Latest news with #womenartists
CNN
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
The women artists who were way ahead of their time
Visitors to European galleries with an interest in pioneering women artists will have plenty of choice this summer, with a series of new exhibitions featuring some of the biggest names in 20th century art. Fantastical sculptures and dreamlike drawings by the late French artist Louise Bourgeois, famed for her towering spiders, are on display at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Elsewhere in Spain, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is hosting a solo exhibition of American collagist and conceptual artist Barbara Kruger. And fellow American artist Cindy Sherman, known for her chameleonic self-portraiture, is the focus of a solo show at Hauser & Wirth Menorca, on the picturesque Balearic Islands. Each of these artists — whether through sculpture, photography, video, painting or language — has challenged conventional portrayals of women's bodies, emotions and experiences. And they've managed to sustain a legacy of radical, often political art, over the course of decades. (Almost all of these current exhibitions include new or recent bodies of work.) That their art remains in focus is both a notable feat and a sign of the times. Asked what might be the reason behind such enduring interest, Gabriella Nugent, a London-based art historian and curator specializing in global modern and contemporary art, wrote over email: 'The 1970s witnessed the emergence of second-wave feminism and a critique of the structures of patriarchy that determined women's public and private lives.' During this transformative period, feminist art historians such as Linda Nochlin and Ann Sutherland Harris helped to, as Nugent said, 'rehabilitate the work of women artists and expose the terms of their exclusion' through groundbreaking texts and exhibitions. She explained that the likes of Kruger and Sherman 'came of age against this backdrop and engaged with the debates of the time in their artwork.' Bourgeois (who will also receive a major retrospective at PoMo in Trondheim, Norway, from February 2026) found a wider audience around the same time as this younger generation of artists, despite having practized art since the 1930s. 'In the 1970s the women's art movement in New York took her (Bourgeois) up as a key precursor to feminist art,' said Jo Applin, who helped curate both the drawing display and sculptural show both taking place at the Courtauld Gallery this summer. The 1970s were a generative decade for pioneering art in other ways. It was a 'watershed moment in terms of arts' relationship to mass media,' explained Tanya Barson, curatorial senior director at Hauser & Wirth, who added that this transformation laid the foundation for artists like Sherman. 'She became part of a group of artists called the 'Pictures Generation' who made work that examined this relationship. Her work is made for an audience who have grown up not just with film and advertising but with television as part of their reality. Looking back, it was the first generation for which this was the case,' Barson told CNN. In many ways, Sherman was an artist ahead of her time. 'Her use of photography to record these identities is something that prefigures the use of social media today,' Barson said of her performances and manipulation of personas. 'She was really in advance of a transformation in society and our relationship to images, to media more widely, and our use of them,' added Barson. 'I think Sherman's work expresses something fundamental about how we live today and how we relate to images. In many ways, we live through images now. We also are absolutely involved in constructing our identities for an ever present but invisible and anonymous audience,' Barson said. While Sherman constructed some of these personas 50 years ago, Barson believes they are perennially familiar. 'We know these subjects, we have met them or seen them on TV, or on Instagram or Tik Tok,' she said. Kruger, another key figure of the Pictures Generation, began borrowing advertising and graphic design techniques to explore power in the context of consumerist and patriarchal structures. The artist continues to interrogate the interplay between image and text in culture today –– illustrating the persistent dominance of advertising, as well as the peculiarities of newer phenomena, such as memes. The feminist movement that coincided with the emergence of these artists addressed issues around the emancipation of women, particularly reproductive rights and sexuality. Such issues have come back under the spotlight amid the rollback of legal rights regarding women's bodily autonomy in some Western nations. 'Many of the debates that charged their work in the 1970s are still ongoing today, from abortion in the United States to child care in the United Kingdom,' explained Nugent. The slogan 'Your body is a battleground', used by Kruger in her famous poster for the 1989 Women's March in Washington, D.C., resurfaced last year in another of her pieces displayed on the side of a truck in Miami, FL., as part of a travelling project calling for reproductive and healthcare access for all. Nugent said that, although 'women artists all over the world have long addressed the gender-defined differences that they had to navigate,' the symbolic impact of US President Donald Trump's reelection and rise of self-proclaimed misogynist influencer Andrew Tate may partly explain why the work of these artists resonates today. Newer audiences may find comfort in engaging with artists who have lived and worked through earlier eras of political struggle. At the same time, the potency of their art has enshrined many of these figures as perennially relevant, even beyond immediate political lines. For instance, Bourgeois' deeply personal works 'speak to universal themes of fear, anger, desire, anxiety that we can all identify with,' said Applin. It could be why her work, like that of Sherman, Kruger, and countless other female artists who made their names in the 20th century, continues to be relevant.
CNN
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
These female artists broke the mold in the ‘70s — and they're not done yet
Visitors to European galleries with an interest in pioneering women artists will have plenty of choice this summer, with a series of new exhibitions featuring some of the biggest names in 20th century art. Fantastical sculptures and dreamlike drawings by the late French artist Louise Bourgeois, famed for her towering spiders, are on display at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Elsewhere in Spain, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is hosting a solo exhibition of American collagist and conceptual artist Barbara Kruger. And fellow American artist Cindy Sherman, known for her chameleonic self-portraiture, is the focus of a solo show at Hauser & Wirth Menorca, on the picturesque Balearic Islands. Each of these artists — whether through sculpture, photography, video, painting or language — has challenged conventional portrayals of women's bodies, emotions and experiences. And they've managed to sustain a legacy of radical, often political art, over the course of decades. (Almost all of these current exhibitions include new or recent bodies of work.) That their art remains in focus is both a notable feat and a sign of the times. Asked what might be the reason behind such enduring interest, Gabriella Nugent, a London-based art historian and curator specializing in global modern and contemporary art, wrote over email: 'The 1970s witnessed the emergence of second-wave feminism and a critique of the structures of patriarchy that determined women's public and private lives.' During this transformative period, feminist art historians such as Linda Nochlin and Ann Sutherland Harris helped to, as Nugent said, 'rehabilitate the work of women artists and expose the terms of their exclusion' through groundbreaking texts and exhibitions. She explained that the likes of Kruger and Sherman 'came of age against this backdrop and engaged with the debates of the time in their artwork.' Bourgeois (who will also receive a major retrospective at PoMo in Trondheim, Norway, from February 2026) found a wider audience around the same time as this younger generation of artists, despite having practized art since the 1930s. 'In the 1970s the women's art movement in New York took her (Bourgeois) up as a key precursor to feminist art,' said Jo Applin, who helped curate both the drawing display and sculptural show both taking place at the Courtauld Gallery this summer. The 1970s were a generative decade for pioneering art in other ways. It was a 'watershed moment in terms of arts' relationship to mass media,' explained Tanya Barson, curatorial senior director at Hauser & Wirth, who added that this transformation laid the foundation for artists like Sherman. 'She became part of a group of artists called the 'Pictures Generation' who made work that examined this relationship. Her work is made for an audience who have grown up not just with film and advertising but with television as part of their reality. Looking back, it was the first generation for which this was the case,' Barson told CNN. In many ways, Sherman was an artist ahead of her time. 'Her use of photography to record these identities is something that prefigures the use of social media today,' Barson said of her performances and manipulation of personas. 'She was really in advance of a transformation in society and our relationship to images, to media more widely, and our use of them,' added Barson. 'I think Sherman's work expresses something fundamental about how we live today and how we relate to images. In many ways, we live through images now. We also are absolutely involved in constructing our identities for an ever present but invisible and anonymous audience,' Barson said. While Sherman constructed some of these personas 50 years ago, Barson believes they are perennially familiar. 'We know these subjects, we have met them or seen them on TV, or on Instagram or Tik Tok,' she said. Kruger, another key figure of the Pictures Generation, began borrowing advertising and graphic design techniques to explore power in the context of consumerist and patriarchal structures. The artist continues to interrogate the interplay between image and text in culture today –– illustrating the persistent dominance of advertising, as well as the peculiarities of newer phenomena, such as memes. The feminist movement that coincided with the emergence of these artists addressed issues around the emancipation of women, particularly reproductive rights and sexuality. Such issues have come back under the spotlight amid the rollback of legal rights regarding women's bodily autonomy in some Western nations. 'Many of the debates that charged their work in the 1970s are still ongoing today, from abortion in the United States to child care in the United Kingdom,' explained Nugent. The slogan 'Your body is a battleground', used by Kruger in her famous poster for the 1989 Women's March in Washington, D.C., resurfaced last year in another of her pieces displayed on the side of a truck in Miami, FL., as part of a travelling project calling for reproductive and healthcare access for all. Nugent said that, although 'women artists all over the world have long addressed the gender-defined differences that they had to navigate,' the symbolic impact of US President Donald Trump's reelection and rise of self-proclaimed misogynist influencer Andrew Tate may partly explain why the work of these artists resonates today. Newer audiences may find comfort in engaging with artists who have lived and worked through earlier eras of political struggle. At the same time, the potency of their art has enshrined many of these figures as perennially relevant, even beyond immediate political lines. For instance, Bourgeois' deeply personal works 'speak to universal themes of fear, anger, desire, anxiety that we can all identify with,' said Applin. It may be why her work, like that of Sherman, Kruger, and countless other female artists who made their names in the 20th century, continues to be relevant.
CNN
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
These female artists broke the mold in the ‘70s — and they're not done yet
Visitors to European galleries with an interest in pioneering women artists will have plenty of choice this summer, with a series of new exhibitions featuring some of the biggest names in 20th century art. Fantastical sculptures and dreamlike drawings by the late French artist Louise Bourgeois, famed for her towering spiders, are on display at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Elsewhere in Spain, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is hosting a solo exhibition of American collagist and conceptual artist Barbara Kruger. And fellow American artist Cindy Sherman, known for her chameleonic self-portraiture, is the focus of a solo show at Hauser & Wirth Menorca, on the picturesque Balearic Islands. Each of these artists — whether through sculpture, photography, video, painting or language — has challenged conventional portrayals of women's bodies, emotions and experiences. And they've managed to sustain a legacy of radical, often political art, over the course of decades. (Almost all of these current exhibitions include new or recent bodies of work.) That their art remains in focus is both a notable feat and a sign of the times. Asked what might be the reason behind such enduring interest, Gabriella Nugent, a London-based art historian and curator specializing in global modern and contemporary art, wrote over email: 'The 1970s witnessed the emergence of second-wave feminism and a critique of the structures of patriarchy that determined women's public and private lives.' During this transformative period, feminist art historians such as Linda Nochlin and Ann Sutherland Harris helped to, as Nugent said, 'rehabilitate the work of women artists and expose the terms of their exclusion' through groundbreaking texts and exhibitions. She explained that the likes of Kruger and Sherman 'came of age against this backdrop and engaged with the debates of the time in their artwork.' Bourgeois (who will also receive a major retrospective at PoMo in Trondheim, Norway, from February 2026) found a wider audience around the same time as this younger generation of artists, despite having practized art since the 1930s. 'In the 1970s the women's art movement in New York took her (Bourgeois) up as a key precursor to feminist art,' said Jo Applin, who helped curate both the drawing display and sculptural show both taking place at the Courtauld Gallery this summer. The 1970s were a generative decade for pioneering art in other ways. It was a 'watershed moment in terms of arts' relationship to mass media,' explained Tanya Barson, curatorial senior director at Hauser & Wirth, who added that this transformation laid the foundation for artists like Sherman. 'She became part of a group of artists called the 'Pictures Generation' who made work that examined this relationship. Her work is made for an audience who have grown up not just with film and advertising but with television as part of their reality. Looking back, it was the first generation for which this was the case,' Barson told CNN. In many ways, Sherman was an artist ahead of her time. 'Her use of photography to record these identities is something that prefigures the use of social media today,' Barson said of her performances and manipulation of personas. 'She was really in advance of a transformation in society and our relationship to images, to media more widely, and our use of them,' added Barson. 'I think Sherman's work expresses something fundamental about how we live today and how we relate to images. In many ways, we live through images now. We also are absolutely involved in constructing our identities for an ever present but invisible and anonymous audience,' Barson said. While Sherman constructed some of these personas 50 years ago, Barson believes they are perennially familiar. 'We know these subjects, we have met them or seen them on TV, or on Instagram or Tik Tok,' she said. Kruger, another key figure of the Pictures Generation, began borrowing advertising and graphic design techniques to explore power in the context of consumerist and patriarchal structures. The artist continues to interrogate the interplay between image and text in culture today –– illustrating the persistent dominance of advertising, as well as the peculiarities of newer phenomena, such as memes. The feminist movement that coincided with the emergence of these artists addressed issues around the emancipation of women, particularly reproductive rights and sexuality. Such issues have come back under the spotlight amid the rollback of legal rights regarding women's bodily autonomy in some Western nations. 'Many of the debates that charged their work in the 1970s are still ongoing today, from abortion in the United States to child care in the United Kingdom,' explained Nugent. The slogan 'Your body is a battleground', used by Kruger in her famous poster for the 1989 Women's March in Washington, D.C., resurfaced last year in another of her pieces displayed on the side of a truck in Miami, FL., as part of a travelling project calling for reproductive and healthcare access for all. Nugent said that, although 'women artists all over the world have long addressed the gender-defined differences that they had to navigate,' the symbolic impact of US President Donald Trump's reelection and rise of self-proclaimed misogynist influencer Andrew Tate may partly explain why the work of these artists resonates today. Newer audiences may find comfort in engaging with artists who have lived and worked through earlier eras of political struggle. At the same time, the potency of their art has enshrined many of these figures as perennially relevant, even beyond immediate political lines. For instance, Bourgeois' deeply personal works 'speak to universal themes of fear, anger, desire, anxiety that we can all identify with,' said Applin. It may be why her work, like that of Sherman, Kruger, and countless other female artists who made their names in the 20th century, continues to be relevant.
Times
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
A pioneering threesome reveals the great erotic divide of the sexes
T he differences between men and women are both obvious and subtle. The obvious ones continue to be the subject of an unpleasant turf war on X and are none of this column's business. But the subtle differences take us deep into the world of art, and there we do need to take notice. Two women-only shows that have opened in London plunge us into the distaff side of artistic creativity, and manage, in their varied ways, to emphasise the creative divide between the sexes. Abstract Erotic, at the Courtauld Gallery, is the bigger and more enticing of the two events. It brings together three women artists working in America in the 1960s whose sculpture was so tangibly female it constituted a fresh voice. Something whispery, nervy and sexual had arrived in the galleries of New York.
New York Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
21 Nonfiction Books Coming this Summer
The Dry Season After the breakup of a disastrous relationship, Febos takes a vow of celibacy — not to get closer to God, but to get closer to herself. She relishes in the sensuality of solitude and the pursuit of her art, a practice she situates in a long lineage of women who have made similar trade-offs: the Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen and the authors Virginia Woolf and Octavia Butler, to name a few. Buckley Tanenhaus, a former editor of the Times Book Review, exposes the roots of the modern conservative movement through this authoritative biography of William F. Buckley Jr., the firebrand writer and commentator who shaped it. As Buckley's only authorized biographer, Tanenhaus draws from troves of his private papers and extensive interviews with the man himself. The Gunfighters In his follow-up to the best selling 'Forget the Alamo,' Burrough offers a myth-busting look at the Wild West, though still replete with outlaws, cattle drives and carnage. In Burrough's telling, the Lone Star State, at the crossroads of anarchic frontier culture and Old South dueling culture, has been a hotbed of violence since its inception, making it a haven for gunslingers and, more formatively, the newspapermen and Hollywood producers who wanted to dramatize them. How to Lose Your Mother 'I was born to privilege, born on third base, but desperate to strike out and go home,' writes Jong-Fast of her childhood in the shadow of her fame-hungry feminist icon mother, the writer Erica Jong. As Jong's health declines, Jong-Fast — now an esteemed writer in her own right — offers an unflinching, albeit not unkind, reflection on the relationship between mothers and daughters. Baddest Man A veteran sports journalist's nuanced history of the heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson offers a portrait of a mercurial young street fighter from Brooklyn, thrust onto the world stage — with all its attendant perks and indignities. Though the narrative ends in 1988, at the height of Tyson's boxing career, it sets in motion 'the snowballing phenomenon' of one of the most controversial athletes in American history. Murderland Fraser begins with a simple true-crime curiosity — why did the Pacific Northwest have so many serial killers in the '70s and '80s? — and expands her gaze to encompass the recent history of American industrialization and the hidden consequences of environmental degradation. The result is a scientific re-examination of Ted Bundy and his ilk, and the toxic chemicals that may have rotted their brains. The Möbius Book Split into fiction and memoir — two narratives, each beginning at either cover — Lacey's latest book draws its cohesion from ruminations on religion, permanence and waning relationships. In a novella, two friends, Marie and Edie, discuss a mutual friendship over tequila as a fresh puddle of blood collects outside a neighbor's door. Elsewhere, Lacey processes the aftermath of a breakup and the possibility of new love via reflections on Annie Baker, Dr. Watson and Christianity. 'Make It Ours' This biography of Virgil Abloh, the men's wear chief at Louis Vuitton until his death in 2021, doubles as a lens into a staid luxury industry undergoing rapid transformation. Givhan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, deftly lays out how streetwear's grass roots revolution challenged fashion's stuffy notions of taste, exclusivity and their consumers — and paved the way for a hip-hop provocateur like Abloh to rise to the top. The Beast in the Clouds In 1928-29, Theodore Roosevelt's two eldest sons went on a swashbuckling global adventure to prove the existence of the until-then mystical panda bear. Holt chronicles their journey into the Himalayan wilderness — marred by sickness, violence and extreme weather — and what the landmark mission meant for the future of wildlife conservation. A Marriage at Sea In the early '70s, an eccentric married couple ditched their landlocked lives for grand plans to sail to New Zealand. Elmhirst's book opens just as a sperm whale crashes into their boat, kicking off a harrowing 117 days stranded at sea. But while the physical circumstances are extraordinary, the psychological drama is all too universal. 'What else is a marriage,' asks Elmhirst, 'if not being stuck on a small raft with someone and trying to survive?' On Her Game Caitlin Clark, the highest-scoring college basketball player in N.C.A.A. history, was a revelation to most observers following her standout season in 2024. Brennan draws on interviews and behind-the-scenes reporting in this energetic account of that campaign, and explains how the ensuing explosion in popularity of women's basketball is a legacy of Title IX's passage in 1972. Dinner with King Tut In the budding discipline known as experimental archaeology, researchers are driven by the full spectrum of human senses. Kean follows them on zany investigations and tactile recreations of ancient life that involve hunting with primitive spears, baking with ancient yeast strains, wrapping human mummies, taking perilous boats out to sea and building Roman-style roads. Sloppy, Or: Doing It All Wrong King's first book, 'Tacky,' was a sharp and spirited essay collection on pop culture and the pleasures of 'bad' taste (think: Creed, the Cheesecake Factory and 'Jersey Shore')8 This follow-up, which also enumerates 'my mistakes and crimes,' as the author has put it, is constructed out of 17 observant essays on the compulsions and vices — overspending, shoplifting, addiction, to name a few — that have molded her. Tonight in Jungleland Carlin, who has published biographies of R.E.M., Paul Simon and the Boss himself, pulls back the curtain on the making of Springsteen's 'Born to Run' album 50 years after its release. Drawing on interviews with the artist and his inner circle, Carlin revisits how each song was written and recorded while shedding light on the arduous studio sessions and their parallels to Springsteen's career. Blessings and Disasters Braiding personal narrative with Southern history, Okeowo, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, reckons with her love for Montgomery, Alabama, where she was raised by Nigerian parents, despite the state's legacy of chattel slavery and Indigenous dispossession and its more recent evolution into the backdrop for Amazon warehouses, auto plants and culture war lawsuits. King of Kings Much like his 'Lawrence in Arabia' (2013), Anderson's latest is an exercise in demystification. This absorbing account of the 1979 Iranian revolution unravels the story of how the nation's seemingly invulnerable leader, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was forced into exile, and the ensuing hostage crisis that rattled American confidence and singed its reputation in the Middle East. Tart After quitting a 9-to-5 in corporate marketing, Cheff, the anonymous author of this gritty memoir, breaks into London's fine dining world in the hopes of becoming a chef. What follows is a tell-all detailing hot bartenders, endless emulsions and grueling work weeks offset by plenty of sex. Summer of Our Discontent Williams, a dependably contrarian voice on issues of race and social justice in the United States, examines how a confluence of issues — the Covid-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, the proliferation of social media — sparked an 'illiberal backlash,' and traces its influence to ongoing social justice movements, such as pro-Palestine encampments at universities across the country. Hotshot Wildland firefighting is no joke, as Selby, who spent years as part of an elite unit known as the Hotshots, details in this memoir. The author details their teenage struggles with homelessness and addiction, notes the rugged camaraderie and sexism of fire crews and shares searing insights on federal fire policy, Indigenous land use and American ecological history. Anonymous Male A former F.B.I. sniper falls off the grid in Somalia, raises a private army in Southeast Asia, survives a coup d'état and lives clandestinely for years until a near-death experience forces him to reassess his life. What sounds like the melodramatic plot of a James Patterson novel is Whitcomb's lived past, candidly divulged in this redemptive memoir. The Martians Mars, our barren neighbor, has served as an empty canvas for our expansionist imaginations since long before Elon Musk arrived on the scene. Baron chronicles the lasting influence of the Mars mania that gripped America during the early 1900s, how it captured the imaginations of Nikola Tesla and Alexander Graham Bell, generated speculative news headlines, fueled astronomical ambitions and left an indelible imprint on our culture.
