As long as art has existed, there have been women creating it. Unfortunately their achievements have either been overlooked in Art History or attributed to their partners or mentors. Fortunately, there has been a push in recent years by art researchers, museum boards, art teachers, and others to finally give women artists their due. From Sofonisba Anguissola (one of the first female artists in Western History) to Simone Leigh (A Black artist whose critically acclaimed work took over the U.S. pavilion in Venice last year) women are beginning to establish themselves firmly into Art History.
In honor of Women’s History Month (I know it was last month but I was lazy, okay?) I would like to present women artists who have personally inspired me, and they represent a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. Some were forgotten for a long time before finally receiving their flowers from art historians, while others have exploded rather recently, and range from traditionalists to activists to New Media adherents. All of them prove that women creating art is in itself a political act. Once again, you can either read about these fabulous women or just enjoy the pretty pictures of their work. Enjoy!
Artemisia Gentilesch
Once a footnote in Art History, Artemisia Gentileschi has emerged as one of the most important painters of the 17th century. In recent years there’s been a newfound appreciation of her technical skill, especially her command of chiaroscuro (a heightened juxtaposition of light and shadow). Gentileschi is especially known for producing an array of paintings of strong female women in literature and often have biblical themes of women killing men as evidenced in the “Jael and Sisera” and “Judith Slaying Holofernes” paintings.
She was also the queen of making lemonade out of some really bitter lemons, as unfortunately she became just as well known for the horrible things that happened to her as well as her talent. In 1611, the year after she painted “Susanna and the Elders,” Artemisia was raped by Agostino Tassi (who was a friend of her father Orazio) and unfortunately that incident (as well as the trial that followed where he was actually found guilty) was the lens in which people viewed her work in the past. However, as scholars unearth more of her personal history a new picture is emerging…and that’s of the ways that she made use of all the areas of her life in her work; not just sexual violation but also motherhood, erotic passion, and professional ambition. She used this incident (as well as her engagement to a man her father picked out for her) as an opportunity to establish herself as an artist independent of her father, and her status as a married woman offered her something she had never truly experienced: liberty. She swiftly became recognized as one of the most accomplished artists of her day, and retained that prominence for decades.
I’m in a Baroque mood. Where can I see the arts?
While her work is highly sought and in museums around the world the Gallerie d’Italia museum Via Toledo in Naples, Italy is hosting a major exhibition of her work that documents her years in Naples.
Wangechi Mutu
When I think “who is the number one artist I think of when I hear the phrase ‘Afrofuturism’” Wangechi immediately comes to mind. Her world is a wondrous place full of color, hybrid animals, aliens, and more. Hybrid creatures populate both the artist’s extravagant collages and startling sculptures, variously merging human and animal (or plant), alien and earthling, and female and male into assertive female-leaning beings. Her collages, sculptures and videos examine the exploitation, resilience and grandeur of Black women as social, spiritual and mythic beings.
Born in Kenya in 1972, Mutu attended boarding school in Wales and came to New York in the early 1990s, earning a B.F.A. from the Cooper Union and an M.F.A. from Yale. In 2015 she moved to Nairobi, but still maintains a studio in Brooklyn. Primarily a multimedia artist (she often stars in and directs her video installations) she is best known for her beautiful, rich collages, and has a knack for combining materials in her sculptures, collages, and paintings to imagine a world free of divisions between species, race, and gender. She is currently having a retrospective of her work at the New Museum in NY, sealing her reputation as one of the best artists of her generation, and using her innate versatility to demonstrate diversity as essential to life, real or imagined.
Enough of this. Where can I see the good sis’s art?
Besides the current retrospective (that I’m pissed I can’t see) at the New Museum she also has work on display at the San Francisco Museum of Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C.
Hannah Höch
Höch is mostly known for her politically motivated collages and photomontage works. She often appropriated text and images from magazines and newspapers to create works that criticized the German government during the Weimer Era as well as gender issues and the place of women in modern society. She was the rare female artist who was actively practicing her craft in the early 20th century as well as being an integral part of the Dada movement (which was primarily a sausage fest). Her work was exhibited at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin, but before the show opened fellow Dadaists George Grosz and John Heart tried to stop her work from being shown. It took her then lover Raoul Hausmann threatening to pull his own work from the show for them to include her, and even then she was constantly being disrespected; Hans Richter (a prominent member of the movement) only memory of her was the food she provided at openings.
Although Höch’s aesthetic of borrowing from popular culture, dismemberment and collage fitted well with that of the Dadaists, the union was an uneasy one, not least because of the inherent sexism of the movement. She also felt uncomfortable with the exhibitionist element of the Dada circle, and was embarrassed by the behavior of some of her peers. Around the late 20s she had moved away from the movement and made connections with other artists; most notably Moholy Nagy and Piet Mondrian. During the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany Hoch found herself under attack from the regime because they had her listed as a “degenerate artist.” Unlike a lot of artists at that time who chose to leave Berlin, Höch chose to stay; she bought a house near Berlin and stayed there as a form of exile. After the war, Höch’s work veered off into abstraction, but her output during this period was less known and less well-received. Regardless of this, her pioneering work in photomontage was still influential for many later artists, including Greta Stern, Cindy Sherman, and countless others.
Wünderbar! Where can I see her work now?
The Met, MoMa, and the Berlinische Galerie all have some of her pieces in their permanent collections.
Guerrilla Girls
The Guerrilla Girls is an activist group formed in 1985 whose members are female artists, curators, and writers. Their work is a combination of performance art and a combination of demonstrations and “public service messages” and the members often disguise themselves by wearing gorilla masks. They do interventions and exhibitions at art museums, blasting them on their own walls for their bad behavior and discriminatory practices, including a stealth projection on the façade of the Whitney Museum about income inequality and the super rich hijacking art. Their art tends to be text based messages that nonetheless are extremely effective in showing the racial and discrimination that often runs rampant in the art world. I first became acquainted with their work through an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, and respect what they do.
Where’s the work at?
They currently are a part of the Put It This Way exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC.
Wendy Redstar
Wendy Redstar is an Apsáalooke contemporary multimedia artist born in Billings, Montana. I first became acquainted with Wendy’s work during a visit to the Brooklyn Museum and instantly fell in love. Red Star’s body of work uses a wide array of self-portraiture—often featuring theatrical poses and backgrounds in addition to archival imagery, large-scale installations, performance art, sculptures composed of found objects, and stunning mixed-media collages showing photographed figures set against backgrounds of vivid textiles and beadwork. At the heart of all of her work is an appreciation and love of Crow culture, and she often uses the Internet and online research sessions on related topics to motivate and inspire her in her work.
I love her! Where can I see her work now?
Her work can currently be seen at the Native American: In Translation exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Barbara Kruger
The designer in me loves Barbara Kruger’s text based creations. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that Barbara initially started her career as a graphic designer for Mademoiselle magazine. She later described this period in her life as the biggest influence in her work. Like a lot of creative she went through a period where she felt her work lacked meaning, and went on a hiatus for a year. When she began working again, her style had evolved into her signature style of large format images overlaid with text. In addition to creating text and photographic works, Kruger has produced video and audio works, written criticism, taught classes, curated exhibitions, designed products, such as T-shirts and mugs, and developed public projects, such as billboards, bus wraps, and architectural interventions.
Kruger likes to address her audience through the usage of personal pronouns like “you” and “I,” drawing the viewer into each piece. Kruger’s work prompts us to interrogate our own positions; in the artist’s words, “to question and change the systems that contain us.” She demands that we consider how our identities are formed within culture, through representation in language and image.
I wants to see the Precious? Where is thou?
While she’s had recent retrospective exhibitions in Chicago, New York, and L.A. you can see a permanent exhibit of her work at the Tate Modern in London.
Amuki
Better known as “Amuki” (inner silence), Vanessa Zúñiga Tinizaray is an designer from Ecuador whose passions has led her to investigate the visual signs of the ancestral cultures of Latin America. Specializing in experimental typography, visual communication, and New Media, Amuki often uses generative software programs like Processing to create her works, and combines Swiss design practices with ancient art forms from the Latin diaspora to create something unique and special. Her goal is to share with and teach people to value and celebrate Latin America’s cultural heritage.
Eighteen years of experimentation culminated into the award winning research project “Visual Chronicles of the Abya Yala” which led her to be a finalist and two mentions in the Ibero-American Design Biennial. Amuki’s work with kinetic typography with the foundry Sudtipos of Argentina to promote the typographic family “Fixture” in 2018 has been featured in magazines such as Computer Arts, as well as online mentions in Graffica and Eye magazine. I first became acquainted with Amuki and her work after seeing her lecture at the Typographics Festival (which is a yearly gathering for people who, you know, love letterforms and typography). It’s a really good talk, so if you love type and have 20 minutes I’ve included it here.
Love that type! Where will she be next?
Amuki is currently giving a talk at the University of Illinois at Urbana entitled “Tinkuy: Meeting in Diversity.” In addition, she is also currently doing Processing Workshops in Latin America.
Once again, I encourage everyone to check out the sources because in many cases I’ve linked directly to the artists website where you can learn more about them and their work. ONTD, who are some of your fave Women in Art? It can be any genre; let me know in the comments, and post images if you can!
~Die Quellen~
anterrabre
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