In the Art World

For the next few weeks, as part of the #5WomenArtists campaign, we're discussing areas of the art world that women artists are leading the way in defining what this type of art means in a contemporary context. Each week, we'll dive into a different area and pick five women artists we love that explores it in her work. This week, we're looking at women who work with the figure. 

The body is so often central to the experience of being a woman. It is highly politicized, objectified, legislatively regulated, misunderstood and mishandled by the medical community, a source of great physical feats and miracles, an incubator or target for unique dangers and violence. It is decorated, disguised, hidden, exposed, manipulated, altered. When it's portrayed it is seen almost solely through the male gaze; it is scrutinized, criticised, broken down into parts. These challenges grow when they intersect with the treatment of bodies that exist outside of the cis straight white realm. Seeing these bodies through the eyes of women artists is intriguing for both their inherent artistic value and nature, as well as how their perspectives amplify all of these issues that arise via male artists that we've normalized. Here are five women artists whose work centers around explorations of the figure:

Laurie Simmons

For the next few weeks, as part of the #5WomenArtists campaign, we're discussing areas of the art world that women artists are leading the way in defining what this type of art means in a contemporary context. Each week, we'll dive into a different area and pick five women artists we love that explores it in her work. This week, we're looking at women who create work about domestic life. 

Domesticity has been the realm of women for centuries, and as their lives expand beyond the walls that keep them within that world women artists are turning their sights back to the home with a discerning eye. Often intended as a metaphor for women's roles and struggles within society at large, their work challenges the connotations of the home with femininity, investigates the politics that relegate women to these spaces, and subverts symbolism associated with domesticity. Here are five artists that work with questions of domesticity:

For thie next few weeks, as part of the #5WomenArtists campaign, we're discussing areas of the art world that women artists are leading the way in defining what this type of art means in a contemporary context. Each week, we'll dive into a different area and pick five women artists we love that explores it in her work. To start, we're taking a look at textile art. We focused on this for our group show, "Following The Thread," last summer that featured our artists like Debra Smith and Emily Barletta, and now we'll open that up to the art world at large. 

The distinct divide between the worlds of art and craft has been rapidly shrinking. Artists who work with textiles are being welcomed into the contemporary art world like never before. Drawn to the aesthetics or the cultural and political connotations of textiles, their work looks to the tenets of painting, applying notions of space, form, and color to their manipulation of fabric and thread. As the world of textiles has always been predominantly a place for women, so too are female artists making up a vast majority of those who are elevating these mediums to fine art. They subvert the notion that these materials are to be dismissed and relegated to the sidelines of the art world, and use their materials to create pieces that are often imbued with political and historical messaging. Here are the five artists we chose to exemplify the work that's been done in the realm of textiles: 

For the past two years, we've been excited for The National Museum of Women in the Arts' #5womenartists campaign during Women's History Month. Getting people talking about women artists is something we're passionate about, and we have a lot to share this year. Our gallery is run by women (with the exception of our weekly visit from our art handler - thanks, Noah!) and 81% of the artists we represent are women, and it's been that way since the beginning. Last year, we spotted Kathryn Markel's name on a Guerilla Girls' piece in the Whitney that listed gallerists who dedicated at least 30% of their solo shows to female artists. When reviewing the season from 1984-1985, the list was shockingly small. In 2017-2018, there's still work to be done, but we still managed to find a lot of excellent shows in New York's galleries and museums that just happened to be by women artists. (Perhaps you've seen our monthly #artwalks in our Instagram stories!) Our Gallery Manager, Alyssa Alexander, and Marketing Associate, Celeste Kaufman, narrow down their lists to their 5 favorite exhibitions they saw since the last #5womenartists campaign: 

On Monday, the portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama for the National Portrait Gallery were revealed. Painted by the renowned Kehinde Wiley and emerging Amy Sherald, respectively, the paintings are a stark departure from what we typically associate with traditional presidential portraiture. (Elaine de Kooning's JFK and Chuck Close's Clinton are other portraits hanging in the Gallery that have also represented a particular moment in art history that coincided with the presidency they depicted.) Unsurprisingly, the reception of the Obamas' portraits has been mixed. Are they successful, powerful representations of an historical moment - the first African American artists chosen to paint the portraits of the first African American First Family for the National Portrait Gallery - or were the artists' choices underwhelming and inappropriate? 

We asked our artists for their reactions to the paintings and collected their commentary below. 

Our gallery director, Debra Marcoux, and gallery manager, Alyssa Alexander, both went to see Vija Celmins’ show at Matthew Marks and had very different responses to her work.  Debra, already a fan of Celmins, appreciated the escapism of getting lost in her paintings of night skies and seas, and her meticulously detailed sculptures.  Alyssa, new to Celmins’ work, was left searching for meaning. Here they discuss their experiences viewing the exhibition.

We're lucky to be in one of the city's biggest gallery districts, Chelsea, and love being able to stroll around our neighborhood to see all of the wonderful shows our neighbors are exhibiting. But it wasn't until relatively recently that Chelsea became so synonymous with the art world. New York's galleries have had a long and winding path, matching the ebb and flow of the growth of the city itself.