Carmen Herrera, now 101 years old, discusses her career with the Guardian. Herrera recalls the obstacles she faced as a woman artist in the mid-20th century. She explains, “Because everything was controlled by men, not just art.”
The Huffington Post highlights Carmen Herrera’s life and work
Herrera famously sold her first painting at age 89. The Huffington Post discusses her solo show Lines of Sight at the Whitney Museum of American Art, on view through January 9, 2017.
The Women’s March on Washington, in collaboration with the Amplifier Foundation, asks for art submissions to be used on posters and banners during the march. The deadline is 2 p.m. on Sunday, January 8, 2017.
Shirin Neshat selects her best photograph for the Guardian
She Who Tells a Story artist Shirin Neshat describes her photograph Speechless from the series “Women of Allah.” Neshat says, “It’s usually printed larger than life—so that when someone stands in front of it, the gun is pointing straight at their stomach.”
Barbara Jatta is the first woman to direct the Vatican Museums.
The Guardian features vivid, abstract paintings by Sandra Blow.
Leila Abdelrazaq draws comics representing the experiences of Palestinian refugees and immigrants.
Wiebke Maurer sculpts place settings in gold and silver filigree.
Artsy highlights eight women who turned food into feminist art.
Bustle reviews the film Hidden Figures, based on Margot Shetterly’s book about the black women mathematicians who helped make space flight possible.
The New York Times interviews Ruth Negga about her leading role in the film Loving.
Colossal shares Alexis Arnold’s work
Alexis Arnold poses discarded books and covers them in borax crystals.
New York’s Second Avenue Subway features expansive public art installations by Sarah Sze and Jean Shin.
NPR remembers Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher.
Beyoncé will be the first black woman to headline the music festival Coachella.
Actress Marlene Dietrich accumulated a massive collection of books and left handwritten notes in many of them.
NPR records Angel Olsen performing her song “Give It Up” in a church in the Bronx.
“Horror creeps into the most ordinary lines” in the novel Fever Dream by Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin.
In her new short story collection, Difficult Women, Roxanne Gay explores “stories of women who go to impossible places but are fighting to find their way back.”
Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush, opening next month at the Nasher Museum of Art, features around 30 of Abney’s paintings. “Through her monumental paintings, Abney gives us the chance to have a meaningful conversation about issues of racial violence and social justice.”
The Creators Project interviews the co-directors of the crowd-sourced NASTY WOMEN Exhibition. The Huffington Post shares a small selection of the featured works submitted by 694 artists.
The Georgia Museum of Art features kinetic sculptures by New Orleans-based artist Lin Emery. “Executed in either polished or brushed aluminum, the sculptures take their cue from music, dance, and natural forms.”
Posted in Art Fix Friday	| Tagged Angel Olson, Carmen Herrera, Lin Emery, Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush, Roxanne Gay, Shirin Neshat, women artists in the news, women in the news
Art Fix Friday: August 19, 2016
Posted on August 19, 2016 by Women in the arts
Nan Goldin asks, “I’m not responsible for anything like social media, am I? Tell me I’m not.”
The New York Times explores Nan Goldin’s work
The New York Times draws parallels between Goldin’s signature work, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and the current culture of image sharing.
Hyperallergic writes, “We should all be inspired by Alma Thomas’s optimism.”
Niki de Saint Phalle’s sculpture garden in Tuscany contains 22 “massive, globular forms of divine goddesses and strange beasts.”
Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, organized by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, will travel to four additional museums in North America. The Art Newspaper and artnet share the excitement.
Doris Salcedo tours Bogotá in a video with the Guardian
Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo tours Bogotá and her studio for the Guardian.
Polixeni Papapetrou uses flowers from a cemetery to explore themes of mourning and remembrance.
The Brooklyn Museum will celebrate the tenth anniversary of its Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.
Artsy profiles the Neo Naturists, a “body-painting trio of female flashers” that started an underground art movement in the 1980s.
The Huffington Post shares a list of ten exceptional women photographers.
In LACMA’s new video series, Catherine Opie discusses a painting by Thomas Eakins in the museum’s collection.
Alexandra Berg’s pencil drawings “would fool anyone into thinking they were black and white photographs.”
ARTnews shares Barbara Kasten’s recent work
A new solo exhibition presents three recent bodies of work by Barbara Kasten.
Photographer Lisa Minogue creates stylized portraits of Australian women of color by using vibrant face paint.
In her “Reading Women” series, Carrie Schneider photographs and films women artists reading works by their favorite women authors.
artnet shares five interesting facts about Italian artist and activist Tina Modotti (1896–1942) on the anniversary of her birth.
A rare letter by pioneering travel writer Mary Wortley Montagu goes up for sale.
Lisa Hannigan’s latest album “sneaks up and envelops listeners in cocoons of sound.”
The Guardian discusses revolutionary Australian feminist films of the ’90s.
After her directorial debut, Natalie Portman discusses the status of female directors in Hollywood.
Hyperallergic delves into Chantal Akerman’s 1975 film, Je tu il elle.
Hyperallergic reviews Paola Pivi: Ma’am
Paola Pivi: Ma’am at Dallas Contemporary features Italian artist Paula Pivi’s “multicolored polar bears, an upside down plane, a giant inflatable ladder, and a film of live goldfish on an airplane.”
NPR finds “a brave sense of modernity and freedom” in The Art of Romaine Brooks at Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Eau de Cologne at Sprüth Magers gallery presents works by Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Rosemarie Trockel, and Louise Lawler. The exhibition is “rooted in an appreciation for these women who are rare in the field of contemporary art: strident and singular and commercially successful.”
Posted on June 23, 2016 by Women in the arts
In Arabic, the word rawiya means “she who tells a story.” Each artist in in NMWA’s summer exhibition She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World offers a vision of the world she has witnessed.
Visitors study Shirin Neshat’s work in She Who Tells a Story
Shirin Neshat
(b. 1957, Qazvin, Iran; lives New York City)
Shirin Neshat moved to the United States during the Iranian Revolution (1979) and studied fine arts. In 1990, Neshat returned to visit Iran and found a changed country. Inspired to create her best-known photographic series Women of Allah (1993–97), Neshat wrote verses by contemporary Iranian women writers across the surface of her photographs in Farsi.
“Art is our weapon. Culture is a form of resistance.”—Shirin Neshat, in a 2010 TED talk
In a way, all of my photographic work is inscribed with poetry. Poetic works allow us to say everything; they offer a subversive language that can transcend the law.”—Shirin Neshat, in an Artforum article
“Under all circumstances, [Iranian women] have pushed the boundary, they have confronted the authority, they have broken every rule in the smallest and the biggest way and once again they proved themselves. . . . Iranian woman have found a new voice and their voice is giving me my voice.”—Shirin Neshat, discussing the Iranian Green Movement in a 2010 TED talk
“The Book of Kings” marks Neshat’s return to black-and-white photography. Neshat found inspiration in stories from participants in the Arab Spring in 2011 and protesters from the Iranian Green Movement in 2009. One portrait on view, Ibrahim (2012), belongs to a part of “The Book of Kings” series Neshat calls the Patriots. The figure meets the viewer’s gaze with his right hand placed over his heart. Neshat inscribed the portrait with calligraphic verses in Farsi from contemporary Iranian poetry, giving the work a powerful effect.
Neshat borrowed the title of her series from the Shahnameh (Book of Kings), an epic Persian poem written a thousand years ago by the poet Ferdowsi. The epic narrates the deeds of legendary and historical kings of Iran, including tales of heroes and villains. Interested in the concept of martyrdom, Neshat says her series explores “how the notions of patriotism, faith, and self-sacrifice always intersect with violence, atrocity, and ultimately death.” She connects triumphs and tragedies of the past to contemporary political demonstrations in Iran and the Middle East. “Perhaps that’s why I became an artist,” says Neshat, “I could build a bridge in between myself and my country. . . re-interpreting historical narratives which I’ve never witnessed but only imagined.”
In the central article, Maura Reilly measures the progress and inequities of women’s representation in museums, exhibitions, press, and the art market:
In the last ten years, there has been a 10.6% increase in women-led museums, although mostly in museums with smaller budgets.
The highest price paid for a work by a living woman artist is $7.1 million for a Yayoi Kusama painting, whereas the highest result for a living man is an editioned sculpture by Jeff Koons for $58.4 million.
In their annual list of the 100 most powerful women in the world, Forbes did not include any artists or art world professionals.
An analysis of six major literary awards shows that novels about women are less likely to win. Research found that zero women writing female-centric works have won the Pulitzer Prize in the last 15 years.
The Financial Times reports that only 22% of people working in the games industry are women, although women make up almost half of players. Recent mentoring initiatives are intended to help close this gap.
In the New Yorker, Anwen Crawford explores the need for female rock critics. Not placed on the same pedestal as male rock critics, women writers are more often viewed as groupies. Crawford describes, “Groupies have proved an enduring stereotype of women’s participation in rock: worshipful, gorgeous, and despised.”