A couple of weeks ago I shared on Facebook a link to an article in The New York Times Sunday magazine titled “Can a Woman Who Is an Artist Ever Just Be an Artist?”In it, British writer Rachel Cusk limns the lives of two very different female painters (author and subjects, seemingly by chance, are all of English origin). Celia Paul, now 60, was locked for ten years in an abusive relationship with Lucian Freud, the powerhouse of postwar figurative painting. She had a child by him and gave the baby to her mother to raise. She lives alone in a rather dingy studio, whose squalid appearance seems to greatly trouble the author, and in general the biography Cusk sets forth is one of a talented woman hugely wounded by her connection with the Great Man. Though Paul has just published a well-received memoir to tell her side of the story and has enjoyed some success in a difficult field (figurative painting? in this day and age?)) Cusk portrays her as a wounded bird. The Times collaborates with this interpretation by posting the opening portrait of Paul looking haggard and wary, her face deeply lined, clutching a paint-spattered shoulder as if to protect herself. Only one of her paintings, an early work from 1980, is reproduced in the online version of Cusk’s report.
Cecily Brown, the other half of the story, is a painter of exuberant expressionist abstractions with vaguely sexual themes. She is shown in her New York studio surrounded by her paintings and sketches, sitting cross-legged and confident and nowhere near as paint-spattered as Celia Paul. “Her work was quickly recognized and made the art world’s favorite transition into high-capital worth before she was 35,” writes Cusk. “Success caused her neither to falter nor to swerve: On the contrary, she seemed not to notice or need it in the disciplined frenzy of her development over the following decade.” Yet she too is struggling with balancing the demands of motherhood and vocation (she has a 10-year-old daughter), probably with a lot more help from her partner, an architecture critic who no doubt has an understanding of “creative types” (partners, other than Freud, are in fact conspicuously absent from these accounts).
Why were these two singled out for this weird compare-and-contrast exercise? (I can just hear the author pitching it to her editor: “Hey, let’s look at a couple of female painters and use it as a prism to examine the plight of women artists today.”)
I found it all strangely unsettling and annoying. Asking the question again and again—“Can a woman artist blah blah blah?”—seems to me to set the progress of artists everywhere back by a few hundred years, as does reinforcing the image of women who have to make family sacrifices to get anywhere in the world. Every case is so different. I interviewed women who are having viable careers and raising kids and loving it for The Motherhood Report. I’ve interviewed women who prefer to fly solo for all kinds of reasons and women who have decided not to have children. I’ve talked to gay women with and without partners. I know widowed and recently divorced artists who are facing their own difficulties in their newly changed lives. Hey, listen up, Ms. Cusk and The New York Times, it’s a big varied art world out there and this kind of reductionist vision doesn’t help any of us understand the difficulties of making art or making it as an artist.
And aren’t we about done with the brutish excesses of successful male artists—from Rodin to Picasso to Giacometti to Freud—toward the women in their lives, whether she is muse, lover, model, or an artist in her own right? Isn’t it time for some new ways of working it out between the sexes?
Anyway, the post garnered about 94 comments on Facebook, something of a record for me. The reactions ranged from “ugh” to “dated” to “confusing” to “the author portrays the hard truths of female artists’ challenges, expectations, and perceived success.” Read it and make up your own mind.
I’d rather hear from guys who are doing their best to have it all: family, career, attention, collectors, while producing the best art they can. And so that’s another can of worms I will pop for your delectation in the months ahead.
Cecily Brown in 2012
And huzzah! I’m done with all this fund-raising for the time being and will get back to writing, reporting, podcasting, etc. very soon. Thanks to all of you who pitched in to see me through another year (and of course you can still contribute here), and thanks especially to Paul Klein, whose shout-out on Facebook brought about 30 new members my way. What a guy!
And now let’s talk about what you’ve been up to….
The amazing Grace DeGennaro is part of a group exhibition called “Temporality/The Process of Time” at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, ME. Organized by Bethany Engstrom, the show is of Maine artists “exploring ideas of repetition, duration, and process” and runs through February 23, 2020. Grace has works from both her “Continuum” and “Equinox” series included. The former are shown in the installation shot below, and one of the “Equinox” paintings is at the top of this newsletter. Of these, DeGennaro writes, “An equinox is a point in time when the sun crosses the celestial equator and day and night are equal in length everywhere on earth. The ‘Equinox’ series conveys this symmetry through color and geometry. The limited palette reflects the changes in atmospheric color that I observed during a spring residency at the Catwalk Institute in the Hudson River Valley. The central patterns of concentric circles, created using the Fibonacci sequence, make visible the passage of time when the works are installed as a series.” A shot of works in situ at the MCA is below.
Larry Graeber is half of a two-person show (with Sterling Allen), called “Formal Proof,” in the Project Room at Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, TX, through January 25. “Initially conceived as a traditional collaboration between two artists who share similar material vocabularies, 'Formal Proof' evolved into a curious spatial experiment,” writes curator Anjali Gupta. “To conceptualize the work, Sterling Allen (Austin) and Larry Graeber (San Antonio) agreed to use common methods of museum display for sculpture—the floor, the ceiling, the walls and the pedestal—as shared inspiration. The subsequent assemblages seem to exist in tandem rather than direct dialogue—more a loosely networked topology than a quid pro quo. An exchange, however, does exist in the liminal space between objects that possess formal qualities and rigorous procedural concerns. With all this in mind, Allen and Graeber owe as much to traditional formalism à la Immanuel Kant as they to post-conceptual 'scatter art' popularized in the 1970s.”
Larry Graeber, Cake (2019), Styrofoam packing, wood, nylon ties, paint, glue, 37 by 20 by 22 inches
Kate Petley is in good company with Richard Serra, Don Voisine, Stephen Westfall, and Derrick Velasquez at Robischon Gallery in Denver, CO, in a group show on view through January 18, 2020. “The five artists on view challenge and investigate varying aspects of abstraction, including Minimalism and Geometric Abstraction, in a variety of media,” says the press release. “From print work to painting as well as sculpture, the artists’ explorations into visual weight, color and surface are expansive in both composition and form….Each of the exhibited artists invites the viewer to engage in a dialogue between light and dark, gravity and weightlessnes, and to experience a sense of the architectural.” Says Petley:“Transformation lies at the heart of my process, both for the materials and my intent for the finished work. I’m a process-driven materialist with a history that crosses disciplines, deliberately emphasizing positivity as an authentic position to contrast these unsettling times.”
Kate Petley, Almost Falling (2019), archival print and acrylic on canvas, 72 by 76 inches
At least three, possibly more, Vasari21 members will be showing at the Miami art fair extravaganzas between December 3 and 8 this year. Daisy Patton is exhibiting work with K Contemporary at Pulse Art Fair and with Hashimoto Contemporary at the Context Art Fair. As I wrote in my profile of her for the site a couple of years back, “Daisy Patton’s cheerfully dysfunctional portraits are bound to remind you of pictures from somebody’s attic, those old crinkle-edged Kodak photos or studio shots that commemorate engagements, high-school graduations, and informal family get-togethers. Yet there are sharp and unsettling differences. Faces may be obliterated with garish masks of color; outrageous patterns take over sedate everyday attire; or creeping vegetation may threaten to engulf the unsuspecting subjects.”
Daisy Patton, Untitled (Three Women with Blue Curtain and Silver and Yellow Leaves), 2019, oil on archival print mounted to panel, 80 by 60 inches
Michelle Benoit will be showing at Art Miami with Pentimenti Gallery from Philadelphia (where she currently has a solo). Booth AM505, December 3-8. Says Michelle of her work: “Inspiration for me is mostly drawn from the natural world where I have found physical evidence of time. I collect, record and categorize these visual signifiers with various media such as glue casts, tracings, wallpaper, sketches and photographs. Color schemes from this body of work have been extracted from the walls of my family home. Excised layers of paint, plaster and wallpaper have been removed and reworked. Each hue represents a time frame in that home, some have left vivid impressions, others are tints from inhabitants that were there before us.” I never received images from the Miami show, but here’s another from the Pentimenti exhibition.
Michelle Benoit, Retrofitted Sky Shim (2019), mixed media on hand-cut Lucite, 8 by 48.75 inches
Susan Schwalb, who currently has works in “Pushing Paper: Contemporary Drawing from the 1970s to Now” at the British Museum in London, will be showing with Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, Ocean Drive and 12th Street, Stand B15, from December 3 to 8. Schwalb is adept in the fine art of metalpoint, and as she notes in her artist’s statement, her approach is often painterly, so she is able to “obtain soft shifts in tone and color reminiscent of the transparency of watercolor. A shimmering luminosity creates what often appears to be a three-dimensional, undulating surface.”
Susan Schwalb, Harmonizations XI (2019), silver/gold/copper/aluminumpoint, purple gesso on wood panel, 24 by 24 by 2 inches
Through December 15, Christine Sauer has four pieces in a group exhibition titled “Wood, Wax, Ink, Paper, Clay, Mixed” at Studio Waveland and Gallery in Waveland, MS. I don’t know much about the show but Sauer says “this is a wonderful, relatively new space that an artist couple bought and renovated.”
Christine Sauer, Interlude Series I-IV (2019), acrylic and collage on cradled panels, 12 by 12 by .78 inches
Vasari21's only Belgian member (as far as I know), Janise Yntema has a solo called “Praeter Terram” at the Green Door Gallery in Brussels (November 28-January 17). “Nature has always been the inspiration for my work,” Yntema writes in the handsome catalogue for the exhibiton. “My inclusion of photography has brought a contemporary dialogue to the ancient medium of encaustic. These hybrid works blur the boundaries between painting and photography. With digitally altered imagery, the concept of reality in a time of manipulated truths is questioned. Environmentally, much of what cannot be seen remains unquestionably true.” Below an installation shot of Yntema’s 6- by- 6-inch studies from nature at the Green Door Gallery.
“If the Earth is a living being, and humans potentially the most conscious and reflexive beings on Earth, what is the responsibility of humanity to nature and the planet?” writes Linda Vigdor. “This is a recent painting that continues my exploration into combining images of brain cells and of nature under stress to suggest that human consciousness is central to the question of how we consume and value life and Earth.” Through December 21, Vigdor is part of a show she curated called “Objects and Objectivities: Convergences in Epistemic Divergence” at the Advanced Science Research Center (part of the City University of New York), 85 St Nicholas Terrace, in Manhattan. “Images from a neuroscientist and an ecologist/biogeochemist will illuminate dynamic changes in neuron-glia interactions and observations of forest ecosystems,” she says. “While the scientists propose an objective lens on their objects, my paintings use scientific imagery to interpret or critique how we observe nature.”
Linda Vigdor, She planned the river blue (2019), watercolor and mixed media on two wood panels, 24 by 24 inches
Phyllis Bramson has organized the exhibition “What Came After 1978-1998,” which she describes as “a survey of diverse interests in the figure as a subject, the human condition, and an interest in personal iconography. Many have struggled with understanding and processing the term ‘Chicago Imagism’ since it was first used in the early 1970s, including artists that built on the ideas of their peers or sought to break free from expectations of that legacy. ‘What Came After’ better defines and celebrates this later generation of artists, often known as Third-Generation Imagists, Post-Imagists, and the Chicago School.” At the Elmhurst Art Museum in Elmhurst, IL, through January 12, 2020.
Phyllis Bramson, Decoys (1989), oil on canvas, 84 by 72 inches
Through January 2, Donald Martiny has recent works at Dimmitt Contemporary in Houston, TX. “Martiny’s ‘Open’ series continues the artist’s exploration into the presence and power of gestures made to exist forever in the present,” says the announcement for the show. “Moving away from earlier forms that were closed, Martiny’s latest body of work incorporates a significant amount of negative space. ‘Open’ refers to the action of the viewer rather than the object itself. Martiny borrows this concept from a series of works by Robert Motherwell, depicting abstract windows in order to gaze into the infinite. Operating in the gap between painting and sculpture, Martiny defines his paintings as the brushstroke itself."
Donald Martiny, Eddas (2019), dispersed and polymer on aluminum, 47 by 60 inches.
And some works from those who so graciously kicked in during the 2019 fundraising drive…
In approximately the order in which they were received. I have about 250 people to thank, so please be patient with me!
David Rubin, who has been an invaluable source for the site, contributing to the round-up of members’ drawings and doing a podcast with me about a show he curated of Salvador Dalí's prints, sends Memorial Drawing for Martha Alf, color pens on Bristol vellum paper, 19 by 24 inches, made soon after Alf’s death in September. About the abstract vocabulary he’s developed, Rubin says he felt he’d found his own abstract vocabulary around 2003. “I see it as though I’m stringing beads in a virtual way. I’m making pathways and trajectories in space. To me, drawing is how I commune with the cosmos.”
Mark Sheinkman, whose work I’ve been following for more than 20 years, recently moved from black-and-white to full-blown color. “On the surface, Sheinkman’s most recent foray into color looks like a giant shift, but it is really a culmination of his ambition to synthesize sculptural and architectural features with abstraction, using the visual language he has been perfecting all along,” notes his gallerist Tarrah von Lintel. Below is Kingston (2019), oil on linen, 55 by 72 inches.
“Pictured here are eight self-portrait photographs taken and displayed in my studio. Each measures 24 by 36 inches, and they were taken over the last two months,” writes Candace Compton-Pappas. “I live in woods that are overrun with various invasive species. I started taking these photos when I committed to remove the Bittersweet, a voracious vine. As this usually is a relentlessly hopeless endeavor, I replaced doom and dread with an approach that was slow, methodical, and consciously non-lineal, with no beginning middle or end. An immersion happened for me, one that opened up a treasure trove of questions, thoughts and explorations on how I approach all I do. This series is a record, to date, of that exploration.”
And there will be more, lots more, in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, my thanks to all who made the end-of-year fundraising for Vasari21 such a resounding success. Of course, there’s still time to contribute (says she, shamelessly pitching for the second time in this newsletter). Just visit the link here.
Please take note that there will be a holiday party at noon on December 14th at Andrea Broyles’ house in Santa Fe. I’ve invited all SF/Albuquerque/Taos supporters, but if for some reason I have missed you, let me know asap and I will send details.
A very happy Thanksgiving to all!
Top: Grace DeGennaro, Equinox 4, 2017, watercolor on Somerset paper, 30 x 22"
Christine Sauer, Interlude Series I-IV (2019), acrylic and collage on cradled panels, 12 by 12 by .78 inches
