Posts from the “Women” Category

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn & Adama Delphine Fawundu: MFON

Posted on November 15, 2017

Photo: Copyright Nydia Blas

Photo: Copyright Sabriya Simon

In 1986, history was made when Jeanne Moutousammy-Ashe published Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers (Dodd Mead), the first book to showcase the history of African-American women behind the camera dating back dating back to 1866. It spanned more than a century of work, showcasing the work of artists whose work had gone largely unrecognised in photography, which the author described to the Chicago Tribune as a traditionally racist and sexist industry.

The book spoke to Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, a young photographer from Brooklyn, who wanted to see more. As years passed, nothing occurred – so Barrayn took it upon herself to be the change she wanted to see in the world. In 2006, she and photographer Adama Delphine Fawundu put together a prototype for the project that would become MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora.

MFON is a biannual journal that will launch with a book of the same name featuring work of 100 women from across the diaspora, including Ming Smith, Delphine Diallo, Émilie Régnier, Lauri Lyons, Noelle Théard, and Dr. Deborah Willis, who wrote the introduction. MFON is named for Mmekutmfon “Mfon” Essien (1967 – 2001) a visionary Nigerian-American photographer who died from breast cancer the day before her photographs from The Amazon’s New Clothes, opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in the acclaimed exhibition Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers.

With the spirit of Mfon guiding their journey, Barrayn and Fawundu persevered, creating the book through a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council and crowdsourcing through GoFundMe. Photographers in their own right, Barrayn and Fawundu, know exactly what it takes to make great work. Together they reviewed more than 1,000 works created by women around the world, and honed their selection with precision to create a powerful look at the heart of photography through the eyes of Black women from all walks of life. From the work of 13-year-old Fanta Diop, a native of the South Bronx, to 91-year-old Mildred H. Jackson, who reflects on Harlem in the 1930s.

Barrayn and Fawundu speak with us about their experience creating MFON, spotlighting the work of six artists featured in the book whose unique perspectives and incredible styles brings fresh new visions, original ideas, and innovative thinking to the art form while simultaneously giving us an inside look at the multidimensional experiences of Black women from every corner of the globe.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Copyright Samantha Box

Photo: Copyright Hélène Amouzou

Categories: Art, Books, Photography, Women

Judy Chicago: The Roots of “The Dinner Party”

Posted on October 20, 2017

Artwork: The Dinner Party, 1974‒79. Ceramic, porcelain, textile, 576 x 576 in. (1463 x 1463 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, 2002.10. © 2017 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (Photo © Donald Woodman)

Artwork: Sojourner Truth #2 Test Plate from The Dinner Party, circa 1978. Porcelain and China paint, diameter: 14 in. (35.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, gift of Judy Chicago, 82.165. © 2017 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. © 2017 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (Photo: Sarah DeSantis, Brooklyn Museum)

When Judy Chicago unveiled “The Dinner Party” in San Francisco in 1979, she turned the art world upside down with the first epic work for the Feminist Art movement. Around an equilateral triangle table, she crafted elaborate place settings for 39 female figures from the history of western civilisation, beginning with the Primordial Goddess and ending with Georgia O’Keeffe. Along the way, viewers encounter Ishtar, Hatshepsut, Sappho, Theodora, Elizabeth I, Sacajawea, Soujourner Truth, Emily Dickinson, and Margaret Sanger, travelling from prehistoric times through the women’s revolution.

For each woman given a seat a the table, a place was set, her name embroidered on a table runner accompanied by symbols of her accomplishments. Then, for the piece de resistance, Chicago served up handmade plates of china, meticulously painted with the main dish: a vulva reminiscent of a flower or a butterfly. The table is situated on The Heritage Floor, composed of 2,000 white triangle-shaped tiles that bare then names of an additional 999 women who contributed to history.

When I first learned of the work in a “Women in Art History” class, the professor asked for reactions. Everyone was silent, agog or agape, lost in thought. But not me. My hand shot up and I blurted out, “The work is about going down – eating out – and I support that.”

The class tittered. My teacher blushed and quickly changed the subject, focusing on how “The Dinner Party” embraces the textile arts (weaving, embroidery, sewing) and china painting, all of which were traditionally relegated to the realm of crafts or, more plainly, women’s art. At the time of “The Dinner Party”, these modes of production had not been accorded parity with the male-dominated realm of drawing, painting, and sculpture, which were considered superior as forms of “fine art.”

In 2007, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art opened at the Brooklyn Museum with “The Dinner Party” as its foundation. Now, to mark its ten-year anniversary, the Museum introduces Roots of The Dinner Party: History in the Making (October 20-March 4, 2018). The exhibition provides insight into the making of this historic work, which took six years to complete, and involved the work of nearly 400 women and men.

Featuring more than 100 objects including rarely seen test plates, research documents, ephemera, notebooks, and preparatory drawings, we are lead inside the creation of this phenomenal project. Chicago speaks with us about “The Dinner Party”, which has become her most influential work and one that, decades on, continues to inspire and provoke a wide array of responses from people from all walks of life.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Christina of Sweden (Great Ladies Series), 1973. Sprayed acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40 in. (101.6 x 101.6 cm). Collection of Elizabeth A. Sackler
© 2017 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (Photo © Donald Woodman

Artwork: Study for Virginia Woolf from The Dinner Party, 1978. Ink, photo, and collage on paper, approx. 24 × 36 in. (61 × 91.4 cm). National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Gift of Mary Ross Taylor in honor of Elizabeth A. Sackler. © 2017 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (Photo: Lee Stalsworth)

Categories: 1970s, Art, Brooklyn, Dazed, Women

Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting

Posted on October 19, 2017

Artwork: Eye Body, Transformative Actions For The Camera, 1963. Courtesy of Carolee Schneemann

You may remember Lady Gaga’s meat dress as something of a scene – but it doesn’t hold a candle to Meat Joy, the Carolee Schneemann happening from 1964 that inspired it. Where Gaga took an existing idea and transformed it into a publicity stunt, Schneemann invented something that had never been seen or done – and it nearly cost her life.

Picture a group of young men and women clad in their undergarments experiencing the pleasures of the flesh: of the carcasses of fish and chicken, along with sausages, touching their bare skin. Imagine being in the same room as they gathered on the floor to engage in an experience of sensuality the likes of which had never been realised before. Envision a man in the audience becoming so enraged he leaped from his seat, dragging Schneemann off to the side, and beginning to strangle her.

This happened during the Paris edition and went on until two bourgeois women jumped from their seats and fought off the attacker until he stopped. Then Schneemann got back into the happening and continued on with the knowledge that her explorations could unleash a cataclysmic storm. But Schneemann is an unstoppable force – she is freedom incarnate. Uninhibited and unafraid, she has been challenging the patriarchy by virtue of being true to herself.

Born in 1939 to a country doctor and a farm wife, Schneemann grew up close to nature, embracing the life and death cycle of the earth. When her father refused to support her decision to go to college, she won a full scholarship to study painting at Bard College, in New York, which she attended until she was expelled on the grounds of “moral turpitude.” Where others might have given up, Schneemann persevered, creating a body of work so singular and so challenging that to this day she has no equal in the field.

Her pioneering investigations into the female body, sexuality, and gender have tapped into archaic visual traditions and wrestled with social taboos, transforming Schneemann into a vessel of transgression and subversion in search of truth. In celebration, MoMA P.S. 1, New York, presents Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting (October 22, 2017- March 11, 2018), the first comprehensive retrospective spanning her prolific six-decade career.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Prestel has released a catalogue of the same name, while the Artists Institute has published Carolee’s Issue 02, which illustrates the ways in which other artists, advertisers, and pop culture figures have drawn heavily from her work. Schneemann speaks with us about Meat Joy as well as her career as “both image and image maker.”

Read the Story at Dazed

Artwork: Meat Joy 1964, chromogenic color print. Photo by Al Giese. From performance at Judson Church, November 16-18, 1964 New York. Courtesy of C. Schneemann and P.P.O.W, New York

Artwork: Nude on Tracks,1962-1977. Courtesy of Carolee Schneemann.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Dazed, Exhibitions, Painting, Women

Jane Friedman: How to Find Artists That Can Change the World

Posted on October 3, 2017

Photo: Mark Sink, Grace Jones, ca 1988

Artwork: Arturo Vega, “Supermarket Sign(Steak Sale)”, 1973. Acrylic on canvas 48 x 72 x 1 1/2 inches

Located in the heart of New York’s East Village, Howl! Happening was established in memory of artist Arturo Vega, who designed the iconic Ramones logo. Vega, a Mexican national, fled his native land in 1968 when the government rounded up 148 of the country’s most notable artists and intellectuals, putting their lives at risk. Vega fled to New York where he had prominent connections, like Jane Friedman – the woman made rock’n’roll journalism a legitimate business.

New York native Jane Friedman grew up on Broadway, as her father handled public relations for legendary shows along the Great White Way. Friedman followed in her father’s footsteps, and along the way, she realised her talents would be best served by supporting the greatest artists of the time. She went on to craft a new lane in the media, representing artists like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, as well as doing PR for the famed musical Hair. She was also Patti Smith’s manager throughout her career.

Friedman has been a behind-the-scenes fixture in downtown New York, working with artists and musicians to ensure their success and legacy. When Vega, one of her dearest friends died in 2013, Friedman set up Howl! Arts, a non-profit organisation that preserves the culture of the East Village and the Lower East Side in a rapidly gentrifying city that has effectively erased so much of the New York’s fabled past.

Taking its name from Allen Ginsberg’s famed 1955 poem, Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project is the cornerstone of the organisation. A gallery, performance space, and archive located around the corner from where CBGBs once stood, Howl! Happening has been home to a series of phenomenal shows including exhibitions by Patricia Field, Lydia Lunch, Taboo!, PUNK Magazine’s 40th Anniversary, and The East Village Eye – as well as on-going events and performances that showcase the very best of the community, which continues to thrive despite the exponential explosion in the cost of living.

This month, Howl! presents Love Among the Ruins: 56 Bleecker Gallery Street and the late 80s New York, a group exhibition that looks back at the famed East Village gallery and performance space that served as a vital intersection of music, fashion, art, and nightlife during one of the most vital and devastating period of New York history. Featuring works by nearly 100 artists including David LaChapelle, Nan Goldin, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dondi White, Stephen Sprouse, and George Condo, to name just a few, the exhibition is on view through October 7, 2017.

Friedman speaks with us about what it takes to cultivate a community of artists that can change the world, while staying true to your roots, and shares images from the ongoing show.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Straight to Hell flyer

Photo: Mark Sink, Keith Haring, ca 1988

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Dazed, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Music, Painting, Photography, Women

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985

Posted on September 28, 2017

Photo: Sandra Eleta (Panamanian, b. 1942), Edita (la del plumero), Panamá (Edita (the one with the duster), Panama), 1978-1979. Black and white photograph. 30 × 30 in. (76.2 × 76.2 cm)Courtesy of the artist. Artwork © the artist

“I don’t give a shit what the world thinks. I was born a bitch, I was born a painter, I was born fucked. But I was happy in my way. You did not understand what I am. I am love. I am pleasure, I am essence, I am an idiot, I am an alcoholic, I am tenacious. I am; simply I am,” Frida Kahlo wrote in a letter to her husband, artist Diego Rivera.

The Mexican artist, who faithfully painted self-portraits throughout the course of her life, has become not only one the most famous artists in the world, but is very often the only Latin American women artist most people know by name. The invisibility of her comrades can be attributed to the power structures within the art world that disregarded the major contributions that women from 20 countries have been making to the art world throughout the twentieth century.

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, a new exhibition on view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, is a major step towards setting the record straight with more than 260 works by 116 women artists now on view through December 31, 2017. Curated by Dr. Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Dr. Andrea Giunta, Radical Women is a watershed moment in the art world, illustrating the power of intersectionality in the new millennium.

Six years in the making, Radical Women brings together women from across Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the United States, showcasing the works of pioneers making art on their own terms, including Brazilian art star Lygia Pape, who had a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this year; visionary Venezuelan Pop artist Marisol, who died at the age of 83 in 2016; and the gender-bending self-portraiture of Cuban American performance artist Ana Mendieta, whose husband was found not guilty of her murder in 1985.

The exhibition, which is accompanied by a catalogue of the same name, published by Prestel, is a brilliant introduction to both the artists and the issues they face as women in the Latin American diaspora, providing their own take on feminism, patriarchy, gender, sexuality, identity, and art history. We spotlight six artists you should know, who have inherited the mantle from the indomitable Frida Kahlo.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: “Marcha gay (Gay pride march)”, 1984. Gelatin silver print. 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm) Courtesy of Yolanda Andrade.

Photo: Paz Errázuriz (Chilean, b. 1944), La Palmera, from the series La manzana de Adán (Adam’s Apple), 1987. Digital archival pigment print on Canson platinum paper. 19 5/8 × 23 1/2 in. (49.8 × 59.7 cm)Courtesy of the artist and Galeria AFA, Santiago. Artwork © the artist.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Dazed, Exhibitions, Latin America, Photography, Women

Art Pioneer Carolee Schneemann Looks Back at 50 Years of Work

Posted on April 21, 2017

Photo: Still from performance of “Up to and Including Her Limits” (June 1976). Photo: Henrick Gaard

Artist. Feminist. Revolutionary. Carolee Schneemann, now 77 years old, has been traversing the sacred spaces of female sexuality and gender in the name of truth, liberation, and freedom from the patriarchy for more than half a century. Raised on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, Schneemann learned not to fear viscera, injury, or death. Instead, she embraced the creative and destructive forces of Mother Nature and fused them into work that challenged every assumption about women in the art world.

A multidisciplinary artist, Schneemann has created groundbreaking paintings, photographs, performance-art pieces, and installations that expose deep female secrets, pleasures, fears, and taboos. Using her body as a starting point, Schneemann also challenges cultural norms that discourage female artists from using their own nude bodies as the subjects of their work. Most memorably, in her landmark piece, Interior Scroll (1975), Schneemann stood on a table, assumed “action poses,” then slowly extracted and read from a scroll tucked neatly inside her vagina.

Her work shocked the establishment, but over the past 50 years, it has also become the foundation upon which generations of artists and pop-culture figures stand. From Matthew Barney to Lady Gaga, Schneemann’s influence is vast, yet she remains a solitary figure in the world of art, constantly reinventing her methodologies to examine the beauty and horrors of life in equal measure. On the cusp of her first United States retrospective, “Kinetic Painting,” at MoMA PS1 (running from October 22, 2017 to February 1, 2018), Schneemann spoke with BUST about her iconoclastic life in art.

Read the Full Story at BUST Magazine

Photo: Still from performance of “Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions for Camera” (1963), photo: Erró

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Women

Hiba Schahbaz: Self Portraits

Posted on April 13, 2017

Hiba Schahbaz, Self Portrait as Grand Odalisque (after Ingres), 2016. Tea, watercolor, and ink on indian paper 60 x 83 in.

Growing up in a family of artists in modern Pakistan, Hiba Schahbaz intuitively picked up a brush and began to paint. As she entered her pre-teen years, she became interested in painting the female nude, as her art began to explore more mature themes that reflected her own physical, emotional, and spiritual growth from child to adolescent.

But in the conservative Muslim country, it was impossible to find a woman willing to pose so Schahbaz did what any enterprising visionary would do: she used herself as the subject of her work. At the same time, Schahbaz was well aware of the prohibitions against her work. “There was a stigma attached to painting myself nude,” she told Crave. So to avoid being identified, she painted her body, but not her face.

“It was bad enough that all there were all these nudes. I’m sure people were aware that it was a self-portrait but if I put in my face, it would be very troublesome to my family,” she recalls. “It was a survival tactic. You paint what you need to paint but not get into too much trouble and make sure everyone is safe.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Hiba Schahbaz, Self-Portrait as Eve (after Dürer), 2016. Tea, watercolor, ink, poster paint on twinrocker 88 x 39 in

Hiba Schahbaz, Self Portrait as Sleeping Venus (after Giorgione) , 2017. Tea, watercolour, ink and poster paint on Twinrocker 48 x 99 in

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting, Women

Yayoi Kusama: In Infinity

Posted on October 31, 2016

© Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/ Singapore; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; David Zwirner, New York, © Yayoi Kusama.

“I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland,’ Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama declares. At the age of 87, Kusama is one of the most famous living artists on earth, becoming known the world over for her mindblowing installations of the infinite.

With the polka dot as the basis for her work, Kusama has taken the most finite form and rendered it limitless. She explains, “A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots can’t stay alone; like the communicative life of people, two or three polka-dots become movement… Polka-dots are a way to infinity.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Japan, Women

Raphael Albert: Miss Black and Beautiful

Posted on July 19, 2016

Raphael Albert (1935-2009) archive 1960 -1980, including beauty pageants such as Miss Black and Beautiful and Miss West Indies in Great Britain; as well as documentary photographs and family portraits of the local community in West London.

Photo: (unidentified) Miss Black & Beautiful with fellow contestants, London, Hammersmith Palais, 1970s. From the portfolio “Black Beauty Pageants”. Courtesy of © Raphael Albert/Autograph ABP.

Hailing from the Caribbean island of Grenada, photographer Raphael Albert (1935–2009) moved to London in 1953 where he became a freelance photographer working for black British newspapers. One of his earliest assignments changed the shape of his destiny, as he covered the Miss Jamaica beauty pageant for West Indian World.

Inspired by the spirit of the times Raphael began hosting local beauty pageants for black women before packed crowds at the legendary Hammersmith Palais in West London, a tradition that continued for more than three decades, into the 1980s. With titles like Miss Black and Beautiful, Miss West Indies in Great Britain, and Miss Grenada, Albert cast aside the European standards of beauty in order to shine a spotlight on the inherent beauty of the African race, showcasing women of all skin tones, hair types, and facial features in the mix.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Holley posing at Blythe Road, Hammersmith, London, early 1970s. From the portfolio “Black Beauty Pageants”. Courtesy of © Raphael Albert/Autograph ABP.

Photo: (unidentifed) Miss Black & Beautiful escorted by two men, Hammersmith Palais, London, 1970s. From the portfolio “Black Beauty Pageants”. Courtesy of © Raphael Albert/Autograph ABP.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

Mirror, Mirror .. Portraits of Frida Kahlo

Posted on July 11, 2016

Photo: Guillermo Kahlo (Mexican, born Germany, 1872-1941). Frida Kahlo at 18, Mexico, 1926. Gelatin silver print, 6 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. On loan from Throckmorton Fine Art.

“At the end of the day we can endure much more than we think we can,” observed the great artist Friday Kahlo (1907–1954). In her time on earth, Kahlo was a luminous soul, transforming tragedy into triumph with ever stroke of her brush, standing for truth, justice, and self determination in the face of pain and loss.

A child of the Mexican Revolution, Kahlo’s love for Mexico is seen in every aspect of her being. Through art, she revealed herself, creating a singular body of work in the history of world art. Perhaps there is no other artist whose face is so well known, who commands our attention with eyes that could pierce your soul. But unlike the preponderance of selfies today, her studies in portraiture were not about the beauty of the surface but rather something more profound. They are studies of a deeper state of being, one that requires continuous labor of he hand and eye to manifest a self that exists beyond words.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

Carrie Mae Weems: Considered

Posted on March 16, 2016

A Distant View. Gelatin silver print . 20” x 20” © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

American photographer Carrie Mae Weems got her first camera when she was 21 as a birthday present from her then-boyfriend. She remembers, “At that point politics as my life, and I viewed the camera as a tool for expressing my political beliefs rather than as an art medium.”

Over the past four decades, Weems has developed a complex body of art that employs photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation and video to explore the complexities African American life and history in her artwork. It is a mission she has chosen, and to which she has dedicated her life. Weems observes, “Despite the variety of my explorations, throughout it all it has been my contention that my responsibility as an artist is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and reveals; to beautify the mess of a messy world, to heal the sick and feed the helpless; to shout bravely from the roof-tops and storm barricaded doors and voice the specifics of our historic moment.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography, Women