Cover Artist: Deborah Roberts, "Shanika and Grace" 2022
From Marginalized to Magnified - Female artists perspectives on the female form
If you are a passionate art-lover like me, the current special exhibition at the Modern Museum in Fort Worth is something that you must go see and is absolutely one of my all-time favorites! As the name implies, this show’s curated works are comprised of 100% female artists that have painted women in a wide variety of styles and scenes. As you traverse the gallery, the emotions you will likely experience will range from appreciation, to happiness, to (very possibly) sudden discomfort, yet all the while, not being able to look away.
Typically, in a museum environment, I expect to see art from artists that are well-established and/or famous and more often than not, they’ve already passed on. There is an incredible variety of artwork being shown, and I was impressed to see that some of the paintings were created as recently as last year. Kudos to chief curator Andrea Karnes and her team for including such a diverse group of 46 female artists!
Curator Andrea Karnes + Artist Amy Sherald, "A Midsummer Afternoon Dream" 2020
At the press preview, I was treated to a tour of the collection by Ms. Karnes herself. She started the tour of the new exhibition, Women Painting Women, just off the Modern’s upstairs gathering platform. Before we begin, Andrea tells us that the exhibition is broken into four different and distinct themes: Color as Portrait, Selfhood, Nature Personified and The Body.
As easy as it would be for me to tell you a little something about every amazing piece on display, I’d much rather you go see it for yourself, unencumbered by my reviews, but I did decide to Spotlight four of my favorite pieces. Choosing only four proved to be very difficult, but here are some of the artworks moved me:
Swimming, Smoking, crying
Dana Schutz’ “Swimming Smoking Crying” (2009). Some would see this art as odd, and I suppose it is, if abstraction isn’t your thing, but I loved it, and the choice of verbs for the title was deliberate and spot on. This type of callout is a common practice in Schutz’ work; she seeks to capture three things that don’t normally go together. The result was intriguing, and I observed that everyone that got close to the painting cocked their heads to the right, as if mimicking the swimming woman. It was fascinating to see people have such a similar, physical reaction while taking in the piece.
In an interview with artfuse.org, Dana commented about her experience as a high school swimmer, coming from a white, middle class background, “[Swimming] is an interesting sport because you are kind of invisible. Your body is submerged in the water, yet you are constantly reminded of the rhythm of your breath. You are really in your own head space.”
Strategy (North Face, Front Face, South Face)
Jenny Saville’s “Strategy (North Face, Front Face, South Face)” was created in 1994 is next on my Must See recommendation list. These paintings are absolutely massive and utterly breathtaking! Jenny is a British artist whose triple portraits captures the contours of flesh, in all of its glory, and in this case, its excess as well. Not only is the female subject of the portrait a large, curvaceous woman, the canvas that Saville uses are large in the extreme as well. The result is a truly awesome representation of the human body and the skin that envelopes it. I look forward to going back to spend more time taking in this piece.
According to Jenny’s profile on gagosian.com, “Saville was able to observe a New York City plastic surgeon at work. Studying the reconstruction of human flesh was formative in her perception of the body – its resilience, as well as its fragility. Her time with the cosmetic surgeon fueled her examination into the seemingly infinite ways that flesh is transformed and disfigured. Her studies focused her interest in ‘imperfections’ of flesh, with all of its societal implications and taboos. Saville had been captivated with these details since she was a child”.
Yayoi: Arrangement in Yellow Lake and Vermillion Clair
Christiane Lyons piece, “Yayoi: Arrangement in Yellow Lake and Vermillion Clair” was created just last year in 2021! She names her works after other women artists. For this piece, she composites three women merged into one, creating a powerful and thought provoking image of “woman”, from the keen perspective of another woman. One thing that jumps out at me is the lack of sexualization in pieces like this. It feels like a statement about women, not an exposé of women.
Our guide and curator tells us that Ms. Lyons gets inspiration from women she finds online, influencers, fashion models, and movie stars, but never reveals exactly who they are. Looking at this particular piece, I have some ideas, but I’ll leave it to you to decide who you see in the mashup!
Here is a description from artnet.com about this piece: “In her paintings, she explores, by distorting the female body, the cycle of women’s objectification throughout art history and culture while at the same time, attempting to break this cycle by imbuing the figures with subjectivity.”
The Tower
Hayv Kahraman’s “The Tower” (2019) is an oil on linen painting of women standing on the backs of other women, bending over backwards. There is a clear implication and conjuring of the ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ idea, but the contortion of the women seems to imply that the process for women to advance and elevate is somehow rife with challenges, even as their predecessors laid the foundation for them. Kahraman is very much an artist ‘on the rise’, and I can certainly see why. We are told by Andrea that her works boldly tackle subjects of conformity, objectification through her frequent use of contortion and acrobatic poses.
Hayv escaped Baghdad with her family and fled to Sweden. The August 4, 2019 Robb Report wrote that “Flaunting physical differences can have the unintended consequence of turning a person into a freak show, a feeling Kahraman experienced as a brown-skinned refugee in Sweden. The only way I could survive in that context and environment was to assimilate. To look at what people wanted me to be and be that,” she says. “For me, these bending bodies—specifically, backwards—that extreme, almost violent act is reminiscent of contorting yourself and your identity to the majority, to the power.”
In 2013 Hayv was listed as one of the “50 under 50 – The Next Most Collectable Artists”. Her work is not easy to come by and is usually sold prior to being made public. If you purchased her work early, you’ve got quite an investment on your hands! If you are a collector, this is just a friendly reminder to purchase artwork from emerging artists if you get a hunch or hear chatter of promising artists, or you just happen to love it!
There is so much to see at this female-centric, yet all-inclusive exhibition. It forces us to look deeply at female artists perspectives on the female form, what it means to create ‘within the feminine’, and how female voices and artistic merit can be held up in the light. As anyone with a basic knowledge of Art History already knows, women have not been represented in the arts nearly as much as our male compatriots and counterparts.
Historically and contemporaneously, there have been countless times when women’s contributions to the arts, whether they be musical, literary, visual, etc., have simply been overlooked (at best) or intentionally suppressed and subjugated (at worst). This exceptional collection of works by women, about women, but for everyone to enjoy, offers a bounty of work of exceptional quality and also serves to magnify the far too frequently marginalized work of these amazing creators.
Article & Photos by: Mouty Shackelford
