this amnesia has been particularly prevalent in the fields of feminism and oppositional art, it is heartening to see young scholars addressing the history of exhibitions and hopefully resurrecting some of its more marginalised events. I have never become a proper curator. Most of the fifty or so shows I have curated since 1966 have been small, not terribly ‘professional’, and often held in unconventional venues, ranging from store windows, the streets, union halls, demonstrations, an old jail, libraries, community centres, and schools … plus a few in museums. I have no curating methodology nor any training in museology, except for working at the Library of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for a couple of years when I was just out of college. But that experience – the only real job I have ever had – probably prepared me well for the archival, informational aspect of conceptual art. I shall concentrate here on the first few exhibitions I organised in the 1960s and early 1970s, especially those with numbers as their titles. To begin with, my modus operandi contradicted, or simply ignored, the connoisseurship that is conventionally understood to be at the heart of curating. I have always preferred the inclusive to the exclusive, and both conceptual art and feminism satisfied an ongoing desire for the open-ended.
    [Show full text]
  • Eva Hesse Is One of the Most Renowned American Artists to Come of Age in the Immediate Aftermath of the Abstract Expressionists
    "I think art is a total thing. A total person giving a contribution. It is an essence, a soul.. In my inner soul art and life are inseparable" SYNOPSIS Eva Hesse is one of the most renowned American artists to come of age in the immediate aftermath of The Abstract Expressionists. Having fled her native Germany during the rise of Nazism, Hesse was originally schooled in American abstract painting and commercial design practices. She originally pursued a career in commercial textile design in New York City, but Hesse's practice as an expressionist painter led her to increasingly experiment with industrial and every-day, or "found" materials, such as rope, string, wire, rubber, and fiberglass. Reducing her means in the spirit of Minimalism, Hesse explored by way of the simplest materials how to suggest a wide range of organic associations, psychological moods, and what might be called proto- feminist, sexual innuendo. She also experimented with expressing semi-whimsical states of mind rarely explored in the modern era until © The Art Story Foundation – All rights Reserved For more movements, artists and ideas on Modern Art visit www.TheArtStory.org her all-too-brief debut. Thus Hesse arrived quickly at a new kind of abstract painting, as well as a kind of so-called "eccentric," freestanding sculpture. KEY IDEAS Professionally trained as an abstract painter and commercial designer, Hesse is a paradigmatic postwar American artist, much like Ellsworth Kelly, who regarded painting not as a two- dimensional surface, but as an object on the wall to be extended into the space of the viewer before it.
    [Show full text]
  • Jakubowska – Feminst Revolution
    The “Abakans” and the feminist revolution Agata Jakubowska (Adam Mickiewicz University) In March of 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles hosted an exhibition titled WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, which was described as “the first comprehensive, historical exhibition to exam- ine the international foundations and legacy of feminist art, [that] focuses on the crucial period 1965-80, during which the majority of feminist activ- ism and artmaking occurred internationally”.1 One of the intentions of the curator, Connie Butler, was to shatter the canon of feminist art, compris- ing almost exclusively American artists, by including “women of other geographies, formal approaches, sociopolitical alliances, and critical and theoretical positions”.2 Among the 120 female artists invited to the exhibi- tion was Magdalena Abakanowicz. Shown was her Abakan Red (1969), a work from a series of large pieces of woven sisal made in the late 60’s/early 70’s and named Abakans after the artist. Abakanowicz was an artist who never belonged to the feminist art movement. Her inclusion in this exhibition devoted to the ties between art and feminism was a result of, as can be surmised from the construction of the exhibition, as well as from remarks appearing in the publications ac- companying it, certain feminist aspects detected in her Abakan works. These aspects were highly varied. For one, it was acknowledged that Abakanowicz belonged to a group of female artists “working from vastly different cultural referents [that] have been empowered by ideas of earth, mother, and Amazon and inspired by their iconography”.3 Her Abakan _____________ 1 Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution, curator: Connie Butler, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Mar.-Jul.
    [Show full text]
  • Lessons in Promiscuity
    LESSONS IN PROMISCUITY: PATTERNING AND THE NEW DECORATIVENESS IN ART OF THE 1970s A ND 1980s ANNA KATZ Robert Zakanitch Dragon Fire, 1983 16 In 1975 in New York a group of artists gathered in the Warren Street loft of Robert Zakanitch to discuss a shared tendency that had emerged in their work in the preceding several years. Joyce Kozloff in her colorful paintings was combining patterns gleaned from architectural ornamentation, pottery, and textiles observed in Mexico, Morocco, Turkey, and Spain (fig. 1); Tony Robbin was using a modi- fied spray gun and patterned stencils to create spatially complex grids in lyric colors (pp. 122–25); Zakanitch was making paintings of massive, luscious blossoms in repeated patterns that evoked wallpaper and linoleum rugs (fig. 2); and Miriam Schapiro was collag- ing found bits of lace and other domestic fabrics associated with women’s lives in boisterous compositions (fig. 3). Joining them was Amy Goldin, an art critic with a strong interest in Islamic art, who had identified an “oddly persistent interest in pattern” in the 1 1 Amy Goldin, “The ‘New’ Whitney 1975 Whitney Biennial. Biennial: Pattern Emerging?,” Art in America, May/June 1975, 72–73. It is tempting to imagine that they gathered in secret, huddling together to confess their shared trespass, their violation of one of the strongest prohibitions of modern art: the decorative. But in truth their art was exuberant, and so were they, giddy with the thrill of destabilizing entrenched hierarchies, and the possibilities that unleashed. They identified
    [Show full text]
  • The Greatest Women Artists of the Twentieth Century
    This PDF is a selection from a published volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research Volume Title: Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art Volume Author/Editor: David W. Galenson Volume Publisher: Cambridge University Press Volume ISBN: 978-0-521-11232-1 Volume URL: http://www.nber.org/books/gale08-1 Publication Date: October 2009 Title: The Greatest Women Artists of the Twentieth Century Author: David W. Galenson URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c5788 Chapter 5: The Greatest Women Artists of the Twentieth Century Introduction Recent decades have witnessed an intense interest in the role of women in the art of the past. Scores of museum exhibitions have been devoted to the work of women artists, and scores of monographs have examined the contributions of women to our artistic heritage. As is common in the humanities, however, the scholarly attention devoted to the role of women artists has been qualitative rather than quantitative. As a result, we now have a large amount of scholarship that analyzes the contributions of individual women artists, or of particular groups of women artists, but we do not have studies that provide systematic evaluation of the relative importance of different women artists. The present study will begin to remedy this deficiency. Specifically, this study will investigate the question of which women made the greatest contributions to art during the past century. The choice of this time period reflects the fact that women played a far greater role in the art of the twentieth century than in any earlier time. So for example the third edition of Nancy Heller’s Women Artists, published in 1997, a textbook written “to provide a richly illustrated overview of some of the most interesting professional women painters and sculptors in the Western world, from the Renaissance to the present,” devotes fully 144 pages to the twentieth century, substantially more than the total of only 97 pages devoted to all earlier centuries.
    [Show full text]
  • An Analysis of the Critical Discourse on the Work of Eva Hesse Michele
    An Analysis of the Critical Discourse on the Work of Eva Hesse by Michele Millard Department of Art History, McGilI University, Montreal September 1991 A Thesls submltted to the Faculty of Graduate Studles and Research ln partial fulfillment of the requlrements for the degree of Master of Am. (c) Michele Mlllard,1991 1 Table of Contents Introduction.................. ........ .......... .. ..................................................... 3 Chapte, One ..... ............ ......... ............ ........................................................ 8 Part 1 ......... .... ............... ..... .......... ...... .. ........ .. .......................... 8 Part Il ............................................................................................................ 10 Part III ............................................................................................................. 13 Part IV ........................................ .................................................................... 18 Chapte, Two ............................................................................................. 23 Part 1 .............................................................................................................23 Part Il .............................................................................................................24 Chapte, Th,ee .............................................................................................. 30 Conclusion ......................................................................................................36
    [Show full text]
  • Press Review
    Press SUN WOMEN Louise Bourgeois Helen Frankenthaler Eva Hesse Jacqueline Humphries Lee Krasner Joan Mitchell Louise Nevelson Curated by Jérôme Neutres April 24 – June 29 2019 Whitewall , June 27, 2019 “SUN WOMEN” Pays Tribute to the Artists Who Fought for Equal Acknowledgment By Pearl Fontaine At the Charles Riva Collection in Brussels, curator Jérômre Neutres has conceived an exhibition of works by seven artists, entitled “SUN WOMEN.” Named for Lee Krasner’s series “The Sun Woman,” the exhibition features a group of artists whose works are, today, known to be part of the women’s emancipation movement of the 20th century. “I feel totally female. I didn’t compete with men and I don’t want to look like a man!” said Louise Nevelson. Not to be categorized because of gender, the artists on view—including Krasner, Nevelson, Louise Bourgeoise, Helen Frankenthaler, Eva Hesse, Jacqueline Humphries, and Joan Mitchell— sought to obtain equal acknowledgment as their male counterparts. Great masters throughout the ages were never referred to as “da Vinci, the male artist,” or “Hemingway, the male writer,” so neither should female creators be referred to as such. Instead of essentializing the work of these women, the exhibition presents them as artists neglected in a scene that has always favored males. A recurring theme of abstraction runs amongst each artist’s style—something which Eric de Chassey suggests is to be expected, since abstraction is “a liberation, the triumph of artistic freedom as a possibility, unhindered by external references.” By committing to an abstracted practice, these artists were essentially pledging themselves to defying the norms (social, sexual, political, and psychological) of their times, where women were held to standards of domesticated delicacy.
    [Show full text]
  • Senga Nengudi's Art Within and Without Feminism, Postminimalism
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works School of Arts & Sciences Theses Hunter College Spring 5-13-2020 Beyond Movements: Senga Nengudi’s Art Within and Without Feminism, Postminimalism, and the Black Arts Movement Tess Thackara CUNY Hunter College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/605 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Beyond Movements: Senga Nengudi’s Art Within and Without Feminism, Postminimalism, and the Black Arts Movement by Tess Thackara Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art History, Hunter College The City University of New York 2020 Thesis Sponsor: May 4, 2020 Dr. Howard Singerman _____________ ______________________ Date Signature May 4, 2020 Dr. Lynda Klich _____________ ______________________ Date Signature Table of Contents List of Illustrations……………………………………………………………………………....ii Introduction……………………………………………………………………….......................1 Chapter 1: “Black Fingerprints and the Fragrance of a Woman”: Senga Nengudi and Feminism………………………………………………………………………………………..12 Chapter 2: Toward Her Own Total Theater: Senga Nengudi and Postminimalism…………….31 Chapter 3: Ritual and Transformation: Senga Nengudi and the Black Arts Movement……………………………………………………………………………………….49 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………64 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………….68 Illustrations……………………………………………………………………………………...72 i List of Illustrations Fig. 1: Senga Nengudi, ACQ series (install view), 2016–7, refrigerator and air conditioner parts, fan, nylon pantyhose, and sand. © Senga Nengudi. Courtesy of the artist, Lévy Gorvy, Thomas Erben Gallery, and Sprüth Magers. Fig. 2: Senga Nengudi, ACQ I, 2016–7, refrigerator and air conditioner parts, fan, nylon pantyhose, and sand.
    [Show full text]
  • 'EVA HESSE' to Go on View in New York City
    5.B@2? D6?A5 2.@A #&A5 @A?22A ;2D F<?8 ;F A292=5<;2 $&! !&$ 3.0@6:692 $&! !&$ Press Release Media contact: Andrea Schwan, Andrea Schwan Inc. +1 917 371 5023, [email protected] 'EVA HESSE' to go on view in New York City Hauser & Wirth New York March 16 – April 24, 2010 Opening: Tuesday, March 16, 6 – 8 pm New York, NY... In 1969, one year before her death at the age of 34, German-born American artist Eva Hesse wrote of her desire "to get to non-art, non-connotive, non-anthropomorphic, non-geometric, non-nothing; everything...It's not the new, it is what is yet not known, thought, seen, touched; but really what is not and that is." In her effort to make works that could transcend literal associations, Hesse cultivated mistakes and surprise, precariousness and enigma. The objects she produced, at once humble and enormously charismatic, came to play a central role in the transformation of contemporary art practice. On March 16, Hauser & Wirth New York will open an exhibition of such objects: 'EVA HESSE' brings together fourteen works, many never before shown publicly in the United States, that previously have been considered improvisational 'test pieces' or prototypes for larger sculptures. Of these, eleven are delicate papier caché forms – wisps of assembled paper, tape, cheesecloth and adhesive made between 1966 and 1969 – that are neither round nor rectangular, but indeterminate. Intimate manifestations of the artist's thought process, they evoke the bodily, suggesting fragments of skull, sheaths of timeworn parchment, tablets awaiting manuscript, curving shadows, the lens of an eyeball.
    [Show full text]
  • ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois Learning Resource
    ARTIST ROOMS LOUISE BOURGEOIS RESOURCE PACK ABOUT THIS RESOURCE Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) is widely regarded as one of the great figures of modern and contemporary art with a career spanning eight decades from the 1930s until 2010. The ARTIST ROOMS collection holds a remarkable survey of Bourgeois’s late works including drawings, prints, sculpture and fabric works. A further group of important sculptures and works on paper are held in Tate’s Collection. Other significant collections are held by the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York), Whitney Museum (New York), SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern art), Centre Pompidou (Paris) and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa). This resource is designed to aid teachers and educators using the ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois collection with groups of young people engaged in related learning activities and projects. The resource focuses on specific works and themes and suggests areas of discussion, activities and links to other works in the online collection pages. For schools, the work of Louise Bourgeois presents a good opportunity to explore cross-curricula learning. The themes in Bourgeois’s work can be linked to curricula areas such as English, expressive arts, health and wellbeing, social studies, citizenship and science. A glossary at the back of the resource provides further information on key words, terms and people associated with Bourgeois and related themes. Cover image: Louise Bourgeois COUPLE I 1996 ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Lent by the Artist Rooms Foundation 2013 Photo: Christopher Burke, © The Easton Foundation CONTENTS What is ARTIST ROOMS? 03 Louise Bourgeois 04 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Curator Helen Molesworth Joins Forces with Getty Center for ‘Radical Women’ Podcast by CLAIRE SELVIN November 13, 2019 10:38Am
    Curator Helen Molesworth Joins Forces with Getty Center for ‘Radical Women’ Podcast BY CLAIRE SELVIN November 13, 2019 10:38am Portrait of Betye Saar, 1970. BOB NAMAMURA/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND ROBERTS PROJECTS, LOS ANGELES In recent years, podcasts have been launched by a number of arts institutions and businesses, with everyone from the Museum of Modern Art to Sean Kelly Gallery getting in on the action. Now the Getty Center in Los Angeles is expanding its efforts in the field, with the debut of its second audio offering: Recording Artists: Radical Women. And a well-known figure is at the helm: the closely watched curator Helen Molesworth, formerly of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The podcast devotes each of its six episodes to a different woman artist of the 20th- century: Alice Neel, Lee Krasner, Betye Saar, Helen Frankenthaler, Yoko Ono, and Eva Hesse. Episodes, which incorporate little-heard audio interviews from the Getty archives with the artists recorded during the 1960s and 1970s, last about 40 minutes. “As a grouping I was hoping that, even though they’re all really big names, the sum might be greater than the parts,” Molesworth told ARTnews of the six artists she chose to concentrate on. She added that “different aspects of their different lives and careers prismatically deal with the really complicated nexus of issues [relating to] what it means to be a woman and an artist simultaneously.” For the project, Molesworth looked through more than 1,000 interviews and oral histories in the archives of the Getty Research Institute over the course of eight months, focusing on the collections of feminist art critics Cindy Nemser and Barbara Rose.
    [Show full text]