As Romaine's work evolved,
the female subjects of her paintings became sharply modern, in possession of a kind of feminine strength that couldn't be captured by other male artists working at that time.
The female subjects of the paintings, all in profile as if in a hieroglyphic stance, are ambiguous and almost without history, often in transit, walking or waiting and on the brink of something new.
Not exact matches
Shown alongside sketches, drawings and studies, her
paintings recast
female subjects from art historical
paintings, photographs and the media into new environments, imbuing them with a newfound sense
of self - possession.
Furthermore, she often tackled
subjects that were perceived as «risky» during her lifetime: Neel is known for
painting gay people long before homosexuality was legalised, transvestites, members
of the poor, immigrant communities in Spanish Harlem (where she lived), candid portraits
of nursing and pregnant women as well as unflinching male and
female nudes.
Known for her monumental, rhinestone - encrusted
paintings of domestic interiors and
female subjects, Thomas identifies photography as playing a central role within her practice.
Just the current show
of Florine Stettheimer's extraordinarily gorgeous, inventive, kaleidoscopic
paintings at the Jewish Museum suggests that there are a thousand aesthetic aromas, ideas
of color, composition, surface,
subject matter, metaphysical attitudes, body postures, and optical domains that have been cut out
of the canon (probably because certain «qualities» have forever been considered too
female, or «girly»).
Highlights from Michelle Grabner's crowd - pleasing selection include Dawoud Bey's presidential portrait photography (Barack Obama, 2008), Karl Haendel's Theme Time Drawings, pencil drawings
of various
subjects arranged in shaped frames across a massive section
of wall, and works by Donelle Woolford, the fictional young black
female artist «created» by Joe Scanlan and played by various actors whose Joke
Painting (detumescence)(2013) investigates the notion
of authenticity.
In turn, they would give rise to his fetishistic furniture sculptures
of female figures,
paintings of women in rubber and exaggeratedly high heels, and their
subject matter would lead him on to explore novel techniques
of relief printmaking in the later 60's.
Today, she is recognised as being among the first
female artists to
paint a nude self - portrait and, later, a series
of self - portraits while she was pregnant —
subjects which are taken up in the Joffe
paintings on show.
The
subject of Christopher Brown's new multipanel
paintings is a wooded landscape, crossed by a river, and sometimes including a nude
female figure.
Comprising five glittering, large - scale
paintings, Mickalene Thomas's latest exhibition flaunts both the presence and the absence
of her African - American
female subjects in boldly patterned domestic interiors.
Brooklyn - based artist Heidi Hahn
paints women but eschews explicit or erotic representation
of her
female subjects in favor
of a nuanced perspective that allows viewers to understand what it means to be a woman in 2017.
However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s Lostutter produced a number
of small watercolors and drawings
of female subjects where he began to explore many
of the elements seen in his later
paintings.
Orchard's own common surroundings and narratives as a
female artist become
subject and setting
of her new
paintings: artists studios,
painting scenes, studio visits, or the display
of institutional rejection letters.
This new body
of work comprises some 15 studies
of exclusively
female subjects, a departure from the small
paintings of children and large landscapes for which she is known.
She was particularly well known for her explicit
paintings of male nudes, which challenged the tradition
of male artists
painting female subjects as objects
of desire.
Painted in 1995 and exemplary
of Lichtenstein's late, great genius, the work revisits one
of his signature
subject matters: the
female form.
«In traditional
painting, across the centuries
of the nude, there's a particular kind
of gaze that's implied between a male viewer and a to - some - degree objectified
female nude
subject.
Dégas» dancers [1] have been
of particular interest to the artist, which is demonstrated in a trio
of paintings in the exhibition — Harp - Strum, Militant Pressures, and Tell The Air (2016)-- a sequence
of vivid studies
of female subjects mid-performance.
Surrounded by his drying canvases, he would ask a young nude
female model to remain with him in the studio, not necessarily to
paint her in a particular pose as Matisse or Bonnard might have done (he was wary
of the anecdotal side
of a pose and tried to avoid it as much as he could), but for a sheer physical presence next to him while he was
painting, and for its influence on his perception
of his
subject.
When you look at these fine illustrations and
paintings by Tel Aviv based artist Julie Filipenko, you're immediately blown away by the
subjects of pretty
female characters that seem to delightfully leap out
of each page or canvas.
In other works, the mélange
of media images bleed into the
painted subjects, giving Crosby's seated
females — sometimes her sister, sometimes herself, sometimes an abstracted blend
of the two (or more)-- subtle full - sleeve tattoos, which upon closer inspection are images
of Nigerian front - cover models.
Among the works on view are Carrie Mae Weems's Untitled (Man Smoking / Malcolm X), 1990, which explores human experience from the vantage point
of an African American
female subject; a «femmage»
painting by Miriam Schapiro titled Agony in the Garden that pays homage to Frida Kahlo; a haunting print by Kara Walker
of a self - empowered heroine from the American antebellum South; and a «bunny» sculpture by Nayland Blake that challenges constructions
of masculinity.
Perhaps to come across as the anti-Currin or the un-Balthus, Mr. Bryan concentrates on two
of painting's oldest
subjects, the
female nude and the still life, the latter using only vases and jugs.
In her fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, Thomas explores the intricacies
of female beauty through
painting and collage, focusing on how artifice serves both to mask and reveal the individual essence
of her
subjects.
The New York artist is known for elegant
paintings of female subjects like Katy Perry and Elle Fanning lounging in candyland - scapes or donning cupcake crowns.
The surprisingly cohesive body
of work in Hahn's New York solo debut contends with the history
of traditional figurative
painting, in which
female subjects possess sensuous beauty offset, generally, by a benzo - like tranquility.
e are told by Jennifer R. Gross, in the catalogue accompanying this focused exhibition
of Jim Nutt's work (even with 70
paintings and drawings it is not a retrospective or a survey), that the artist «has expressed surprise that his unidentified women have been seen as male rather than as the clearly
female subjects he intended.
These pioneers included the Impressionist Mary Cassatt, who
painted a mural on the
subject of Modern Woman (1893) for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago; the photomontage artist Hannah Hoch, the Mexican Frida Kahlo, and the sculptor Kathe Kollwitz, all
of whom raised issues about power and representation in gender; the German - born painter Eva Hesse, the Russian - born assemblage artist Louise Nevelson, and the French sculptor Louise Bourgeois, who all produced imagery dealing with the theme
of domesticity and the
female body.
On view are «Large Dark Figure» (1962 — 63), a shadowy, abstract
painting, and «Two Sisters» (1976), a highly realistic work
of two
female nudes, both
of which reveal the range
of her exploration into how best to capture her
subjects.
Quietly enigmatic, James»
paintings of youthful
female subjects are not portraits in the usual sense
of the word.
Through
painting, photography, installation art and performance, the artist uses her own body as the
subject matter to examine and problematise notions
of the idealised erotic
female subject.
«The
subject of my recent
paintings is the
female figure and its accouterments.
· Key
paintings of the
female nude by Marguerite Zorach, illustrating both her early Fauvist adoption
of the
subject to express the joys and energies
of nature and later use
of it to suggest women's ambiguous position in American society
of the 1920s.
Turning the perspective
of her compositions to her own body as
subject, she began
painting the nude
female figure, shifting the point
of view from outside
of the canvas as the viewer, to a simultaneous observer and
subject.
Rita Ackermann (b. 1968, Budapest) is a Hungarian - American painter renowned for
subject matter that challenges and liberates traditional depictions
of the
female body and archetypes in figurative
painting.
Sylvia Sleigh (1910 - 2010) was a figure in the feminist art movement
of the 1970s who is best known for turning portraiture and art history on its head as she reversed traditional sex roles in her
paintings, casting her husband and their friends and associates as male nudes that recalled the
female subjects often found in
paintings by Titian or Ingres.
During the forties, her work was acclaimed for its honest exploration
of domestic
subject matter and its frank, unapologetically
female viewpoint, but in the late fifties and sixties, her
paintings lost much
of their currency to Abstract Expressionism and later to Minimalism.
Her work, which has been the
subject of many solo exhibitions, was recently featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, alongside that
of Jacqueline Humphries, Dona Nelson, Laura Owens, and Amy Sillman, in a section artist - curator Michelle Grabner dedicated to
female painters «who take on the authority
of abstract
painting — its history, its ambition, and its relationship to power and gender.»
Since Carnegie's
subjects range from the relatively benign, isolated nature
painting — along with the brooding architectural structures that often occupy the landscape, such as a gateway into a cemetery — to intimate little studies
of excellently formed
female asses, this is not an unreasonable question.