Visual Art Archives - Page 46 of 52

Agnes Martin

Although Martin abandoned the artistic hub of New York in favor of a solitary existence on the other side of the continent, she continued to refine her practice while traveling, writing, and experimenting with filmmaking. Perhaps ironically, her seclusion skyrocketed her fame; many devotees ventured to New Mexico in search of Martin, who reluctantly received her callers. The last few decades of her life were spent painting and writing, her practice becoming a metaphor for her search for tranquility. Her work is especially influential in India and China.

Alice Neel

In a world where painted portraits were still primarily for the upper class, Neel’s insistence on representing a broad cross-section of the American public, from a range of racial, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds was firmly rooted in her political convictions, and recalls the staunch radicalism of Diego Rivera and American artists of the Harlem Renaissance.

Anne Truitt

Anne Truitt is recognized as a leading figure of the Washington Color School along with a predominantly male-centred group of artists who made geometric art infused with resonant, vibrating color relationships.

Marie Laurencin

Laurencin’s influence can be seen across the work of a number of artists who have employed visual languages of femininity in order to explore the place of women and gender expectations in modern life. Louise Bourgeois, Laurencin’s most celebrated student, similarly used clothing and other symbols of womanhood in order to explore female relationships, using psychoanalytic ideas to consider familial relationships, the human body and emotional states.

Yayoi Kusama

More important than the impact her diverse work has on the art market is its influence on other artists and movements, which spans generations. To this day, she represents herself as a lone wolf most comfortable with being known as independently avant-garde.

Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson’s career spans four decades and her contributions to the histories of performance art, experimental music, contemporary visual art and installation have received wide recognition.

Frida Kahlo

As an individualist who was disengaged from any official artistic movement, Kahlo’s artwork has been associated with Primitivism, Indigenism, Magic Realism, and Surrealism. Posthumously, Kahlo’s artwork has grown profoundly influential for feminist studies and postcolonial debates, while Kahlo has become an international cultural icon.

Yoko Ono

Ono’s performances and instructional paintings of the early 1960s changed forever the relationship between artist and audience.

Vivian Maier

Since the discovery of her work around the time of her passing in 2009, Maier’s photographs have been made available to public viewers through many exhibitions and books. To the next generation of street photographers, Maier’s work provides an historical example of the way in which everyday scenarios can be imbued with a particular aesthetic power, and that through thoughtful framing and composition, the photographer might then find a way of using their camera to capture something of the psychological space of their subjects.

Hilla Rebay

Hilla Rebay left a profound legacy on the art world. Playing a key role in shaping modern art of the twentieth century, she was among the first artists to use the term “non-objective” to describe the abstract art that she and her colleagues were creating. She made it her life’s mission to further the importance of non-objective art and to educate others about this movement. Her greatest achievement in this effort was her success in convincing Solomon R. Guggenheim to collect non-objective art. In doing so, she helped support the career of many artists and set in motion the building of a collection that would become the foundation of one of the world’s greatest modern art institutions.