Modern women, modern art close Sunday at the Women's Museum

April Banks (b. 1972, Takoma Park, Maryland), Future Ancient, 2022, fused glass, cut metal, and LED light panel. The label says the work "proposes an alternate path to self-knowledge, equally focused on past lineage and future legacy."/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The large exhibition, New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024, featuring works by 28 women from around the globe (some of whom have more than one work on display) is set to close Sunday at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and if you want a glimpse of what the younger bunch (or those generally under age 50) is thinking artwise, rush to see it, but be advised, you'll want to hold on to your mind which may be blown away by the creativity and the artists' visions of the future, the past and present.

It's beyond the wildest of imaginations and all have a theme and deeply personal message about what they've done, the purpose and why they have used the materials they chose. 

But, hope for the future? 

I couldn't find any, maybe due to my (aging) shades and perspective. What I saw was a dark and gloomy vision of the future, but that was before Kamala was nominated. (She who brings joy.) Since then, perhaps there is room for some optimism? None I found here.

Kathryn Wat, deputy director for art, programs and public engagement and chief curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, welcomes visitors to the exhibition, New Worlds:  Women to Watch 2024. On the left is Intra-Venus, 2019-21 in carrara marble by Marina Vargas (b. 1980, Granada, Spain)/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Mona Cliff/HanukGahNé (Spotted Cloud, b. 1977, Prescott, AZ), Conjured Topography, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Prescoia seed beads, maple wood, beeswax, copal resin, pine resin, benzoin resin, and thread on plywood. The label says the "beads pay homage to nature" which required Cliff to spend "hundreds of hours adding thousands of beads to the wood surface," to honor "the labor-intensive work of women artisans."

Detail of Conjured Topography, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie

SHAN (sic) Wallace (b. 1991, Baltimore), Pale Blue Egun, 2024.  Flashe, gesso, paper, gouache, oil stick, shells, and crackle paste on wood/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The label says the artist "pays homage to the spectrum of Black experience in the United States" fusing "folklore and fantasy to explore belief systems and rituals related to death for the Black community. Motifs such as dice, shells, and a chicken serve as offerings for or methods of communication with the dead."

NMWA’s Women to Watch series is presented every three years and features emerging and underrepresented women artists who work in regions of the world where the museum has outreach committees.

On its website, NMWA notes that in the last decade just 11 percent of all acquisitions by "prominent American museums" were by women. With its promotion and exhibitions, NMWA hopes to draw greater attention to this dearth of female artists presence.

Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya (b. 1988, Atlanta), the primitive sign of wanting, 2024,
vintage TV screens, raspberry pis, and internet-connected receipt printers which invites viewer to interact with the work by scanning a QR code found on one of the screens/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The label quotes the artist who says her work is a “'call to moral vigilance,'” inviting "viewers to consider the ethical implications of human advancement in the face of climate change and rapidly changing technology. Assembled from discarded artifacts and found objects, this interactive installation challenges visitors to confront their moral biases about issues facing us today—and to imagine the possibilities of tomorrow." 

Detail of the primitive sign of wanting, 2024/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Detail of the primitive sign of wanting, 2024/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Sophia Pompéry (b. 1984, Berlin), Fluten (Floods), 2023
Steel, perforated latex, and LED lights/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The label says "Pompéry’s practice lies at the intersection of art, science, and philosophy, investigating the artifice of constructs such as money, units of measure, and time. Fluten comprises an aerial map of recorded levels of light pollution in the Arctic Circle.  The haphazard placement of the rods implies the futility of creating records of the natural world—its time scale is beyond human comprehension."

Irene Fenara (b. 1990, Bologna, Italy), Three Thousand TIgers, 2020
Wool and silk tapestry/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The label says: "Fenara explores how technology can change our perception of reality. The artist feeds a data set of three thousand images of tigers—approximately the current number of living tigers in the wild—into a generative algorithm" resulting in "a distorted digital fauna."

She then "turned the patterns into tapestries, referring to the practice of making animal-hide rugs, and had them produced in India, where most living tigers are found."  I can't see any tigers here, but my imagination is more limited than the computer's.

Detail of Three Thousand TIgers, 2020/Photo by Patricia Leslie

 Detail of Three Thousand TIgers, 2020/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Molly Vaughan (b. 1977, London) Project 42: Gwen Amber Rose Araju, Newark, CA, 2021/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Inkjet- and silkscreen-printed fabrics with headdress. The label says this "responds to violence toward transgender people in the United States. The artist and her team create garments that commemorate the lives of murdered transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals. Using Google Earth, Vaughan takes screen shots of locations where these murders have occurred. She manipulates the digital images to create abstract patterns, printing them on fabric to make into clothing that can be worn by a collaborator during an activation."

Nicki Green (b. 1986, Boston), 
Anointed (double bidet basin with faucets), 2019/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Glazed vitreous china with epoxy. The label says Green "interrogates gendered binaries of Judaic ritual baths that complicate participation for trans individuals. Drawing from her Jewish background and gender politics, she transforms urinals and bidets into sacred wash basins that can affirm the holiness of trans bodies." This is one of two works on this theme by Green in the exhibition.

Ana María Hernando (b. 1959, Buenos Aires), detail of 
Nadar en el diluvio de aguas caldas (To Swim in the Deluge of Warm Waters), 2024/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Tulle, wood, metal lattice, and felt.
The label says the artist includes "association with feminine clothing and sewing" to create "monuments that celebrate the collective work of generations of unacknowledged women. Her works manifest the feminine as joyful and inexorable."

Works pictured above are those which were of the most interest to me, but all of them produced interest and awe.  You'll see!

Two local artists (April Banks, Takoma Park, MD, and SHAN (sic) Wallace, Baltimore) are represented.

A soft cover exhibition catalog of 100 pages is available in the shop or online for $23.95.

What: New Worlds:  Women to Watch, 2024


When: Closing Sunday, August 11, 2024. The museum is open Tuesday through Sundays, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

Where: The National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005

Admission: $16, adults; $13, D.C. residents and those over age 70; free admission for members, those under age 21, and disabled persons and attendant. Free for all on the first Sunday and second Wednesday of every month.

For more information: 202-783-5000 or visit nmwa.org.

Metro stations: Metro Center (exit at 13th Street and walk two blocks north) or (better) walk a short distance from McPherson Square.

patricialesli@gmail.com

Textiles and modern abstraction close Sunday at the National Gallery of Art

Ann Hamilton (b. 1956), (side by side.coats), 2018/2023.  The label says Ms. Hamilton worked on her art in northern Portugal, sourcing fleeces from a local farmer and using coats from secondhand shops to show "enduring interdependencies: between human and animal, manufactured and organic, nurture and sacrifice." Loaned by the artist/By Patricia Leslie

The National Gallery of Art hosts a large show, Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, in eight rooms to display some 160 works by 50 artists from around the globe. Their art begins with the first World War and continues to present day.

The exhibition brings to mind the question: Why have textiles and related arts taken a back seat to oil, sculpture, prints and drawings and other fine arts?*

The fact that textiles and woven arts are usually associated with women likely plays a role. 

Sophie Taeuber-Arp, 1889-1943, Cushion Panel (detail), 1916 (facsimile 2021) cross-stitch embroidery. Loaned by the Museum of Design, Zurich. Silhouettes of viewers are reflected in the protective glass/By Patricia Leslie

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972), from left, The Past as Future Artifact (Mask 2), 2020, The Anthropophagic Effect, Helmet No. 2, 2019, and The Anthropophagic Effect, Helmet No. 1, 2019.  Materials used included birch bark, pine resin, porcupine quills, brass bells, metal jingles, turquoise, and beeswax. Loaned by the artist/By Patricia Leslie

These artists produce their works for the same reasons as other artists: to effect political and social change, to capitalize on change, to build momentum for matters of the time, to promote more awareness of cultural and historical change, to enjoy beauty, to document scenes from current events, to express themselves.

Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979), Electric Prisms (detail), 1913, Davis Museum at Wellesley College/By Patricia Leslie

Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979), Groupe de femmes, 1923-1924, watercolor, colored inks and graphite on paper glued on cardboard, Centre Pompidou, Paris/By Patricia Leslie

In a textiles gallery at the National Galley of Art, Washington, D.C./By Patricia Leslie

Eden Gallery with offices around the world may have answers to why these arts have not enjoyed the same prestige and importance as other "fine arts."

On its website, Eden asks:

What exactly is fine art, and how has its definition changed over the centuries?

Art, in its broadest sense, embodies the act of crafting something unique that tantalizes our visual or auditory senses. Fine art, often labeled as "high art," stands as the pinnacle of artistic expression, emphasizing aesthetics over functionality. This inherent aesthetic quality sets fine art apart from "low arts" which are crafted with a more utilitarian purpose in mind.

Yet, as the art world continues to evolve, the once-clear boundaries that defined what is "high" or "low" art blur. This prompts the question: should any art form be considered superior to another in today's democratized art landscape?

Sonia Delaunay, 1885-1979, from left, Summer Dress, c. 1926, printed silk and Dress, c. 1926, printed and pleated silk. Private collection/By Patricia Leslie

The artists explain their various techniques of weaving, knitting, netting, knotting, and felting** and the reasons why they choose the mediums they do.  

Here I've included artworks which I found of particular interest, and without paying attention to the artists' names as I photograhed them, I was struck later as I write this, that of the few I chose for this blog post, three are by Sonia Delaunay 1885-1979.

Olga de Amaral (b. 1932), Cintas Entrelazadas, c. 1969, wool and cotton. Loaned by the artist/By Patricia Leslie

Marilou Schultz (b. 1954), Replica of a Chip (detail), 1994, wool. The label says the Intel Corporation commissioned Ms. Schultz, a Native American weaver, "to make a blanket featuring their Pentium microprocessor," using the traditional techniques that she learned as a child growing up on the reservation. The company proposed "affinities between Native American aesthetics and advanced technologies" as part of its marketing campaign. Loaned by the American Indian Science and Engineering Society/By  Patricia Leslie

Ellen Lesperance (b. 1971), Cardigan Worn by One Woman of the Boeing Five,  Tried for Entering the Boeing Nuclear Missile Plant on September 27th, 1983, Sentenced to Fifteen Days in the King County Jail for Defending Life on Earth, 2011. Loaned by Brooklyn Museum/By Patricia Leslie

Liz Collins (b. 1968) and Gary Graham (b.1969) (GRIZ), Pride Dress from the Seven Deadly Sins series, 2003. Loaned by Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design/By Patricia Leslie

Liz Collins (b. 1968) and Gary Graham (b.1969) (GRIZ), Pride Dress from the Seven Deadly Sins series, 2003. Loaned by Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design/By Patricia Leslie

A hardback catalog, Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abraction of almost 300 pages with 200 colored illustrations is available in the shops, online at shop.nga.gov, and by phone, 800-697-9350 for $32.50. Accompanying products are available.

The exhibition comes to NGA after its showing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and, after its stay in Washington, will travel to the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (November 8, 2024–March 2, 2025) and then, the Museum of Modern Art, New York (April 20–September 13, 2025).

Lynne Cooke, senior curator in the department of special projects in modern art, National Gallery of Art, curated the exhibition.

*After you've seen the show, maybe you can answer the question.

**sculpting and making figures and shapes from wool 

Hannah Höch is one of the artists included in this show and for more on her, go here where she's included in a book on Da Da.

What: Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction

When: Through July 28, 2024. The National Gallery hours are 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. daily.

Where: East Building Concourse and Ground Floor, National Gallery of Art, 6th and Constitution, Washington

How much: Admission is always free at the National Gallery of Art.

Metro stations for the National Gallery of Art:
Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives, or L'Enfant Plaza

For more information: (202) 737-4215

Accessibility information: (202) 842-6905


patricialesli@gmail.com

National Gallery's curator talks Philip Guston

Philip Guston, Painting, Smoking, Eating (detail), 1973, collection of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 

Close your eyes and visualize for a moment stubby fingers and heads, cigarette butts, an eyeball here, some shoes over there, a lightbulb, flabby, cartoonish fleshly colored characters and parts and what or who comes to mind?

Just the strange world of Philip Guston (1913-1980) whose 225 art works are set to leave the National Gallery of Art on August 27 after a five-months' stay.

Martial Memory, 1941, oil on canvas, Saint Louis Art Museum, Eliza McMillan T

Philip Guston, Martial Memory, 1941, Saint Louis Art Museum, Eliza McMillan Trust.

HauMartial M emory, 1941, oil on canvas, Sainrt Resource, 

Philip Guston, Passage, 1957–1958, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Bequest of Caroline Wiess Law.

The NGA calls him "one of America's greatest modern painters....[and] one of America's most influential modern artists" and has devoted 17,640 square feet of exhibition space on two floors in its East Building for Philip Guston Now.

The arrangements are laid out chronologically following  Guston's style changes, according to Harry Cooper, the Gallery's senior curator and head of the department of modern and contemporary art, who organized the Washington presentation.

"I wanted to tell Guston’s story and show his development as clearly as possible," Cooper emailed.

The Guston show has already run at the Museums of Fine Art in Houston and Boston and when it leaves Washington, will travel to the Tate Modern, London, for its last venue.

Each of the four places approached their presentation of the exhibition differently, Cooper noted.

Philip Guston, Untitled, 1964, National Gallery of Art, Gift of Musa Guston Mayer.

Philip Guston, Untitled, 1968, oil on panel, private collection.

Interest in Guston has grown since the four museums postponed the show scheduled for 2020 because of Guston's Ku Klux Klan works and the clash with culture and turmoil sweeping the U.S. then, largely as a result of the murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd the same year.

Some 2,600 artists protested the postponement. The National Gallery has segregated the KKK drawings in a different gallery with signs warning visitors about their content.

Philip Guston, Untitled, 1968, brush and ink, private collection.

Philip Guston, Head II, 1969, charcoal on paper mounted to paperboard, National Gallery of Art, gift of Edward R. Broida.

Philip Guston, The Studio, 1969, promised gift of Musa Guston Mayer to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Whether this is a self-portrait like the wall copy says, Mr. Cooper wrote: "I might prefer to call it a self-image because it is obviously not a likeness."

Guston's daughter, Musa Guston Mayer (who has the same first name as her mother and Guston's wife), attended the National Gallery's opening and proclaimed it "a gorgeous exhibition; a beautiful show," complimenting Cooper and the NGA staff.

Mayer was "thrilled" the show would hang for "a significant period of time which would not have happened without the postponement." Mayer is also the president and founder of the Guston Foundation which has promised the Gallery her father's complete Richard Nixon drawings which followed his watershed exhibition in 1970 at the Marlborough Gallery in New York.

There his art announced publicly that Guston was eschewing abstract expressionism for cartoonish figures and anti-heroes which Cooper attributes to "pure courage and conviction and  personal/aesthetic necessity."

(And rather than "abstract impressionism," Mr. Cooper wrote that it is "a term that some critics used to describe Philip Guston’s style of a softer abstract expressionism. I find it misleading because he had no interest in most of the Impressionists.")

Only one of Guston's pieces sold at the Marlborough.  (Not to miss: 12 of the original Marlborough 33 works in the separate gallery.)

Harry Cooper addresses the press at the National Gallery of Art, Mar. 2, 2023 with Guston's Dawn, right, and Caught, left, in the background with colors counter to the originals/By Patricia Leslie

Philip Guston, Painter’s Table, 1973, National Gallery of Art, Gift (Partial and Promised) of Ambassador and Mrs. Donald Blinken in memory of Maurice H. Blinken and in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art.

Philip Guston,The Ladder (detail), 1978, National  Gallery of Art, Gift of Edward R. Broida. That's Guston's wife's head surfacing on the horizon.

Cooper and Mayer both described Guston's art as "darkening" over time. Said Mayer about her father's change from color to dark colors: "I think it had to do with the darkening times."

Guston had been traumatized by current events, including the Vietnam War; he felt he could not ignore what was happening around him and began a shift from complete abstraction.

In 1968, the year of the Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy assassinations, Guston started painting hooded figures like members of the Ku Klux Klan which he called "self-portraits … I perceive myself as being behind the hood … The idea of evil fascinated me … I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan." 

He is quoted in the catalog and on a Gallery wall:

“So when the 60s came along I was feeling split. Schizophrenic. The [Vietnam] war, what was happening to [in] America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into [a] frustrated fury about everything – and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue."

The Marlborough criticism sent Guston packing to Italy for eight months when, upon returning to the U.S. and inspired by his friend, Philip Roth's novel, Our Gang, the artist began work on his Richard Nixon series.

They are 73 drawings which satirize the president and his henchmen, Henry Kissinger, John Mitchell, and Spiro Agnew, all completed in one year, 1971. The National Gallery has the entirety of the set on the walls on the main East Building floor.

When you go, enter the gallery on your right and circle, ending on the left with "Nixon cookie," "Spiro's Sponge Cake," and "Kissinger Pot Pie." (Those are not to miss!)

Guston planned to make the drawings into a book but held back. Finally, 21 years after his death, they came out in an exhibition and release of Philip Guston's Poor Richard by Deborah Bricker Balken, the University of Chicago Press. (A new edition, Poor Richard by Philip Guston with afterword by Mr. Cooper, is available.**)

Philip Guston, Poor Richard entrance, National Gallery of Art. In the center is Guston's San Clemente, Nixon's escape place after he resigned in 1974. It's the only painting  Guston made of the former president. See below/By Patricia Leslie

Philip Guston, San Clemente, 1975, Glenstone Museum. The wall label notes that Nixon has some pencils in his pocket, possibly a signal from the artist who may have sympathized with a celebrity under fire whose leg is bandaged from ill effects of phlebitis and Washington's attacks. 

Philip Guston, Poor Richard (no. 52), 1971, ink , the Guston Foundation, promised gift to the National Gallery of Art by Musa Guston Mayer. Guston's tatoos on Nixon's arms were prescient,  about 50 years ahead of the tatoo craze.

Philip Guston, Poor Richard (no. 46), 1971, ink , the Guston Foundation, promised gift to the National Gallery of Art by Musa Guston Mayer. Nixon in black face, patronizing black Americans with Spiro Agnew on left, and Henry Kissinger (or is that John Mitchell?), center. Notice hanging objects.

Philip Guston, Poor Richard (no. 37), 1971, ink , the Guston Foundation, promised gift to the National Gallery of Art by Musa Guston Mayer. In center left near the bottom are small letters with the words "Key Biscayne  Aug. 1971". Sink or swim?  Looks like Nixon and Kissinger are sinking, caught by the throes of the monster above, themselves?

At Poor Richard by Philip Guston, National Gallery of Art, Washington/By Patricia Leslie

Musa Guston Mayer welcomes guests to the Guston exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Mar. 2, 2023/By Patricia Leslie

Guston was born in Canada in 1913 where his parents had fled in 1905 to escape persecution in Ukraine.

When Philip was 10, the family moved to Los Angeles where, unable to find work, Guston's father committed suicide by hanging in the same year as the family's move. Whether Philip's mother or Philip himself found his father is debated.  According to the catalog's chronology, a few years later found Philip withdrawing to a closet with a single light bulb to read and to draw when family members came calling.   

Nine years later his brother died in a car accident.

When asked whether his father's death affected Guston's art, Cooper replied:

"Deeply. Look at the essay I wrote for the catalogue of the 2000 Yale-Harvard show, which was reprinted in the journal October. [Not easily accessible.] Most basically, I think his interest in hanging things (light bulbs, pull cords on shades) refers back to this trauma."

Once you are made aware of these objects and their connections to Guston's past, they seem to appear in almost every piece of his art.

Although several references, including label copy at the exhibition, say Guston was self-taught, Dr. Cooper said Guston "is not self-taught. He went to an arts high school (where he was friends with Jackson Pollock) and then went to Otis College of Art and Design for a few months."


Wikipedia says that at Los Angeles Manual Arts High School, he and Pollock protested the school's emphasis on sports vs. art and both were expelled, however, the catalog says only Pollock was caught and expelled but later graduated. Guston's graduation is not listed in the catalog.

Encouraged by Pollack to move east, Mr. Guston relocated to New York in 1936 where he quickly found work for the Federal Art Project as a muralist. Later, he joined abstract expressionists to create art representing the unconscious rather than reality or "inner" concepts rather than "outer" concepts.

Forty institutions and private collectors loaned art for the show, but the National Gallery has up 30 more than any of the other showplaces, including Guston's last works, single images made in 1980, the year he died. 

In an auditorium at the exhibition, an enthralling documentary, Philip Guston: A Life Lived (58 minutes, 1981), by Michael Blackwood runs continuously and features long interviews with Guston. In it the artist says art flowed from him; he was a mere vessel of transmittal.

The highest price ever paid for a Guston work was $25.8 million at Christie’s in 2013 for the abstract painting To Fellini (1958). His Smoking II (1973) sold for $7.65 million at Phillips in New York in 2019, neither of which appears in the show.


The Terra Foundation for American Art is a major sponsor of the international exhibition.

Out of respect for Black History Month in February, the Gallery postponed the opening of the exhibition until March of this year.

*The catalog, Philip Guston Now ($65), sold in the gift shops, is hardcover with 280 pages, most in color, a comprehensive chronology of Guston's life, and the lead essay by Harry Cooper.

**Also see Poor Richard by Philip Guston, $21, paperback, 73 drawings which Amazon calls " a monument of contemporary satirical art and virtuoso drawing."

What: Philip Guston Now

When: Through August 27, 2023. The National Gallery hours are 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. daily.

Where: East Building Concourse and Ground Floor, National Gallery of Art, 6th and Constitution, Washington

How much: Admission is always free at the National Gallery of Art.

Metro stations for the National Gallery of Art:
Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives, or L'Enfant Plaza

For more information: (202) 737-4215

Accessibility information: (202) 842-6905


patricialesli@gmail.com