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Daily Art Fixx

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Lillian Bassman: 1917 – 2012

June 15, 2020 By Wendy Campbell

Lillian BassmanBorn on June 15, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York, Lillian Bassman is considered one of the most important fashion photographers of the 20th century.

Bassman studied at the Textile High School in Manhattan, NY in 1933 and became an assistant painter at the WPA (Works Progress Administration) in 1934. In the 1940s, Bassman was working as a graphic designer when photographer Richard Avedon, a friend of her’s and her husband (Paul Himmel), encouraged her to pursue a career in photography.

Bassman’s most well-known photos were taken from the late 1940s to the early 1960s and most were published in Harper’s Bazaar. During this time she also worked as an art director for Junior Bazaar and later for Harper’s Bazaar. At Harper’s Bazaar, “Bassman brought a sophisticated, new aesthetic to fashion photography with her elegant, moody, and often abstract images. Her work diverged from classic fashion photography in that she did not rely on beautiful models and clothes as the sole essence of her photographs.”

“Bassman’s experimental and romantic visions revolutionized fashion photography. Vanity Fair magazine singled her out as one of photography’s “grand masters”. Full of mystery, sensuality, and expressionistic glamour, Bassman’s dramatic black and white photographs capture secret moments and dream memories. Her work is elegant, graceful and totally original. Bassman achieved her unique images through darkroom manipulation, specifically by blurring and bleaching areas of the photographs.’”

By the 1970s, Bassman’s interest in “pure form” photography was at odds with the changing fashion industry. She abandoned photography and turned back to painting, closing her studio for the next two decades. She returned to photography in the early 1990s after a friend found a bag of Bassman’s negatives in storage. Bassman, who had always had an interest in the manipulation of photographs, began altering the pictures and bleaching out backgrounds, creating  dramatic effects.

At the age of 87, Bassman discovered PhotoShop and began working in her studio “toying and reconfiguring” her photographs. “She claimed a proud proficiency with her computer. It is a skill however that [did] not extend to the use of e-mail or Google.” “I’m not interested,” she said, “in any of that.” (New York Times)

Lillian Bassman died in her home on February 13, 2012. Her work has been published in “Lillian Bassman” (1997), “Lillian Bassman: Women” (2009), and more recently,  “Lillian Bassman: Lingerie,”  in March 2012.

Lillian Bassman
Lillian Bassman
The Bird Lady Kasia Lillian Bassman. 1999
Lillian Bassman
Lillian Bassman
Lillian Bassman
Lillian Bassman
Lillian Bassman
Lillian Bassman
Lillian Bassman
Lillian Bassman
Lillian Bassman

Sources: Farmani Gallery, New York Times, New York Times (obituary), Facebook

Filed Under: ART, Art History, Photography, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: American Art, Lillian Bassman

Remedios Varo: 1908-1963

December 16, 2019 By Wendy Campbell

 Remedios VaroBorn on December 16, 1908,  in Anglés, near Girona, Spain, Remedios Varo is often overlooked as an important surrealist painter. As a child, Varo moved frequently with her family, following her father’s work as a hydraulic engineer.

Varo studied art in Madrid and moved several times between Paris and Spain where she met and exhibited with other leading Surrealist artists. She met her husband, the French surrealist poet Benjamin Péret, in Barcelona. In 1941, Varo and Péret fled the Nazi occupation in Paris and moved to Mexico City where many other Surrealists had sought exile.

Varo separated from Péret, and initially worked as a commercial artist and illustrator in Mexico City. At the encouragement of Walter Gruen, Austrian exile and businessman, she was able to devote herself full-time to painting for the last eleven years of her life. Her first solo exhibition in Mexico at the Galería Diana in 1955 was a great success and earned her international recognition.

Varo became skilled in Surrealist Automatism, a practice where several artists work together to devise unforeseen subjects with smoke or wax on paper or canvas. Varo’s palette consisted mainly of somber oranges, light browns, shadowy grays and greens. Her paintings were carefully drawn, and depicted stories or mystic legends. She often painted heroines engaged in alchemical activities. “A delicate figure may spin and weave tiny threads transforming them into musical instruments or fashion them into paintings of small birds. The settings are often medieval tower rooms equipped with occult laboratory devices.”

Varo was influenced by artists such as Francisco Goya, El Greco, Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Georges Braque, pre-Columbian art, and the writing of André Breton. She also borrowed from Romanesque Catalan frescoes and medieval architecture, mixed nature and technology, and combined reality and fantasy to create paintings that defied time and space.

Varo was also influenced by a variety of mystic and hermetic traditions. She was interested in the ideas of C. G. Jung and the theories of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Helena Blavatsky, Meister Eckhart, and the Sufis. She was also fascinated with the legend of the Holy Grail, sacred geometry, alchemy and the I-Ching. She saw in each of these an avenue to self-knowledge and the transformation of consciousness.

Remedios Varo died of a heart attack at the height of her fame in her home in Mexico City on October 8, 1963. Since that time, her works have been seen in over a dozen solo exhibitions and nearly one hundred group shows worldwide.

Remedios Varo - Valle de la Luna - 1950
Remedios Varo - Visita al Cirujano Plástico - 1960
Remedios Varo - Tiforal - 1947
Remedios Varo - Lady Godiva - 1959
Remedios Varo - Tailleur Pour Dames - 1957
Remedios Varo - El Gato Helecho - 1957
Remedios Varo - Aurora - 1962
Remedios Varo - Banqueros en Acción - 1962
Remedios Varo - Ciencia Inútil o El Alquimista - 1955
Remedios Varo - Au Bonheur des Dames - 1956
Remedios Varo - As del Volante - 1962
Remedios Varo - Creacion de las Aves - 1957

Sources: Ciudad de la Pintura (images), Wikipedia, NMWA

Filed Under: ART, Art History, Painting, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: Mexican Art, Remedios Varo, Spanish Art, Surrealism

Esther Barend: Follow Your Dreams, 2019

November 4, 2019 By Wendy Campbell

BAREND_FollowYourDreams150x120DAF favourite Esther Barend, has a solo exhibition called “Follow Your Dreams” currently showing at Artclub Gallery in Paris, France.

“Barend has an unstoppable need to paint. The paintings in her abstract series are mostly autobiographical in nature, inspired by her rich and complex inner world, her current emotions and contemporary events. The portraits in her figurative series are open-minded reflections of perfect imperfections.”

Artist Bio
Esther Barend was born in an artistic family in the Netherlands. After finishing her studies,  established herself as a designer of jewellery in Eindhoven (The Netherlands). Several years later she started classes at the Academy of Fine Arts. After 3 years she felt she had to go her own way. She started experimenting day in, day out and developed her own distinctive style through the years. After living in Paris, Amsterdam and Antwerp, she nowadays works and lives in the Valencia-region (Spain) and her paintings can be found in private and corporate collections from the USA, all over Europe, The Middle-East, China, Japan to Australia.  (courtesy of artist’s website)

To see more of Esther Barend’s work, visit estherbarend.eu.

BAREND_LanguageIsLeavingMeinSilence_120x120
BAREND_DontLetGo_80x80cm

BAREND_Proud
BAREND_Efflorescence_120x120

BAREND1_In-Love..._120x120
BAREND_Exuberance220x140x4_resultat

BAREND_FollowYourDreams150x120
BAREND_GlowingInMoonshine_120x100

BAREND2_Ravishing_80x140
BAREND1_CanYouFeelIt_80x120

BAREND_Introspection_160x100
BAREND_LadyInRed_80x140

Filed Under: ART, Contemporary Art, Exhibitions, Painting, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: Esther Barend

Great Women Artists – Book Review and Contest!

October 2, 2019 By Wendy Campbell

Officially hitting book store shelves today is GREAT WOMEN ARTISTS published by Phaidon as part of The Art Book series. With 646 pages featuring over 400 artists, over 500 years, from 54 countries, this is the “most extensive fully illustrated book of women artists ever published”.

“Edited down from a long-list of over two thousand artists, the collection was finessed in consultation with Phaidon colleagues and art experts globally. The selection reflects as wide a variety of artists as possible, from different periods and parts of the world, who work with varied materials in diverse mediums.”

Why This Book? At a time when women artists are gaining more recognition,  Rebecca Morrill reminds us in her introduction that “where art is exhibited, traded and written about – male artists are still likely to be more successful by any number of measure…”This includes gallery representation, higher market prices, and featured more in publications. That being said, institutional shifts are happening in museums and galleries which has raised the profile of female artists. The internet and social media have also played a significant part, writes Morrill.

Great Women Artist -2

A Point of Departure: GREAT WOMEN ARTISTS makes no claims to be a comprehensive volume of all women artists. The book is, a “point of departure. to prompt and support further exploration – to read more, see more and share more art made by women throughout history, until the names in this book are as well known as so many of their male counterparts, and until there is no need to ask whether an artwork is made by a male of a female because equality, across all institutions of the art world, has finally been reached.”

Why You’ll Like This Book – We here at DAF really like this book – not only because the topic of recognition of women artists has been a feature on our site since our beginnings in 2009. This book is a treasure trove of artists, many that you’ve seen before, but even more that you probably have not. If you like discovering new art, (historical and contemporary), this book is for you. The artists are presented in alphabetical order rather than by date of birth, so you might find yourself looking at the creation date – and be surprised that a particular work is older than you imagined.  The book includes a helpful glossary of art terms, styles and movement with a list of significant artists related to each term. Finally, this book is BIG! At 9 7/8 x 11 3/8 inches, it is a joy to flip through the beautifully reproduced images and read the succinctly written bios. In an era where much of the art imagery we encounter is though small screens such as our cell phones and tablets, it is refreshing to have the tactile experience of an “in real life” art book.

WIN A COPY OF GREAT WOMEN ARTISTS!

Subscribe to Daily Art Fixx’s monthly e-newsletter for a chance to win a copy of GREAT WOMEN ARTISTS. Simply fill out the form below by October 31, 2019. One winner will be announced on November 2, 2019. See full contest rules here.

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**No compensation was made to the author by Phaidon. A copy of Great <strike>Women</strike> Artists was provided by the publisher for review purposes.

 

 

 

Filed Under: ART, Art History, Books, Contemporary Art, Women in Visual Arts

Berthe Morisot: 1841-1895

January 14, 2017 By Wendy Campbell

BBerthe Morisot - photograph by Charles Reutlingerorn to a prosperous family on January 14, 1841, in Bourges, Cher, France, Berthe Morisot was a central member of the Paris Impressionists.  Morisot, as well as her sisters, were encouraged at an early age to pursue art and studied with neoclassical painter Geoffroy-Alphonse Chocarne. In 1858 she and her sister Edma studied at the studio of Joseph-Benoît Guichard, and through him met the leading landscape painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot who encouraged the siblings to paint outdoors.

Morisot exhibited at the Salon from 1864 to 1873.  Around 1867, she met Édouard Manet with whom she developed a close friendship. Morisot modeled for Manet numerous times and in 1874 she married his brother, Eugène.  That same year she refused to show her work at the Salon and instead participated in the first independent show of Impressionist paintings. In 1878, Morisot had a daughter Julie who became a main source of inspiration for her paintings.

Morisot painted her daily experiences and reflected 19th century cultural expectations of her class and gender. Her works included landscapes, family and domestic life, portraits, garden settings and boating scenes. She avoided urban and street scenes as well as the nude figure. Morisot worked with pastels, watercolors, and oil, and in her later years, she experimented with lithography and drypoint etching.

Morisot became an important member of the Impressionist group. Painters and writers would meet at her home including Renoir, Degas, and Mary Casssatt. Morisot was never commercially successful in her lifetime. At the time however, her paintings sold for slightly higher prices than those of Renoir, Monet, and Sisley.

Berthe Morisot died of pneumonia on March 2, 1895 in Paris at the age of 54. She was interred in the Cimetière de Passy.


Berthe_Morisot,_Le_berceau_The_Cradle_1872
Berthe Morisot - photograph by Charles Reutlinger

he Mother and Sister of the Artist Berthe_Morisot_1869-70

Summer DayBerthe_Morisot1879

Sources: Wikipedia, Cleveland Museum of Art, Biography.com

Filed Under: ART, Art History, Painting, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: Berthe Morisot, French Art, Impressionism

Emily Carr: 1871 – 1945

December 13, 2016 By Susan Benton

Emily CarrEmily Carr, Canadian artist and author, didn’t became famous until she was in her late 50s, but is now probably one of the most famous female artists of this country. Her paintings are undeniably original, as was she – a free spirit and rebel, born to a British family in the constrained Victorian era. She was fascinated and accepted by the aboriginal people of the West coast, and the intersection of her two worlds would forever impact her life and art. Like the work of the members of the Group of Seven, whom she was ultimately considered a part of, her art was unlike any that had been seen before, and it would change the face of Canadian art.

Contrary from the Start

Emily Carr was born in Victoria, British Columbia on December 13, 1871, during a freak winter storm, which seems to be appropriate. She once said that she “was contrary from the start”. She was the youngest of five sisters and had one younger brother. Her father, British by birth, became a successful business owner. The death of first her mother, and then her father when Emily was still a young girl, left her in the care of her unsympathetic and rigid older sister. Emily had always been a rambunctious child, more interested in nature and drawing than in the expected pursuits of girls of the period, and she was perplexing to her sisters.

Determined to be an Artist

Somehow Emily convinced her skeptical guardian to allow her to go to San Francisco’s, California School of Design in 1889. Three years later, she returned with a knowledge of classical art practices and set up shop as an art teacher in the Carr family home.

In the summer of 1898, Emily visited her sister Lizzie, who was a missionary in an isolated aboriginal village on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The attraction to the people was quick and mutual, and would influence Carr and her art forever. Carr was delighted by their openness and sincerity, which she found lacking in her own society. The group gave her the nickname of Klee Wyck, The Laughing One, which many years later would be the title of an autobiographical book penned by Carr.

Back in Victoria, an unwanted engagement offer (her belief was that marriage and art for a woman could not co-exist), and an unreciprocated love would cement Carr’s path as a single woman, living for her art. Carr decided to continue her studies in England at the Westminster School of Art and in private studios, learning 19th century British watercolour techniques and style. After five and a half years, she returned disappointed, but was very happy to be back in her beloved Western Canada.

Her family was equally disappointed, but for different reasons. They saw that her time in Britain had done nothing to quell her rebellious spirit or her avant garde behaviour. In 1910. she travelled with her sister Alice to Paris for further study. This time however she was not disappointed and was inspired by “the Post-Impressionist style with a Fauvist palette”. “She developed her own bold, colourful, post-impressionist style of painting, which she brought back to Victoria in 1912.”

The Draw of the Indigenous People

Having earlier seen the impact of the white settlement spread in British Columbia on the aboriginal way of life, Carr “had announced that she wanted to document the villages and the art of the people”. She spent six weeks travelling north to the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Skeena River, and capturing her observations of the Haida, Gitksan and Tsimshian totems and life.

However, her paintings, which were supposed to be an attempt to truthfully document the situation, were heavily influenced by her “French style” and were brilliantly coloured and ultimately seen as inaccurate. The provincial government, who she had thought would be interested in her work, was not. “Painted in 1912, her richly coloured War Canoes, Alert Bay would not have looked out of place alongside the paintings of Matisse and Derain in the Salon Fauve in Paris.”

By 1913, Carr had amassed a significant number of works, but her depiction of colourful trees, and magical landscapes with totem poles were also not well received by the public. She was forced to look for another way to support herself. For almost fifteen years, she gave up her artwork and built an apartment house, which she was then forced to turn into a boarding house due to the faltering of the economy at the time.

She rarely painted during these hard years and her reputation as an eccentric was intensified by her “odd behaviour” including owning a pet monkey who was her constant companion, the odd netting that she wore on her head, her living room chairs held in the air by a pulley system, and her menagerie of various other animals. It wasn’t until the 1920s that she started painting again.

A Renewed Spirit

Her bold and energetic paintings were ultimately not to remain unappreciated. In 1927, Carr was invited by the National Gallery of Canada to participate in the exhibition of West Coast Aboriginal art. Carr attended the opening and met the group of artists that would finally give her the feeling of belonging that had been absent all of her life. Lawren Harris, and other members of the Group of Seven, were shaping a new direction for the art of Canada, one that she understood and felt a great affinity for. Lawren Harris, as he had with other unique artists, took Emily into the fold and provided mentorship and support. Theirs was a relationship that would last a lifetime. The next ten years would be her most prolific period of painting, and would also see the formation of a new, more inclusive group of artists called the Canadian Group of Painters.

“Carr began to paint the bold, almost hallucinatory canvases with which many people identify her – paintings of Aboriginal totem poles set in deep forest locations or the sites of abandoned Indigenous villages. After a year or two she left Aboriginal subjects to devote herself to nature themes. In full mastery of her talents and with deepening vision, she continued to produce a great body of paintings freely expressive of the large rhythms of Western forests, driftwood-tossed beaches and expansive skies, like Indian Church (1929), Loggers’ Culls (1935), and Heart of the Forest (1935).”

A New Chapter

In 1937, Carr suffered her first of many heart attacks, and as a result of her physical limitations she stopped painting, turning to writing as a gentler expression of her creativity and perspective. Her first book, Klee Wyck, a collection of short stories based on her experiences with Aboriginal people, was published in 1941. However, passages about native people’s positions, and Carr’s support of them, were censored and never appeared in print. The book won a Governor General’s Award, and sections of it were read over the CBC radio, positioning Emily Carr as a well-known Canadian author. She wrote four other books, two of them published posthumously, that have been printed in more than 20 languages.

Emily Carr died in Victoria on May 2, 1945, after checking herself into St. Mary’s Priory to rest. Amazingly, a Victorian woman, blazing her own trail at a time when art as a career for women was unfathomable, succeeded in depicting the primordial forests and coasts of British Columbia, Canada in such a way that more than 60 years after her death, her paintings are at the forefront of Canadian art, at home and abroad.

Emily Carr - Autumn in France - 1911 National Gallery of Canada
emily-Emily Carr - Zunoqua of the Cat Village - 1931 - Vancouver Art Gallery-zunoqua-of-the-cat-village-1931-oil-on-canvas-vancouver-art-gallery
Emily Carr - Totem Walk at Sitka - 1907 - Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
Emily Carr - Indian Church - 1929 - Art Gallery of Ontario
Emily Carr - Tanoo, Q.C.I. - 1913 - British Columbia Archives Collection, Royal B.C. Museum
Emily Carr - Sketchbook for Pause - 1903 - McMichael Canadian Art Collection
Emily Carr - Odds and Ends - 1939
Emily Carr - Above the Gravel Pit - 1937 - Vancouver Art Gallery
Emily Carr - Blunden Harbour - 1930
Emily Carr - Big Raven - 1931 - Vancouver Art Gallery

Sources: telegraph.co.uk, virtualmuseum.ca, thecanadianencyclopedia.ca, Life & Times of Emily Carr (CBC, 1997)

Filed Under: ART, Art History, Painting, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: Canadian Art, Canadian Group of Painters, Emily Carr, Group of Seven, Haida art, Lawren Harris

Video: Marina Abramović – ‘Brilliant Ideas’ (Bloomberg)

November 30, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

marina-abramovic-portrait-from-walk-through-wallsBorn in Belgrade, Serbia on November 30, 1946, Marina Abramović is one of the most acclaimed, remarkable and influential performance artists in the world today. From her shocking early work in the 1970s to her blockbuster 2010 show “The Artist is Present”, she has redefined what art can be and brought performance into the mainstream. Her latest project  is based in “As One,” is at the Benaki Museum in Athens, showcasing and mentoring young performance artists and revisiting some of the key works of her career.

Watch this short video from Bloomberg‘s “Brilliant Ideas” series for an interesting overview of Abramović’s life and work.

For more information about Marina Abramović, and for links to purchase her new memoir “Walk Through Walls” visit marinaabramovic.com.

Filed Under: ART, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: Marina Abramović, Performance Art

Wangechi Mutu: What do you see? Book Giveaway

October 19, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Wangechi Mutu - What Do You See?What do you see? is a children’s book that brings to life the surreal art of Wangechi Mutu (featured). Written by Kyla Ryman, each page of this unusual seek-and-find book reveals a small part of Mutu’s artwork Le Noble Savage (2006), allowing readers to explore each part of the collage work closely. On the final page, the entire piece is revealed, opening up even more room for discussion and exploration.

Wangechi Mutu - What Do You See?What do you see? may challenge some expectations of what a children’s book should be. While young creative minds can engage with the art book in a simple way—looking at colours, and the fun game of spotting images within the pages—the book may also serve as an opportunity to engage in early conversations about race, gender, and body image, topics that figure prominently in Mutu’s artwork.

Wangechi Mutu - What Do You See?About Wangechi Mutu: Born in Nairobi, Kenya, Mutu scrutinizes globalization by combining found materials, magazine cutouts, sculpture, and painted imagery. Sampling such diverse sources as African traditions, international politics, the fashion industry, pornography, and science fiction, her work explores gender, race, war, colonialism, global consumption, and the exoticization of the black female body. Mutu is best known for spectacular and provocative collages depicting female figures—part human, animal, plant, and machine—in fantastical landscapes that are simultaneously unnerving and alluring, defying easy categorization and identification. Bringing her interconnected ecosystems to life through sculptural installations and videos, Mutu encourages audiences to consider these mythical worlds as places for cultural, psychological, and socio-political exploration and transformation. Her work is represented in museum collections around the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the MoMA in New York City, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. (via Brooklyn Museum)

About Kyla Ryman: During her work within homeschool collectives as a reading specialist, Kyla saw a need for creative and compelling reading content for children. In 2012, she founded Home Grown Books to develop resources that empowered parents and inspired little readers. Kyla is a mother of two boys and an advocate of organic learning for children. She embraces thinking, playing, and creating as the building blocks for learning. Kyla has a Masters in Early Childhood Education and a Reading Specialty from Bank Street College. She taught for 12 years in the public school system, tutored, and worked with a homeschool collective.

What do you see? is part of Home Grown Books Mini Museum Series, bringing contemporary art to creative kids.

BOOK GIVEAWAY!

DAF is pleased to offer the chance to win one (1) free copy of What do you see?  to DAF readers, courtesy of Home Grown Books.  To enter, click on the link below. The winner will be contacted for shipping information. One entry per person only. Contest entry deadline is November 5, 2016. Winner will be drawn randomly and announced on November 15, 2016. Good luck everyone!

ENTER THE CONTEST!


Disclosure: No payment was made to Daily Art Fixx for featuring this book. A copy of the book was provided to the editors for review.

Filed Under: ART, Books, Collage, Contests, Mixed Media, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: Wangechi Mutu

Faith Ringgold: Painting, Fiber Art, Sculpture

October 8, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Faith Ringold - photo © Katherine McMahon 2015

photo © Katherine McMahon 2015

Born on October 8, 1930, in Harlem, New York, Faith Ringgold is considered to be one of the most important living African American artists. Working in a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, and performance, Ringgold is best known for her “story quilts” that combine narrative paintings with quilted borders and text.

Ringgold’s mother, a fashion designer and seamstress, nurtured her daughter’s creative abilities from a young age. Ringgold attended City College of New York where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art and Education in 1955. She taught art in New York’s public schools from 1955 to 1973 and earned her Master’s degree in art in 1959. During this time, Ringgold also married and divorced jazz pianist Robert Earl Wallace with whom she had two daughters. In 1962, she was remarried to Burdette Ringgold.

Ringgold’s oil paintings and posters of the mid-to-late 1960s carried strong political messages and were supportive of the civil-rights movement. In 1970, she participated in a demonstration against the exclusion of black and women artists by New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art. This resulted in the inclusion of Betye Saar and Barbara Chase-Riboud in the Whitney Sculpture Biennial, making them the first black women ever to exhibit at the Museum.

In the early 1970s, Ringgold abandoned traditional painting and began making unstretched acrylic paintings on canvas with soft cloth frames after viewing an exhibition of Tibetan art at the Rijk Museum in Amsterdam. During this time, Ringgold also began lecture tours and traveling exhibitions to colleges and universities around the United States. In 1973, she retired from teaching altogether to continue touring and create art full time.

In 1983, Ringgold began to combine images and handwritten text in her painted “story quilts,” which conveyed imaginative narratives. In 1984, a 20-year retrospective of her work was held at The Studio Museum in Harlem. That same year, Ringgold also became a professor at the University of California, San Diego, a position that she still holds today.

Over the course of her career, Ringgold has published 12 children’s books including the award winning “Tar Beach” which is based on her story quilt.  As well, a book of her memoirs was published in 1995.  She has exhibited in major museums in the U.S., Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Ringgold is in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art.

Retrospectives of Ringgold’s work have been held by Rutgers University, New Brunswick (1973), the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1984), and the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, Hempstead (1990). Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions devoted to political art, women’s art, contemporary quilts, and African-American art, as well as in the Whitney Biennial (1985). Ringgold has received many honours, including the National Endowment for the Arts awards in sculpture (1978) and painting (1989), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1987), and fifteen honorary doctorates.

Ringgold currently lives and works in Englewood, New Jersey. To learn more, visit Faith Ringgold.com.

The American People Series #20: Die © Faith Ringgold - 1967
Performance Mask - Faith Ringgold-1980
Anyone can Fly © Faith Ringgold
The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles -© Faith Ringgold-1996
Mrs Jones and Family © Faith Ringgold
The Flag is Bleeding © Faith Ringgold -1967
Tar Beach © Faith Ringgold -1967-1990
Grooving High © Faith Ringgold 1996
Faith Ringgold Street Story Quilt - 1985

Sources: Guggenheim, Faith Ringgold.com

Filed Under: ART, Mixed Media, Painting, Sculpture, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: African American Art, Faith Ringgold, Fiber Art

Annie Leibovitz: Photography

October 2, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

Born on October 2, 1949, in Waterbury, Connecticut, Annie Leibovitz has been documenting American popular culture since the 1970s and is one of the most sought-after portrait photographers today.

The Leibovitz family moved frequently with her father’s duty assignments in the U.S. Air Force and Annie took her first photos when they were stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. Leibovitz studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and after a summer trip to Japan with her mother, she began taking night classes in photography and developed her skills as a photographer. Early influences include Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

In 1970, Leibovitz approached the editor of the recently launched Rolling Stone Magazine for  employment. Her first assignment was a photo shoot with John Lennon and her photo appeared on the January 1971 issue. Leibovitz was named chief photographer two years later.

In 1980, Leibovitz was sent to photograph John Lennon and Yoko Ono and created the now-famous Lennon nude curled around a fully clothed Ono. Several hours after the photo shoot, Lennon was shot and killed. The photograph ran on the cover of Rolling Stone Lennon commemorative issue and in 2005 was named best magazine cover from the past 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

In 1983, Leibovitz became a contributing photographer for Vanity Fair magazine and became known for her provocative celebrity portraits including Whoopie Goldberg, Demi Moore, Brad Pitt, Ellen DeGeneres, Queen Elizabeth II, and countless others. Her portraits have also been featured in national media including Vogue, The New York Times, The New Yorker, as well as media ads for American Express, the Gap, and the Milk Board.

Leibovitz began a long-term romantic relationship with writer Susan Sontag in 1989. Sontag had a strong influence on her work including her photos documenting the Balkan war in Sarajevo and Women, a book they published together in 2000. The couple lived apart but maintained a close relationship until Sontag’s death in 2004.

Leibovitz has received numerous awards including a Commandeur des Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government as well as designation as a living legend by the Library of Congress. In 1991, she had her first museum show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. – a show that toured internationally for six years.

With several book publications under her belt, Leibovitz’s most recent book A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005 features her trademark celebrity portraits as well as personal photographs from her own life.

Leibovitz has three children, Sarah Cameron who was born when Leibovitz was 51 years old, and twins Susan and Samuelle who were born to a surrogate mother in May 2005.

To see more of Annie Leibovitz’s photographs visit Contact Press.  There is also a PBS documentary called Annie Leibovitz, Life Through a Lens that features interviews from celebrities and with the photographer about the her work over the last few decades.

Annie Leibovitz Louise-Bourgeois
Annie Leibovitz rolling-stone-john-lennon-and-yoko-
Annie Leibovitz Whoopie Goldberg
Annie Leibovitz - Keith Richards
Annie Leibovitz - Iggy Pop
Annie Leibovitz - Queen Elizabeth II
Annie Leibovitz - Mikhail Baryshnikov
Annie Leibovitz - Willie Nelson
Annie Leibovitz - Demi Moore - Vanity Fair Cover
Annie Leibovtiz - Keith Haring
Annie Leibovtiz - Sarajevo
Annie Leibovitz - Lance Armstrong - Strong

Sources: PBS, Wikipedia

Filed Under: ART, Art History, Photography, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: American photography, Annie Leibovitz, Leibovitz Birthday, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Vogue

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