Visual Art Archives - Page 65 of 71

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.

The Guerrilla Girls

In the 1980s, many women artists felt their careers were precarious enough that they could not succeed as artists and fight the feminist battle too. The Guerrilla Girls proved them wrong. They succeeded in transforming the relationship between art and politics. They made activism seem not only acceptable, but vital to full participation in the art world.

Faith Ringgold

Ringgold’s work as an artist, an activist, and an educator has influenced both the art world and communities beyond the art world. Her founding or co-founding of many arts organizations focused on issues faced by women of color has created many opportunities for those artists.

María Izquierdo

Izquierdo’s work opened up new possibilities for using symbols tied to Mexican traditions in a way other than to serve the nationalist discourse in art at the time. Izquierdo believed in art for art’s sake and wanted to go beyond the bounds of political art then. While the concept of art for art’s sake traced back to nineteenth-century European avant-gardes, in her context of post-revolutionary Mexico, this direction in art especially bucked the trend of using art as a propagandistic tool. Instead, art’s meaning, for Izquierdo, could be personal and variegated, not following the lines set by the politically powerful art establishment then.

Romaine Brooks

The style of Romaine Brooks’ art in many ways defies classification and does not easily fit into one stylistic category. However, she has been most frequently linked to the movements of Aestheticism and Symbolism because of her leaning towards the non-narrative and the romantic and lyrical qualities of her portraits. While Brooks did not embrace the vivid colors of many of her fellow modernists, she nevertheless made the same bold and somewhat simplified expressive gestural lines as her contemporary Fauves and Cubists. Her portraits are unapologetically honest and real in the same way that the likes of much later twentieth century portraitists, including Alice Neel and Lucian Freud took on board.

Claude Cahun

Cahun’s artistic work, diverse personae, and unusual personal life have made Cahun a figure of inspiration and interest for many later artists. The gender-shifting self-presentation, and non-heterosexual relationship make Cahun important to homosexual activists and Feminism-lovers alike. Furthermore, Cahun’s use of photography in self-portraiture sees the beginnings of an important emerging tradition among non-male artists.

Perle Fine

Fine’s career as a practicing artist spanned over 50 years, and she exhibited her work regularly from 1943 onwards. One of the first women to join The Club, she was a vital part of the New York art scene in the early 1950’s, but over the decades she fell into obscurity. Never settling on a single style, unlike many of her male peers, may have hampered Fine’s notoriety, but also chauvinistic gallery owners often refused to show female painters at this time. Also, while her work can be found in several museum collections, much of it found its way to private collectors, and the majority of it has never been seen by a broader public.

Louise Nevelson

Nevelson’s work is fundamental to the history of Feminist art, as it challenged the dominant stereotype of the macho, male sculptor. In Linda Nochlin’s famous 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” she cited Nevelson as a major influence on the new generation of women struggling to redefine femininity in art.

Nancy Spero

Today, Spero is widely recognized as one of the most influential women artists of her generation. Working directly onto the wall, Spero’s technique recalls ancient fresco painting, but simultaneously her cut and paste approach of placing individual figures in the urban landscape interestingly brings to mind the work of contemporary street artists, such as Banksy. The process and result of creating an immersive gallery environment rather than simply a framed artwork is a way of making work that is now much more wide spread than it was when Spero developed the notion during the 1980s. More broadly speaking in popular culture, using collage cut and pasted directly on to the wall has become an important statement in the world of design, with both public and private spaces preferring this way to decorate rather than a picture in a frame.