Due to the combined quality of her artwork and groundbreaking treatment and representation of the female nude Suzanne Valadon is considered one of the greatest early female artists. As muse to many of the most famous Impressionists, as well as an artist often making self-portraits she is one of the most well-documented and “seen” French artists. Thus she has become an important role model for following generations of female artists.
Cunningham has been called the “Grandmother of Photography” for her seminal role in popularizing the medium in its early years and for successfully moving the practice into the realm of fine art. Curator Celina Lunsford states, “It is Cunningham’s modernist artistic legacy that has impacted photography most, but her thirst for experimentation was perpetual.”
For more than 200 years after her death, Leyster’s work was either attributed to her husband Molenaer or Frans Hals. This seems partly due to their similarity in style, but there also seems to have been deliberate forgery: in 1893, Leyster’s signature was discovered underneath a forged signature of Hals on the 1630 painting called The Carousing Couple or The Jolly Companions.
Because Leyster’s legacy was overlooked for centuries of art-making and history, it is difficult to say precisely who has been influenced by Leyster’s work. It would seem that many of the artists who studied or cited Frans Hals or Molenaer as an influence may well be citing Leyster without realizing it. The realist paintings of Netherlandish painters such as Jacoobus van Looy and Isaac Iraels owe much to the style of Dutch Golden Age painting, where she was a leader among her contemporaries. Similarly, many key figures in both Impressionism and Realism studied the works of Dutch Golden Age painting as a means of considering the interaction between interior spaces and human life. Her impact is most likely larger than modern art historians can document.
Often described as ”a pioneer” Angelica Kauffman took everywhere that she went by storm and has a long-lasting legacy. During her lifetime she was one of the highest paid and most sought after portrait artists, second only to her great friend and colleague, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Her skill and dedication to painting was phenomenal and unfailing and as such a vast variety of autobiographies and articles have been written on her career.
Artemisia Gentileschi’s legacy has been controversial and complex. Although well-respected and well-known during her lifetime, after her death she was almost entirely omitted from art historical accounts of the period. This is partly because her style was often similar to that of her father and many of her works were mis-attributed to Orazio.
Walker always insisted that her job was to jolt viewers out of their comfort zone, and even make them angry, once remarking “I make art for anyone who’s forgot what it feels like to put up a fight.” In 2007, TIME magazine featured Walker on its list of the 100 most influential Americans. In 2008 when the artist was still in her thirties, The Whitney held a retrospective of Walker’s work. Though Walker herself is still in mid-career, her illustrious example has emboldened a generation of slightly younger artists to investigate the persistence and complexity of racial stereotyping.
As her biographer Carolyn Burke states, “to this day, her life inspires features in the same glossy magazines for which she posed…this approach turns the real woman in to a screen onto which beholders project their fantasies”, and further perpetuates the legend of Lee Miller as an “American free spirit wrapped in the body of a Greek goddess”.
When her mother died early in 1848, Caroline’s life began to alter course dramatically. Her considerable artistic talent flourished, and she was able to turn her strong sense of duty and social commitment to better account, especially in the nursing and care of the poor.
Schneemann’s groundbreaking works on film have been an inspiration for later artists, like Peggy Ahwesh and Abigail Child, and provided them with a historic precedent for feminist filmmaking. Her performance and photographic works also set a precedent for artists like Ana Mendieta and Hannah Wilke to explore ideas ranging from goddess imagery, the generative and subjective female form, and ideals of beauty. Even Annie Sprinkle’s Public Cervix Announcement (1990) would not be possible without Schneemann’s exploration of intimacy in her artwork. Many exhibitions throughout the 1990s and 2000s have been dedicated to feminist artists of these later generations in direct communication with works from Schneemann’s oeuvre. As new generations of artists and women discover her works, the dialogue Schneemann initiated in the early 1960s about women, their bodies, the sensual and the intimate continues to engage viewers, artists, and critics.
Though she is little known, Baroness Elsa Freytag-Loringhoven helped to shape the direction of New York Dada with her eccentric public displays and performances as well as with her desire to fuse her sexuality with her art. In the face of accusations that she was “crazy,” Freytag-Loringhoven would simply state, “Every artist is crazy with respect to ordinary life.” Her gender bending and blatant displays of her sexuality anticipated Feminist art and performance of the mid-20th century. She was an innovative artist whose works paved the way for later experimental Performance art of the late 1950s and 1960s. A renowned poet and a proto-feminist, Elsa and her work have only recently been rediscovered by art historians who have recognized the importance of her contribution to New York Dada. Her provocative poetry was published posthumously in 2011 in Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. At the very forefront of developing the readymade and performance art, the Baroness holds a legacy as the “Mama of Dada,” as the New York Times critic Holland Cotter dubbed her.