In this very special BONUS EPISODE of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews one of the most renowned artists alive today, Marina Abramović.

*BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9781529151145

**This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.com – use the code "The Artist is Present" at checkout for 15% off!**
 
The “grandmother” of Performance Art, Marina Abramovic has been instrumental in pioneering the genre as a visual art form for the last five decades – a genre defined by risk taking; being present; a state of mind; emptying yourself; and connecting the energies with the surrounding public.

Born in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia in 1946, to communist hero parents, Marina Abramović experienced a strict upbringing. Until the age of 29, she was under a curfew of 10 o’clock – resulting in the artist running away a few months later.

Since the beginning of her career in the 1970s, Marina Abramović has stretched the limits of the body and mind as both object and subject. Early works include Rhythm 0 (1974), where she became an object of experimentation for the audience – laying out 72 objects, including a pistol, and stating they could be used on her as desired; or Rhythm 5 (1974), where she lay in the centre of a burning five-point star. She has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in her quest for emotional and spiritual transformation.

Never slowing down, in 1997 she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for a work that commented on war in Yugoslavia, and in 2010, she took over MoMA for The Artist is Present, where she sat motionless in a chair for eight hours a day – the show broke records, attracting 850,000 visitors.

In 2012, she founded the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), a non-profit foundation for performance art, and has since exhibited at the world’s most prestigious institutions, earning her a global following. And in 2023, she will be the first woman to have a solo exhibition in the main galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

TODAY Marina Abramović launches The Hero 25FPS – @artistispresent / NFT.CIRCA.ART

For her first performance launching today on the blockchain, Marina Abramović revisits one of her most personal and autobiographical works ‘The Hero (2001)’ to present in collaboration with The Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Art (CIRCA) this digital exploration of time, immateriality and audience participation. Filmed at 25 frames per second, never before seen footage has been separated into 6,500 unique frames to create The Hero 25FPS, a genesis NFT collection by the warrior of performance art.

A call for today’s new heroes! Upon completion of THE HERO 25FPS, Marina Abramović, @nadyariot (Pussy Riot) and CIRCA will award a series of Hero Grants to people working within Web3 who demonstrate a desire to make the world a better place.

ENJOY!!!

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Marina Abramović

WELCOME BACK TO SEASON 8 OF THE GREAT WOMEN ARTISTS PODCAST!! ...and what better way to kick it off with than an INTERVIEW with the world renowned artist, TRACEY EMIN!

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TW: This episode contains discussions around abortion and suicide. 

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Tracey Emin's an oeuvre that encompasses painting textiles, sculpture, neons, film, installations and more, and is some of the most frank, personal, confessional, and visceral to ever exist. She speaks universal two truths on a personal level, drawing on love, desire, loss and grief.

Whether it be her 18.2 tonne or nine metre high bronze, The Mother – as recently installed outside the Munch Museum in Oslo – or an intimate watercolour drawing, Emin’s works holds so much power. They are alive with energy and have the ability to send us to places that resonate, that make us feel, that are somehow incredibly familiar, but make us question so much. Just as she has said, “True art should resonate. It should make you feel it's not a picture. It's not a thing. It's not an object. It is a true thing that has energy. That's what makes it art.”

Born in Croydon, and raised in Margate -- where the artist resides today and where she has just been named a free woman -- Emin studied at Maidstone Art College, followed by the Royal College of Art. It was in the 1990s that she came to the fore with a shop she ran with fellow artist, Sarah Lucas, in 1993. And her hugely significant biographical works, from Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1963–1995) to My Bed, 1998, works that changed the course of art history and have been just as contemporary and relevant today and in the years to come. In 2007 She represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, and in 2008, she had her first major retrospective at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

In recent years, she has installed a poignant Nan in St. Pancras station, I Want My Time With You; taken painting to new heights with her incredibly strong and emotive works -- as recently exhibited at her joint exhibition with Edvard Munch at the Royal Academy of Arts -- and her current exhibition at Jupiter Artland in Scotland. Following a severe illness in 2020, she has, in her words, made her most “honest and complete” work to date, as witnessed in her incredible show earlier this year, a journey to death at Carl freeborn gallery in Margate, Tracey Emin,

Tracey Early Works: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/nov/23/tracey-emin-unseen-paintings-bed-margate-first-time 

Tracey The Shop (1993): 
Interview and Hilton Als and others on The Shop: https://www.frieze.com/article/tracey-emin-and-sarah-lucas-shop 

Fun short video of them partying in the shop: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06pn6mh 

Last night of the Shop (1993): https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/emin-lucas-the-last-night-of-the-shop-3-7-93-t07605 

Tracey on How it Feels (1996): 
https://whitecube.com/channel/channel/tracey_emin_on_how_it_feels/type/Tracey%20Emin

My bed (1998):
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/emin-my-bed-l03662 

Tracey at Venice 2007: 
https://www.theguardian.com/arts/gallery/2007/jun/07/emin

I Want My Time With You (2018) 
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/terrace-wires-tracey-emin

The Mother in Norway (2022):
https://www.munchmuseet.no/en/about/the-mother-at-inger-munchs-pier/  

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ENJOY!!!

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY CHRISTIES: www.christies.com

Tracey Emin

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview one of the most well-known and prominent art critics of the 21st century, JERRY SALTZ on various artists including Gillian Wearing, Tracey Emin, and Kara Walker!

Since the 1990s, Saltz has been an indispensable cultural voice and has attracted an enormous following of contemporary readers. 

Only beginning to write at around 40 when he was still a long-haul truck driver, Saltz is now the senior art critic for New York magazine and its entertainment site Vulture. In 2018 he won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and had twice been nominated when he was the art critic for The Village Voice between 1998 and 2007. 

He has spoken at the likes of MoMA, the Guggenheim, as well as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the RISD +  is the bestselling author of How to be an Artist published in 2020 which provides invaluable insight into what is really important for up and coming artists from originality to persistence, and self-belief. 

But, the reason we are talking with Jerry today is because on the first of November, Jerry published his next book, Art is Life: Icons & Iconoclasts, Visionaries & Vigilantes, & Flashes of Hope in the Night which is collection of his writings from 1999 to 2021 and surveys the ups and downs of the time between 9/11 and the Pandemic through the lens of visionary artists shaping how we see art today. 

ENJOY!!

LINKS: 

Jerry's Instagram: 
https://www.instagram.com/jerrysaltz/?hl=en 

Jerry's Twitter: 
https://twitter.com/jerrysaltz?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor 

Jerry's writing for New York magazine: 
https://nymag.com/author/jerry-saltz/ 

How to Be an Artist (2020): 
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612484/how-to-be-an-artist-by-jerry-saltz/#:~:text=From%20the%20first%20sparks%20of,of%20qualities%2C%20self%2Dbelief. 

Art is Life (2022): 
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612485/art-is-life-by-jerry-saltz/9780593086490/ 

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Research assistant: Viva Ruggi
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY CHRISTIES: www.christies.com

Jerry Saltz on Gillian Wearing, Tracey Emin, Kara Walker (and more!)

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, for the very special 100th EPISODE, we interview one of the world’s leading cultural commentators and most important voices in Classics, Professor Dame MARY BEARD!!

A specialist in Roman history and art, Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Newnham College, where she has been since 1984. She is also Professor of Ancient Literature at the Royal Academy, Classics editor of the TLS and a Fellow of the British Academy and International Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

One of the most important writers of our age, Mary Beard has written groundbreaking scholarship, books, documentaries and articles on the subject such as The Parthenon, Pompeii: Life in a Roman Town, Laughter in Ancient Rome, and SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, And more recently, Women and Power: A Manifesto and Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern about Roman Emperors in Renaissance and later art, two books which shifted my understanding of the perception and role of women in society today and the nature of power in our Western word … and I couldn’t be more honoured to have her on for this very special episode of the Great Women Artists Podcast. 

In this episode we discuss the women artists in the ancient world, the perception of women from ancient times to the present day – looking at Livia, Melassina, Agrippina, and Cleopatra – and the effect of the depictions of women from the ancient world – Venus, Medusa, Athena, Lilith – and how they filter into society today.

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Twelve Caesars (2021): https://www.waterstones.com/book/twelve-caesars/mary-beard/9780691222363 

Women & Power (2017): https://www.waterstones.com/book/women-and-power/professor-mary-beard/9781788160612 

Lecture by Mary Beard on women of the 12 Caesars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB7W0UzVP24  

Edmonia Lewis The Death of Cleopatra (completed 1876)
https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/death-cleopatra-33878  

Detail from The House of the Surgeon, a panelled painting in Pompeii (c.50-79 AD) - shows a woman in front of a painted canvas holding a paintbrush and mixing her paints: 
https://www.theancientartblog.com/post/women-painters-in-antiquity 

Women artists in antiquity:
https://www.theancientartblog.com/post/women-painters-in-antiquity 

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ENJOY!

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Research assistant: Viva Ruggi
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY CHRISTIES: www.christies.com

Mary Beard on Classical Women (100th episode special!)

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview one of the most renowned artists working today, SARAH SZE!

Working across sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, video, and installation – and the culmination of them – Sze’s creations often take the form of a planetarium, a colosseum, a work-in-progress laboratory. Often held up by precarious stick-like structures and formed around everyday objects (and, more recently, moving images), her works behave – for me – as the greatest visual microcosm for the information and images inundating today’s fast moving, internet-filled world. 

In dialogue with art historical predecessors who worked with the readymade at the start of the 20th century – as well as challenging traditions in genres, such as the still life – Sze borrows from everyday materials. These include wire, congealed paint, tape measures, scissors, newspapers – as well as images and films taken on her iPhone as if to give prominence to mundane, mass-produced objects. 

Born in Boston, Sze earned a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Already when she was just in graduate school, an exhibition at MoMA PS1 saw her transform both the museum and sculpture itself. This quickly progressed to Sze working with projections and objects – from plastic water bottles to razor blades, q-tips and ladders – and work on an immersive scale that activated the viewer to be part of the time-based work, as well as challenging the notions that everything in her artworks is actually what is used to require to make the piece itself. 

In 2003, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship; in 2012 she took over New York’s High Line; in 2013 she represented the US at the Venice Biennale; in 2017, her permanent mural “Blueprint for a Landscape” opened at the 96th Street station of the Second Avenue subway in Manhattan. Last month she opened a monumental exhibition titled “Timelapse” at the Guggenheim, and next month will transform a disused Victorian waiting room at Peckham Rye station in London into an installation commissioned by Artangel. 

FURTHER LINKS!

https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/sarah-sze-timelapse
https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/33-sarah-sze/
https://gagosian.com/artists/sarah-sze/
https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/sarah-sze/
https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_sze_how_we_experience_time_and_memory_through_art#t-542032

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Research assistant: Viva Ruggi
Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael
Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

Sarah Sze

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview the acclaimed novelist, essayist and author of 18 books, SIRI HUSTVEDT!

From memoir to poetry, non-fiction to fiction, Hustvedt’s writing has touched on the topics of psychoanalysis, philosophy, neuroscience, literature, and art. 

Long-listed for the Booker Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, Hustvedt’s The Blazing World is a provocative novel about an artist, Harriet Burden, who after years of being ignored attempts to reveal the misogyny in art by asking three male friends to exhibit her work under their name. It is of course a triumph, and other bestsellers include What I Loved and The Summer Without Men. 

Born in Northfield, Minnesota to a Norwegian mother and an American father, and based in NYC since 1978, it wasn’t until 1995 that Hustvedt began writing about art. Since then, her art writing oeuvre has expanded enormously with numerous books and essays published to acclaim – which often focus on the fate of female artists in history, the biases of history making, and discuss the likes of Louise Bourgeois, Alice Neel, Adrian Piper, Lee Krasner, Betye Saar, Joan Mitchell, Dora Maar, among others – which I can’t wait to get into later on in this episode… 

Hustvedt’s writing is both eye-opening and groundbreaking. She has questioned how we measure greatness, if art has a gender, the effect of art and literature existing in our memory and the future of fiction. She has looked at the masculine traits of the mind and the female traits of emotion, the domestic vs the intellectual, and analysed how historians have not just told the narrative of art, but the narrative of the world. She has asked why absence is so prevalent and explored how women have reconfigured the body after years of what she calls ‘fictive’ spaces… I love her writing and it’s allowed me to unlock elements (and see things differently) in books, art, and more that exist in my memory. 

Favourite books include A Woman Looking at Men Looking At Women: Essays on Art, Sex and the Mind and, more recently, Mothers, Fathers and Others – which is part memoir, part psychological study. So I couldn’t be more delighted to have her on the podcast today. 

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael
Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

Siri Hustvedt on Artemisia Gentileschi, Louise Bourgeois, and more

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview the renowned painter, photographer and filmmaker, Marylin Minter! 

A legend on the New York art scene for over 50 years, Marylin Minter is a pioneer of electrically graphic, photorealist paintings which take the form of some of the most criticised elements of culture – from high fashion to female desire – and explore how advertising and the the media have set the stereotypes of beauty, behaviour and sexuality…
Cropping her images, and zooming in on highly charged – at time erotic – images, Minter’s brightly saturated paintings of a tongue or high-heel are highly ambiguous in both subject and aesthetic value. From the contradictory questions around, is it beautiful? Is it abject, is it pretty or is it dirty? The work almost forms into an abstraction – with acidic tones and hazy finishes – making it unclear as to whether we are looking at a photograph or painting…

Minter doesn’t stop at traditional art: she has taken to the mainstream and made works to appear on Times Square billboards or the backdrop of a Madonna concert. She is invested in all forms of culture, assessing wherever art has become disregarded and interpreted as low culture, opening up the question even wider… 

Born in Louisiana, Minter Grew up in and attended university in Florida, and it was when studying when she embarked on her first well known photographic series of her mother – swept up in the impossible fantasy of glamour – that she was praised by the late Diane Arbus, who at the time was a visiting tutor. 

In the 70s, Minter moved to NYC. Settling in the East Village scene, she challenged how both popular media and pop art treated women as unrealistic – as subjects of comparison rather than real people, in subjects often considered “debased”. She has since exhibited across the globe, and this Spring will open a new exhibition at LGDR featuring portraits of the likes of Lizzo to Lady Gaga, Gloria Steinem to Monica Lewinsky. And I can’t wait to find out more. 

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael
Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

Marilyn Minter

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview one of the most renowned artists living today, Adriana Varejão

Best known for her sculptural, almost architectural, paintings that extend far beyond the frame, Varejão has tackled themes of Brazilian cultural identity, challenged ideas of modern monuments, and in her art exposes colonial truths through traditional processes. 

Drawing upon the visual language of the European Baroque, Chinese Song ceramics as well as Brazilian and other South American traditions – just as she once said: interest lies in the interactions between different latitudes of the world.

At once gory and theatrical, Varejão's work is all about what lies under the surface – literally – under the layers of canvas or plaster but also metaphorically, asking whose stories are being hidden, what violence is being covered up. 

She has exhibited all over the world with major exhibitions in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, at the ICA in Boston, and in 2016 designed the Brazilian Olympic Aquatics Stadium. Today, Varejão's practice continues to break ground in how we interpret cross-global intersections and ideas.

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael
Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

Adriana Varejão

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview one of the most pioneering artists alive today, Kiki Smith!

Born in 1954, in Germany, raised in New Jersey, and now based in the Catskills and New York City, where we are recording today, Kiki Smith is an artist who works across a whole range of mediums ranging from sculpture to printmaking, tapestry to collage. She focuses on subjects of mortality and decay, the body and the earth, what it means to be human and our relationship to nature. She has said: "Our bodies are basically stolen from us, and my work is about trying to reclaim one's own turf, or one's own vehicle of being here, to own it and to use it to look at how we are here.”

But it is this notion of collage that seems to be at the heart of her oeuvre – as she works with multiple forms, hybridised figures, and looks at both ancient mythology and contemporary politics, such as tragic events such as the AIDS crisis or the cruel laws around abortion. As a result, she has used materials such as bodily fluids to investigate subjects around death, reproduction and birth. 

Working indefatigably since the 1970s, Smith, although having briefly studied at Hartford Art School in Connecticut, is for the most part self taught. She has described herself as a “thing-maker” and it is this desire and hunger for experimentation that makes her work so captivating and engaging. Studying the world by living and surrounding herself with nature, she has also since gone on to train as an emergency medical technician. 

A professor at NYU and Columbia University, Smith has exhibited across the globe – from the Whitney museum to MoMA, The Whitechapel to, most recently, the Seoul Museum of Art in South Korea – and is in collections of some of the most renowned museums in the world. I couldn’t be more excited to be interviewing her today.

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael
Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

Kiki Smith

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview one of the most renowned artists working in the world right now, Mickalene Thomas. 

Working across painting, photography, installation, film, collage and more, Thomas, for the past two decades has been instrumental in forging an identity for figuration in the 21st century. Positioning her subjects – bold, beautiful women – in often large-scale work that commands the same power as that of Old Master Painting, Thomas lionises her subjects, whether they be friends, family members or lovers, by imbuing them with glittering rhinestone crystals and rich, colourful patterning, in atmospheres that are full of freedom, full of liberation. 

Drawing from pop culture and history – think Grace Jones to the 19th century French painters – and striving to encapsulate the beauty and glamour she witnessed in Jet magazine when growing up, Thomas also re-stages, reclaims, art-historical compositions by reworking paintings from the lens of a Black queer woman. 

In 2013, she said: ‘Portraits are very powerful. They have a great representation and dominance in the world... of trying to capture the essence of someone’ and just to prove how powerful this was on her own career, it was after seeing legendary photographer Carrie Mae Weems’s Kitchen Table Series, 1990 that Thomas was inspired to pursue art. Switching from law and enrolling in art school at the Pratt Institute, Thomas then went on to earn her MFA from Yale, and has since worked indefatigably to elevate the presence of Black women in art.
 
Thomas has exhibited at the world’s most prestigious institutions, from the Brooklyn Museum to MOCA Los Angeles, Spellman College to the ICA in Boston, but she has also been a force at uplifting the careers of others – such as, in recent shows, curating exhibitions alongside her own featuring younger names, making for a more exciting and inclusive art history, that others have followed her in doing. 

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael
Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

Mickalene Thomas

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview one of the most exciting artists working in the world right now, Anna Weyant.

From girls on the cusp of adolescence swept up in an eerie atmosphere to dollshouses with doors only slightly ajar, the subjects of Weyant’s paintings are nothing short of haunting, humorous, witty, and tense. Rooted in a style that feels like a cross between Old Master Painting and the unnerving perfection of Disney animations, Weyant’s works feel at once familiar, but starkly detached, leaving us to question if they are scenes from the real world, the past, or the ones in our head? 

Often centred on a young girl – often waiting, thinking, watching or screaming who appears to be around the pre-teen and teenage years described as the “most frivolous and the most intense periods of human experience – Weyant’s paintings are full of contradictions. Unrooted in place and time, they sit on a threshold between good/evil, absent/present, strength/vulnerability, being watched/ watching, historic and the contemporary. And, by grounding her work in the traditional genre of still lifes and portraits – genres only afforded to women who were restricted to large-scale history painting before the 19th century – she allows us to question what we already know and don’t know from these historic paintings, or,  what we know and don’t know about our female protagonist and her own experiences. 

Based in New York, and educated at RISD, Weyant, despite being 27, has already held shows to acclaim in the city. Last November, she took over Gagosian’s spaces with 7 new works – one as large as 9 feet tall, alongside many of her drawings – and I can’t wait to find out more. 

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael
Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

Anna Weyant

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview one of the most important, pioneering and impactful writers and novelists working today, Ruth Ozeki. 

In this episode, we deep dive into looking, writing, observation and perception in a fascinating discussion that traverses objects, the written form, imagination and memoir. 

She is the author of four novels, My Year of Meats (1998); All Over Creation (2003); A Tale for the Time Being (which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2013 and won the LA Times Book Prize); and more recently, The Book of Form and Emptiness (for which she won the Women’s Prize for Fiction) – an extraordinary novel centred on 14 year old Benny who, after his father dies, begins to hear voices, with other objects in a magical realist sense taking on roles to speak. Ozeki’s work is powerful, it breaks boundaries and reinvents storytelling and often melds ancient ideas with contemporary ones – looking at how they relate to our technology, religion, politics or pop culture. 

In addition to her writing work, Ozeki is a Zen Buddhist priest, ordained in 2010 and a role that has influenced her two most recent novels; and a filmmaker, hailed for her 1995 work Halving the Bones, that looks at three generations of Ruth’s maternal family history from Japan, to Hawaii and to a suburb in Connecticut. 

But, aside from this, it is also Ozeki’s non-fiction work that I highly admire, in particular her 2016 book “Timecode of a Face” – a part-memoir, part-experiment – influenced by a Harvard art historian that saw her sit in front of a mirror for three hours and examine her face as she traces each line, mark, crease and feature back to story from her past – which I cannot wait to get into in this episode! 

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael
Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

Ruth Ozeki on 'looking'

Ruth Ozeki on objects and observation

In this episode, of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel reads 30 MINS of her chapter on SURREALISM from her book – and audiobook! – The Story of Art Without Men. 

The Story of Art Without Men is published by Penguin (UK), WW Norton (US). 

AUDIO BOOK: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Story-of-Art-Without-Men-Audiobook/B09P1RK3GV?utm_source=Authorpost

BOOK: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9781529151145

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-story-of-art-without-men-katy-hessel/1141471389

Taking its name from Gombrich’s Story of Art (now in its sixteenth edition, which includes just one woman!), this book aims to retell art history with PIONEERING non-male artists who spearheaded movements and redefined the canon.

Beginning in the 1500s and ending with those defining the 2020s, this ~FULLY illustrated 500+ page~ book is divided into five parts pinpointing major shifts in art history. It goes across the globe to explore and introduce you to myriad styles and movements, interweaving women, their work and stories, within!

To avoid artists ever being seen as the wife of, the muse of, the model of, or the acquaintance of, I have situated the artists (over 350!!) within their social and political context.

I hope this book will be your GUIDE and BIBLE to art history, providing introductions and overviews of major movements from the last 500 years, because, what was the Baroque anyway? Who were the Spiritualist artists in the 19th century? Explore the Impressionists, the quilt-makers paving the way, the Harlem Renaissance trailblazers, the postwar artists of Latin America, the St Ives group, GUTAI, Abstract Expressionists, those reinventing the perception of the body in art, the feminist movement of the 1970s, art since the millennium and SO MUCH MORE!

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

By: Katy Hessel
Narrated by: Katy Hessel
Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
Unabridged Audiobook

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Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael
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https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

The Story of Art Without Men (Surrealism -- Audiobook!)

I am so excited to say that my guest is one of the most renowned painters working in the world right now, Christina Quarles. 

A painter of bodies that stretch, condense, tangle, and meld into shapes that range from fleshy to stringy, Quarles is globally hailed for transposing this warm-blooded vessel onto a flat surface with ambiguity and effervescence. Her paintings make us feel, viscerally react both physically and emotionally with their fluorescent colouring, limbs that dismantle from the body, faces devoid of detail that exist between reality and surreality, all while echoing the constantly in flux body that we all live within. 

Born in 1985 in Chicago, and based in Los Angeles, Quarles emphasises through paint her and our multitudinous positions in the world. Working with acrylic paint and programmes such as adobe illustrator for the background and structures that surround the figures, her process, like her chosen subject, is full of dichotomies, between the historic and contemporary, absence and presence, night and day, in locations that exist in water and on land, in bodies that are both shadow and the full figure. 

A graduate of Hampshire College, for which she completed dual BA degrees in Philosophy and Studio Art, an MFA graduate of Yale School of Art and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Quarles in the past few years has exhibited across the globe in some of the most prestigious institutions and group exhibitions, from the landmark Radical Figures at Whitechapel Gallery to last year’s Venice Biennale, and has had solo exhibitions at the Hepworth Wakefield and Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, but today we meet her in Menorca, at Hauser & Wirth, for her newly opened exhibition Come In From An Endless Place, which I can’t wait to find out more about.

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

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Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael
Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Christina Quarles

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most pioneering artists alive today, Rachel Whiteread. 

Working across sculpture and drawing, in mediums ranging from concrete to resin, and in scales that go from miniscule to colossal – from casting domestic hot water bottles to entire immersive libraries – Whiteread is hailed for her poetic, stoic works that draw so intimately on our human experiences. 

Discussing how her work gives, in her words “authority to forgotten things” Whiteread’s sculptures of the past three decades have not only made me rethink sculpture as a form and medium, but they have provided incredible commentary on the changes that have occurred – from the rapidly gentrifying London, the state of political change in 1990s and 2000s Britain, as well as imparting on us a reflection of impermanence and loss. 

As someone born in the 90s, I grew up with Whiteread’s work. Her sculptures were some of the first I ever saw and knew of as a kid and no matter what age we are, one can’t help but be utterly stunned and fascinated by them. 

Famous for casting familiar objects and settings, from houses to the underneath of a chair, baths to doors, Whiteread takes elements we use in our everyday life, transforms them into ghostly replicas, and ultimately makes us rethink their purpose, practical use, and the memory that these objects once held. 

Raised in London to an artist mother and geography teacher father, who encouraged her to scavenge found objects and “look up” wherever she went, Whiteread studied at Brighton Polytechnic and sculpture, with the late and great Phyllida Barlow, at the Slade School of Fine Art in the 1980s. 

Her first solo exhibition in 1988, included her first series of cast objects, and in the early 1990s she made headlines with her sculpture House, a monumental, to-scale concrete cast of the inside of a three-storey townhouse. She has since taken over the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, London’s Fourth Plinth, created an extraordinary Holocaust Memorial in Vienna that resembles the shelves of a library with the pages turned outwards, has had major exhibitions and retrospectives all over the world and is still continuing to push forth all boundaries of sculpture in the most exciting and impactful ways.

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Rachel Whiteread

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast – for the second time! – is Dame Professor Marina Warner, one of the leading historians on this planet!

A writer, lecturer, author of almost 40 books, and former president of the Royal Society of Literature, Marina Warner, according to the New Yorker, is an authority on things that don’t actually exist – from magic spells, monstrous beasts, to pregnant virgins. 

A world specialist on myths, fairy tales and stories from ancient times, Warner has written indefatigably for the last five decades on how these tales – some thousands of years old – still speak to our culture today and allow us to appreciate how they are shaped by the societies that tell them.

I have poured over her books, from Alone of All Her Sex, her study of the cult of the Virgin Mary, to my favourite, Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form, that so pertinently looks at how women are represented as allegories, bringing about ideas of actual power vs perceived power – for example, while Lady Liberty might be ubiquitous, how much power does she, a woman, actually have?

Warner’s list of accolades is extensive: a distinguished fellow at All Souls College, Oxford; an honorary fellow at many more; the giver of the BBC’s Reith Lectures in 1994; and awarded doctorates of eleven universities in Britain, such as King's, the Royal College of Art, Oxford University, and more. 

But it’s stories and the power of imagination that fascinate her, and has what led me to be so captivated by her work. She has written – inside stories was the place I wanted to be, especially stories that went beyond any experience I could live myself at first hand. The very first stories I heard were saints’ lives: the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries of the Virgin Mary, the terrible gory violence of the martyrs’ ends … When I first encountered myths and fairy tales, the wonder I felt was pure wonder. But as I have grown older, wonder has taken on its double aspect, and become questioning too.

And that is why I couldn’t be more excited to be, instead of looking at a woman artist, investigate the representation of female figures that we so often see across history and art history – Eve and Lilith from the Bible, and Medusa and Athena from mythology.

MARINA'S BOOKS: 
https://www.marinawarner.com/
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520227330/monuments-and-maidens
https://www.waterstones.com/book/forms-of-enchantment/marina-warner/9780500021460
https://www.waterstones.com/book/joan-of-arc/marina-warner/9780198718796
https://www.waterstones.com/book/alone-of-all-her-sex/marina-warner/9780198718789

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Marina Warner on Eve, Lilith, Athena, Medusa

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview world-renowned scholar, Julia Bryan-Wilson – the Professor of Art History and LGBTQ+ Studies at Columbia University – on the trailblazing artist, Louise Nevelson!

“It’s not the medium that counts. It is what you see in it and what you do with it, " said Nevelson, the sculptor working in the mid-20th century New York City, hailed for her monochromatic, architectural wall sculptures amassed from found, recycled and discarded objects.

Nevelson’s monochromatic and architectural wall sculptures are amassed from found, recycled and discarded objects sourced from her surrounding environment (from bedposts to bannisters), which she coated in opaque paint and stacked tall to form all-engulfing units. Nevelson, like Krasner, studied with Hans Hofmann (you can almost feel the fragmented lines that form through her innovations), and was also influenced by the ancient ruins of Mexico and Guate- mala. This inspiration is evident in her work Sky Cathedral, 1958, which questioned new types of religious experiences and spaces.

Bryan-Wilson is the expert in  Louise Nevelson, having authored the monumental new book Louise Nevelson's Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face (2023), as well as curated one-person shows: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300236705/louise-nevelsons-sculpture/

A great documentary on Nevelson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnfEmNRzoCs&t=1332s&ab_channel=TheMet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnYBR9VAPsI&ab_channel=Tate

Additional information: 
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/19/obituaries/louise-nevelson-sculptor-is-dead-at-88.html
https://louisenevelsonfoundation.org/biography
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/arts/design/09neve.html

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Julia Bryan-Wilson on Louise Nevelson

I am so excited to say that my guest on the great women artists podcast is one of the most pioneering – and my favourite – writers alive today, Elif Shafak! 

In this episode, we talk about the power of storytelling, the importance of writing women's lives into history and fighting for their rights. Shafak has said: "...as a young Turkish student, it occurred to me that the history that was taught to me top down could be seen in different ways depending on who is telling the stories..."

We speak about Artemisia Gentileschi to Frida Kahlo, Ana Mendieta to Georgia O'Keeffe; Shafak's upbringing and the importance of multitudinous narratives, and the power of images when it comes to writing novels. 

We explore the similarities between a painting and a novel; how storytelling can be transmitted through so many different artforms, from word of mouth or the written word. As a novelist, Shafak spends so much time dreaming up worlds, and, in a way, this is not that dissimilar from an artist. 

But we also talk about the importance of emotion, and how stories can give us that, as Shafak has said: “Why is it that we underestimate feelings and perceptions? I think it’s going to be one of our biggest intellectual challenges, because our political systems are replete with emotions … and yet within the academic and among the intelligentsia, we are yet to take emotions seriously…” 

Shafak is the author of 19 books, which have been translated into 57 languages. A shortlister for the Booker Prize and Women's Prize for Fiction, she holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at universities in Turkey, the US and the UK. 

A Fellow and a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature, Shafak is also instrumental in her work as an advocate for women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression. A twice TED Global speaker, Shafak contributes to publications around the world, such as the Guardian with her poignant articles on women’s rights in Turkey. 

Books by Elif: 
https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-to-stay-sane-in-an-age-of-division/elif-shafak/9781788165723
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-bastard-of-istanbul/elif-shafak/9780241972908
https://www.waterstones.com/book/three-daughters-of-eve/elif-shafak/9780241978887
https://www.waterstones.com/book/10-minutes-38-seconds-in-this-strange-world/elif-shafak/9780241979464
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-island-of-missing-trees/elif-shafak/9780241988725

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Elif Shafak on storytelling in art (+Frida Kahlo, Artemisia Gentileschi, and more!)

I couldn’t be more excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most renowned writers, curators, critics, and cultural commentators in the world right now… Hilton Als! 

A Pulitzer prize winner, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the theatre critic at the New Yorker, where he has been writing since 1994, Als is also the author of numerous books – from White Girls (a collection of 13 literary essays, exploring race, gender, interpersonal relationships) to more recently, My Pinup, an intimate study on his friendship with Prince. He is a teaching professor at Berkeley, and has held previous posts at Columbia, Yale, and more. 

Als has been one of my favourite writers, and curators, on art since I can remember. He writes in a manner that is intimate, with emotion and rigour, infusing it with stories from his upbringing in Crown Heights in Brooklyn to ones with more complex family dynamics. 

And there is a humanity at the centre of it: whether it's his ability to make us see artists as people – with their struggles, desires, needs and complexities – or his belief that we can all be artists too. Often tracing the city of New York through images and words, he unearths stories that were often cast out from mainstream institutions but feel so pertinent for the world today. From Alice Neel to Diane Arbus, whose work and subject he treats with such empathy, not only can he transport us to the exact street where Arbus took that picture, or to Neel’s 108th street apartment, but writes so acutely on the mediums they used. 

On photography vs painting he has said: The former takes life as it comes, in an instant, but can be described as a series of selective moments. Painting, on the other hand, has time on its side, the better to know, delve, and express what it’s like for two people to sit in a room, observing one another while talking or not talking about the world.

And it is the latter that I still remember experiencing, being a gallery assistant in my early 20s at Victoria Miro, at the time of one of his many brilliant curated exhibitions – Alice Neel, Uptown – when I saw the whole world walk in, recognise themselves and feel seen and celebrated – which, I think, is the best outcome an exhibition can have… 

In this episode we discuss the power of language and the importance of sharing it; Hilton's introductions to art; his early days as a photo-editor that informed him as a curator; and his takes on Diane Arbus and Alice Neel. 

HILTON'S WRITING + CURATING:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308056/white-girls-by-als-hilton/9780141987293
https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2022/joan-didion-what-she-means
https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2019/god-made-my-face-collective-portrait-james-baldwin
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/26/alice-neels-portraits-of-difference
https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2017/alice-neel-uptown-curated-hilton-als
https://www.davidzwirnerbooks.com/product/alice-neel-uptown

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Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

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Hilton Als on Diane Arbus and Alice Neel

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the world-renowned Classics scholar and professor at the University of Cambridge, Caroline Vout! 

Today we are discussing all sorts of figures in Classics, from Venus to Hermaphroditus. 

Born in Durham, Vout studied for a BA at Newnham College Cambridge, completed her MA at the Courtauld, and PhD back in Cambridge, where she spent a very formative year as a Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome. Since 2006, she has been based in Cambridge where she is a Fellow at Christ’s College. 

The author of seven formative books that have expanded my mind on the Ancient world, our thinking around gendered bodies, imperfect bodies, and the perception of women through these vessels, from Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present to the more recently published “Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body”, Vout has been instrumental in pushing forwarding Classical research. Next year, she will curate a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum 

But the reason why we are speaking with Carrie Vout today is because of how her research challenges the ideal forms of the Greek and Roman body. Whereas a body cast in marble or bronze sitting atop a pedestal might be the template that we have – and one that European painters have so often perpetuated through idealised portrayals of men and women – Vout argues this is a lie, and that ancient bodies were in fact anxious, ailing, imperfect, diverse, and in turn, much more like us than we might at first glean.

CARRIE'S BOOKS: 
https://www.waterstones.com/book/exposed/caroline-vout/9781788162906

https://www.waterstones.com/book/classical-art/caroline-vout/9780691177038

https://www.waterstones.com/book/sex-on-show/caroline-vout/9780714122786

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Caroline Vout on Venus, Hermaphroditus, and other Classical Bodies in Art

Caroline Vout on Classical Bodies in Art

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most brilliant writers around today, Lauren Elkin! On today's episode we speak about feminist pioneers, Carolee Schneemann and Hannah Wilke!! 

Elkin is an American in London who has lived and spent extensive time in Paris, Liverpool, Tokyo, Venice and New York – as outlined in one of my favourite of her books, Flaneuse, which sees her trace cities through the eyes and steps of female writers and artists as the feminine “flaneur”, one who walks aimlessly. She is excellent at making her own a term or a trait previously steeped in patriarchal meaning. 

The author of four books, and the translator of others – including of Simone de Beauvoir’s unpublished novel, The Inseparables – Elkin has received numerous awards for her writing. She has been a cultural critic for the likes of the New York Times, Harpers, London Review of Books, TLS, Frieze, and more; holds a PhD in English; an M.Phil in French; and is currently working on biographies on the likes of avant-garde tastemaker Getrude Stein and artist Louise Bourgeois. 

But! One of the reasons why we are speaking with Elkin today is because she has recently published a fantastic book, Art Monsters, which looks at a variety of female artists – from Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun to Laura Knight; Betye Saar to Carolee Schneemann; Eva Hesse and Hannah Wilke; Kara Walker and Maria Lassnig – who have centred their practice around the body. Exploring those who reacted against patriarchal portrayals and ideas of the body, Art Monsters is a fascinating insight into how women have broken from the historically-weighted past and configured a language using a voice unique to them. 

LAUREN'S BOOKS: 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/art-monsters/lauren-elkin/9781784742935

https://www.waterstones.com/book/flaneuse/lauren-elkin/9780099593379

https://www.waterstones.com/book/no-91-92-notes-on-a-parisian-commute/lauren-elkin/9781838014186

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Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
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Lauren Elkin on Carolee Schneemann and Hannah Wilke

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the renowned art historian, Kirsten Pai Buick to discuss EDMONIA LEWIS!

Edmonia Lewis (1844–1907) is hailed for her stunningly chiselled marble busts and figurative sculptures – with their elegantly coiled hair, elastic-like folds of drapery, idealised nudes with strong, robust builds. She was the first sculptor of African American heritage (of any gender) to achieve such fame and recognition. 

Buick is the author of a highly distinguished book Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject – about the sculptor acclaimed for her marble busts and figures that portray local people to mythical subjects, as well as deal with vital political narratives of the late 1800s. 

In this episode we go into depth about Lewis's life and work – focussing on how Lewis reworked classical narratives from a distinctly female perspective. We also look at how she interpreted vital political narratives of the time in artworks such as Forever Free, 1867, referencing the Emancipation Proclamation of four years previously. Originally titled The Morning of Liberty, this smaller-than-life-size, yet weighty and mighty statuette immortalises an empowered, freed African American couple. Muscular and heroic, on the right we see a Herculean male figure breaking from his chains and raising a clenched fist. 

Buick’s vital scholarship explores the material and visual culture of the first British Empire, the art of the US, African American art, landscape representation, women as patrons and collectors of art. She also focuses on pro- and anti-abolitionist images in the Atlantic world.

In 2022, Buick was named Distinguished Scholar by the College Art Association, and is currently working on a book – In Authenticity: Kara Walker and the Eidetics of Racism, about the artist renowned for her work that dismantles racist imagery through cut outs, and colossal sculptures, challenging the imperialist language that surrounds us.

ENJOY!!

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Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
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Kirsten Buick on Edmonia Lewis

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most renowned artists alive today, Doris Salcedo. 

Born in Colombia, where she is based today, Salcedo, is hailed for her mid to colossal-scale sculptures and public installations that push the boundary of the artform, while simultaneously addressing vital political narratives of Colombian history of conflict that also have the power to transcend both time and geographies. 

Salcedo challenges scale and perspective; materials and everyday objects, and although the physical breadth of her work might be extensive, humanity remains the centre of it – as she has said: “I address the experiences of those who dwell on the borders, on the periphery of life and in the depths of catastrophe.”

By incorporating materials that speak to the presence of a human being – whether it be chairs, desks, shoes and more, or working with people and the names of the innocent people who have lost their lives – Salcedo’s work points to absence, loss, memory. Works have ranged from slotting and stacking 1,500 chairs between two buildings on a street in Istanbul to filling domestic items with cement – creating an atmosphere of silence, of mourning. 

She has exhibited all over the world, in the most acclaimed institutions worldwide, and in 2007, she showed at Tate Modern with a work called Shibboleth, which saw her excavate a crack into the concrete ground, which is a work that could be viewed from multiple perspectives but which also – when not looking properly – could easily be missed. And it’s this idea of looking in Salcedo’s work that I find so interesting – because by getting us to look further, she gets us to question beyond our everyday experiences, what we witness in the media, the futile lines that divide this world, to ensure for a fairer and more equal society.

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Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
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Doris Salcedo

I am so excited to say that my guest on the great women artists podcast is the renowned curator, scholar, and expert in 15th- and 16th-century Italian drawings, Furio Rinaldi to discuss TAMARA DE LEMPICKA!

Dubbed “the Baroness with the Brush'', Lempicka at the height of the 1920s found herself at the centre of Parisian life, and constructed some of the most radical, liberal and avant-garde images. From reworking traditional subjects to melding the meticulous techniques of Renaissance painting with cold and shiny art-deco aesthetics to evoke the fast-industrialising world.

Born in Poland at the end of the 19th century, Lempicka was raised in Russia, but escaped at the outbreak of the revolution. From there, she settled in Paris: the centre of the avant-garde, and thrived. She painted celebrated characters in the highest fashions of the day, and embraced sexual liberations.

Epitomising the modern woman, she was apparently known to break only for “baths and champagne”, this was, of course in her modernist apartment-slash-studio, designed by her equally successful sister, Adrienne Górska.

Currently holding the post of Curator of drawings and prints at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the largest collection of works on paper in Western United States – where he has just staged the most extraordinary Botticelli exhibition – Furio is acclaimed for his work on Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo. 

A writer – he has published extensively in The Burlington Magazine, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Journal and more, but perhaps he is best known for his curatorial eye, having organised the fantastic Legion of Honor exhibition Color into Line: Pastel from the Renaissance to the Present, and next year, will curate a groundbreaking exhibition – and the first major show on the West Coast – on the Polish-born painter Tamara de Lempicka – who is very excitingly the artists we will be discussing today.

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Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
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Furio Rinaldi on Tamara de Lempicka

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most groundbreaking artists working today, Karon Davis.

Hailed for her life-size sculptures, that she covers in white plaster dust and bases on her own or friend’s bodies, Davis’s works often take the form of installations, that very powerfully explore vital narratives of current and historical political events, as well as speak to the history of dance and performance. While they speak on a universal level, Davis especially looks to issues of history, race and violence in the US, memorialising key injustices witnessed by innocent victims from the 20th century, and beyond. By executing her figures in a stark shade of white, she also speaks to Western beauty ideals and standards that have been entrenched in our society since classical times. 

Brought up by a family of performers, Davis was exposed to the arts at a young age, the excitement of entertainment but also the reality of what people with these careers go through. And it’s this insight that she gives us in her work – showing us both the pain and ecstasy to make something deemed beautiful, as her mother said, which was the title for her recent Salon 94 show: Beauty Must Suffer. 

Although a trained ballerina in her youth, Davis turned to filmmaking, studying at Spellman College, but her love of performance has stayed with her in her work. Entering an exhibition by Davis is like stepping into another world akin to watching a film or ballet playing out in front of you: there’s narrative, costume, drama, a beginning and an end, but also beauty and pain. 

In 2012 Davis, along with her late husband Noah, founded the Underground Museum in Los Angeles, a groundbreaking space that featured the work of Black artists. And, most recently, Davis’ work has been featured at the Hammer Museum, Jeffrey Deitch, Salon 94, and is in the collection of MOCA Los Angeles, LACMA, The Hammer Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum, among others. For those in New York, she has just installed a major sculpture on the High Line, of a ballerina taking her final bow, in conjunction with her exhibition that looked at the process of ballet, as well as the passion and resilience integral to life as a dancer, and artist.

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Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
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Karon Davis

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, @katy.hessel interviews is one of the world's most influential artists: Barbara Kruger.

Hailed for her distinctive poster-style language, Kruger merges text and image to bring attention to urgent political concerns. Bold, loud and readily available, her tabloid-esque works confront everyday issues. And, evocative of advertising, have the ability to bring meaning to often meaningless signage. 

Born in Newark, NJ, and educated at Syracuse then Parsons, where she was taught by the late great Diane Arbus, Kruger began as an art director for Condé Nast, where she shaped her visual language. As she has said, “I had the luxury of working with the best technology ... I became attached to sans serif type, especially Futura and Helvetica, which I chose because they could really cut through the grease.”

Fast forward to the 1970s and 80s – a highly political moment in America: especially for the control over one’s body – and Kruger is culminating text/images that speak to Laura Mulvey’s landmark 1975 essay on the male gaze, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", and that protest anti abortion laws. Her work defined a new type of art that directly addressed power and control, championing the rights we should have over our bodies, life and world. 

Today, she is still at the forefront with her work – immersive and on the wall – that feels familiar due to its evocation of the machine we know as capitalism, that both drives us and that we drive. For those lucky enough to be in London, Kruger is very excitingly having her first institutional show in London in over 20 years, at Serpentine Galleries: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. Opening TODAY, until 17 March 2024.

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

ENJOY!!!

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Barbara Kruger

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews Catherine Morris of the Brooklyn Museum, on the great artist JUDITH SCOTT – launching on what would have been Scott's 81st birthday!!

Scott (1943–2005) was an American artist hailed for her fibre-based sculptures that merge wheels, trolleys, locks and chairs with bundles of threads, and whose brilliantly inventive methods and obsessively spun sculptures cocoon found objects. They also served as a form of communication – which is particularly extraordinary for someone who couldn’t hear or speak verbally. A twin – her sister Joyce was born without disabilities – Scott was deaf and had Down syndrome, and through her art, which she discovered later in life, was able to communicate to the outside world.

From the age of seven, she was placed in a series of institutions, enduring horrific conditions for more than 35 years. Sadly, she was born before the kind of legal protections that were implemented after scandals such as Willowbrook, a New York facility in which disabled children were brutalised, while the disability rights campaign, which took place in tandem with other social justice movements of the 60s and 70s, was some way off.

It wasn’t until 1985, when Joyce became her legal guardian and enrolled her at Creative Growth, that Scott turned to art. While she made nothing for her first two years at the centre, after taking part in a fibre art workshop she became obsessed by threads, spending every day until her death fastidiously wrapping and spinning fibres around objects, transforming them into her extraordinary creations.

I'm thrilled to be able to speak to Catherine Morris, who curated a great exhibition of Scott's work at the Brooklyn Museum. Morris holds the post of a feminist art specialist at the Brooklyn Museum, and has co-curated and curated numerous groundbreaking exhibitions – such as Lorraine O’Grady, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-1985; Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art… Worked on projects with Marilyn Minter, Zanele Muholi, Lorna Simpson, Kiki Smith, and Cecilia Vicuna, as well as the major head-lining-grabbing show, It’s Pablomatic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby at the Brooklyn Museum last year. 

ENJOY!

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LINKS:
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/judith_scott/
https://creativegrowth.org/
https://art21.org/artist/judith-scott/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_n-8P_4IeE&t=66s&ab_channel=BetsyBayha
https://americanart.si.edu/artist/judith-scott-31169
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/apr/29/how-judith-scott-escaped-a-life-in-institutional-isolation-to-become-a-great-sculptor

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Catherine Morris on Judith Scott

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA podcast is one of the most exciting artists working in the world right now, Rose B Simpson.

An artist working across mediums that span from sculpture to performance, painting and ceramics, Simpson is hailed for her life size clay figures which she adorns with a plethora of symbols, extended antennas and materials – from steel, beads, leather, and wood... She challenges the nature of sculpture in ways, as she has said, that “can transform my own reality”, and her figures appear to be imbued with spirituality. They have titles like Genesis, Guides, Heights and Vital Organ – accentuating the importance of the body and rituals. 

Simpson was born, and lives and works, in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, and grew up in a multigenerational, matrilineal lineage of artists working in clay, including her mother, whose work is grounded in Pueblo traditions. Her practice is informed by Indigenous tradition, as she has said: “The work represents my own journey, whether it is a psychological investigation or a new spiritual awareness, or practical…” 

A recipient of a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, an MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2011, and another MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2018, storytelling, history and making seems to be at the centre of her practice – something she has expanded on further with her artwork Maria – a black-on-black Lowrider 985 Chevrolet El Camino and artwork and named in honour of Native American artist Maria Martinez, which sits at the heart of her community in Espanola Valley – and I can’t wait to find out more! 

LINKS:
https://www.rosebsimpson.com/works
https://jackshainman.com/artists/rose-b-simpson
https://art21.org/artist/rose-b-simpson/
https://jessicasilvermangallery.com/rose-b-simpson/selected-works/
https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/rose-b-simpson-legacies/

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Rose B Simpson

I am so thrilled to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most esteemed curators in the world, Naomi Beckwith. 

Currently the Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY, where she plays an instrumental role in shaping the museum’s vision, Beckwith’s career has seen her curate some of the groundbreaking shows in recent years. At the MCA Chicago, she curated Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen – the first survey of the 20th and 21st century pioneer, as well as The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music that looked at the legacy of 1960s African American avant-garde and its impact on art and culture today. Among many others, she also staged the first ever US solo exhibition by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at the Studio Museum in Harlem. 

Beckwith was part of the team that realised Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, conceived by Okwui Enwezor for the New Museum, as well as shows featuring Arthur Jafa and Laurie Simmons. She has dedicated her career to the impact of identity and multidisciplinary practices within contemporary art, and has just been granted the David Driskell Prize 2024. 

But the reason why we are speaking with Beckwith today is because she has just unveiled a new group exhibition at the Guggenheim – By Way of Working – that brings together artists across mediums, and generations – from Mona Hatoum, Joseph Beuys, Robert Rauschenberg, and Senga Nengudi: the artist we are very excitingly discussing today. Chicago-born Nengudi is hailed for her works across sculpture to performance, that explore the human form in all its many iterations through her early training in dance, and I can’t wait to find out more.

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LINKS: 
Naomi's exhibition: https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/by-way-of-material-and-motion-in-the-guggenheim-collection
https://www.guggenheim.org/about-us/staff/naomi-beckwith
https://www.sengasenga.com/
https://www.artnews.com/feature/senga-nengudi-who-is-she-why-is-she-important-1234591161/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DutixbTscWM
https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5078

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Naomi Beckwith on Senga Nengudi

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most pioneering and revelatory artists alive, Judy Chicago. 

Born Judith Sylvia Cohen, then Judy Gerowitz, but changed it to Judy Chicago to renounce the name of her first husband to instead adopt the name of her birth city instead, Chicago has been at the forefront of art since the 1960s. Following her studies at UCLA in the 1950s, Chicago attended auto body school, as the only woman out of 250 men. It was here that she learnt to use spray guns, but instead of actually painting cars, she used these skills to formulate vaginal forms onto carhoods, as if to poke fun at her male contemporaries. 

In the 1960s, she turned to Minimalism, creating block-like sculptures which she executed in exuberant colours. While her work was acclaimed, she was one of only three women (out of 51 artists) included in the landmark Jewish Museum exhibition, Primary Structures, in 1966. 

During this decade, she became increasingly aware of the lack of women artists available to her – as an undergraduate at UCLA in the late 1950s and 60s, she had taken a class titled the Intellectual History of Europe, where her professor declared that women had made zero contributions to European History – so she set herself the task of looking for it herself. As she has said “there was actually a huge amount of information if one looked for it, especially dating back to the 19th century…”

Out of this – and turning to the importance of education – she began the first ever feminist art programme, at Fresno State College, with artist Miriam Schapiro in 1970, which, as feminist art historian, Linda Nochlin has declared, was a time when there were no women’s studies, no feminist theory, no African American studies, no queer theory, no postcolonial studies. What there was ... was a seamless web of great art, often called “The Pyramids to Picasso”... extolling great (male, of course) artistic achievement since the very dawn of history’...

In the 1970s, Chicago created the famous Dinner Party, worked on between 1974 and 1978: a giant minimalist-like table that awards 39 women from history and mythology a ‘seat at the table’ – with the further names of 999 women in the porcelain in the middle. 

She has created images of birth, death, animals, plants, that deal with an attitude entrenched in feminism towards caring for our planet, and so much more. But! The reason why we are speaking to her today is because this summer in London, Chicago will take over the Serpentine Gallery with an exhibition that corresponds to her major new book: Revelations, a project that has been unrealised for over 30 years, but is finally being published, that includes rewriting the story of creation, spotlighting the Great Mother Goddess, and a plethora of other women, and challenging the patriarchal paradigms that have always dictated how stories have been read, written, and accepted.

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LINKS:
https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/judy-chicago-revelations/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwo6GyBhBwEiwAzQTmc3bNjJ0zjNj2RgMuZomrRmjd8Bhuvx6YlLjhkJ8sk0ZYIgxU_IQVmRoCEWoQAvD_BwE
https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/judy-chicago-revelations-hardcover
https://judychicago.com/
https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/judy-chicago-herstory

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Judy Chicago

Created off the back of @thegreatwomenartists Instagram, this podcast is all about celebrating women artists. Presented by art historian and curator, Katy Hessel, this podcast interviews artists on their career, or curators, writers, or general art lovers, on the female artist who means the most to them.

Popular tracks by The Great Women Artists Podcast