What would life be without art? Science prolongs life.
To consist of what-
eating, drinking, and sleeping?
What is the good of living longer
if it only a matter of satisfying the requirements that sustain life?
All this is nothing with out the charm of art.
~ Sarah Bernhardt
National Museum of Women in Art
founded 1987
NMWA is the only major museum in the world
solely dedicated to recognizing women's creative contributions.
It's a place I'd wanted to go in D.C. ever since I'd heard about it! A museum dedicated to women artists! So often, women in history are forgotten and this is very much the case when it comes to the history of art.
Alice Bailly
b. 1872, Geneva, Switzerland; d. 1938, Lausanne,
Switzerland
Self-Portrait, 1917
Oil on Canvas
The building was originally built in 1903.
In 1983, NMWA purchased a landmark 78,810 square feet former Masonic temple in the Renaissance Revival style to house its works. After extensive renovations that included the addition of the two dramatic marble stairways linking the first floor and mezzanine, the museum opened to the public on April 7, 1987. The Elizabeth A. Kasser Wing opened November 8, 1997 making the entire facility 84,110 square feet.
The museum was founded to reform traditional histories of art. It is dedicated to discovering and making known women artists who have been overlooked or unacknowledged, and assuring the place of women in contemporary art. The museum’s founder, Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, and her husband Wallace F. Holladay began collecting art in the 1960s, just as scholars were beginning to discuss the under-representation of women in museum collections and major art exhibitions.
Impressed by a 17th-century Flemish still life painting by Clara Peeters that they saw in Europe, they sought out information on Peeters and found that the definitive art history texts referenced neither her nor any other woman artist. They became committed to collecting artwork by women and eventually to creating a museum and research center. wikipedia
Remedios Varo
b. 1908, Anglès, Spain; d. 1963, Mexico City
La Lamada (The Call), 1961
Oil on Masonite
I do not with to talk about myself
because I hold very deeply the belief
that what is important is the work, not the person.
~Remedios Varo
A perfect example of women in art, forgotten by larger society, is Berthe Morisot who was in all but one of the Impressionist Exhibitions, alongside her contemporaries like Monet, Cezanne, Pissarro and Renoir from 1874-1886. She was in many ways pushing the boundaries more than the men. In some of her paintings, her brushwork was so loose and expressionistic, she was more like the expressionists of the 20th Century!
b. 1841, Bourges, France; d. 1895, Paris
The Cage, 1885
Oil on Canvas
It is important to express oneself ...
provide the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience.
~Berthe Morisot
Suzanne Valadon
b. 1865, Bessines-sur Gartempe, France; d. 1938, Paris
The Abandoned Doll, 1921
Oil on canvas
Look at all the wonderful colors in the flesh tones. Ugh, it's so exquisite ... and next to the red?!
I paint with the stubbornness I need for living,
and I've found that all painters who love their art
do the same.
Janet Forrester Ngala
b. ca. 1936, Northern Teritory, Australia
Language group: Luritja
Milky Way Dreaming, 1998
Acrylic on canvas
b. 1891, Columbus, Georgia; d. 1978, Washington, D.C.
Iris, Tulips, Jonquils, and Crocuses, 1969
Oil on Canvas
Remember our heritage is our power;
we can know ourselves and our capacities by
seeing that other women have been strong.
b. 1920, Brooklyn, d.
Bacchus #3 (detail)
Acrylic and charcoal on canvas
(I LOVE this piece!!!!)
May Stevens
b. 1924, Boston
SoHo Women Artists, 1978
Acrylic on canvas
b. 1939, Chicago
Virginia Woolf (test plate for The Dinner Party), 1978
Glazed Porcelain
Porcelain plates like this one form a main component of Chicago's monumental work, The Dinner Party. This large installation consists of a triangular table with thirty-nine place settings, each dedicated to an influential woman in history. Chicago purposefully incorporated techniques traditionally associated with women, such as porcelain and needlework, to provoke questions about their traditional designation as craft rather than fine art.
If you have never seen an installation of the Dinner Party and you get the chance, definitely go see it. I saw it at the Hammer Museum in LA in 1996 and it really stuck with me and made a huge impression on me, as a woman. It was like going through time and history and in the end finding my place in it.
I believe in art that is connected to real human feeling-
that extends itself beyond the limits of the art world
to embrace all people
who are striving for alternatives in a an
increasingly dehumanized world.
Hung Liu
b. 1948, Changchun, China
Shui-Water, 2012
Color aquatint etching with gold leaf
I hope to wash my subject of their 'otherness'
and reveal them as dignified,
even mystic figures
on the grander scale of history painting.
~Hung Liu
b.1935, Bleiburg, Austria; d. 1997, Vienna
Superwoman, 1973
Oil and acrylic on canvas
"Superwoman comments on the representation of the female body in popular culture. With deadpan humor, Kogelnik challenges comic book clichés, which portray female superheroes-if they include them at all-clad in sexy, impractical costumes ..."
b. 1552, Bologna; d. 1614, Rome
Portrait of a Noblewoman, ca. 1580
Oil on canvas
I once had a boyfriend who asked why there weren't any genius women artists like Leonardo or Michelangelo. He's lucky he wasn't socked. There are a couple of ways to answer this. One is that there have been, but people don't usually know their names. (Critics and historians have selective memory and particular prejudices. I know that is shocking.)
The other answer, or reason there weren't as many painters in history of art, was lack of opportunity.
As a young artist, you would do what Michelangelo did, and go apprentice with an older established master. For a young girl or young lady this would have been completely inappropriate, to go off and live at an art studio with a man. Which is why you see so few women painters in the Renaissance, Baroque periods, etc.
For the most part if you were able to paint, you had a father or older brother you could learn from, like the painter Artemisia Gentileschi who became very well known in her time ... her dad was Orazio Gentileschi who was a known artist and contemporary of Caravaggio. This was also the case with this Renaissance master, Lavinia Fontana. Her father was a painter.
Doesn't it make you wonder how many incredible, talented, genius women were out there and not given the opportunity??
b. 1844, Allegheny City, Pennsylvania; d. 1926,
Le Mesnil-Theribus, France
Buste d'une femme en corsage blanc, 1905
oil on canvas
I hated conventional art.
I began to live.
~Mary Cassatt
I am independent!
I can live alone
and I love to work.
~Mary Cassatt
b. 1950, Bridgeport, Connecticut
Wonderful You, 1995
Oil, gold leaf, and collage on canvas
Real painters understand with a brush in their hand.
~Berthe Morisot
b. 1972, Columbus, Georgia
They call me Redbone but I'd Rather be Strawberry Shortcake, 2009
Oil on Canvas
(Love this work!)
From the museum website:
They Call Me Redbone but I’d Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake alludes to racial labeling directly, as the slang term “redbone” typically refers to a black woman with a light skin tone.
Typical of Sherald’s art, the young woman in They Call Me Redbone but I’d Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake appears to float against an intensely colored background, which enhances the work’s dreamy quality. The artist achieves this effect by limiting her use shadow along the figure’s contours. Here as in other works, Sherald disrupts viewers’ readings of her portrait subjects as black by painting their skin in grayscale, metaphorically removing their “color.”
Sherald modifies historical portrait formats to upend the dominant narrative of African American history. She notes: “I create playful yet sober portraits of black Americans within an imaginative history where I do black my way, in the European tradition of painted portraiture.” While historical portraitists aimed to reveal a sitter’s social standing or some essence of character, Sherald’s haunting figures are expressionless and dressed in unusual, costume-style clothing that she has collected.
b. 1844, Paris; d. 1923, Paris
Après la tempête (After the Storm),
ca. 1876
White marble
(Did you know she was a sculptor, as well as an actress?!)
From the museum website:
Her debut in Racine’s tragedy Iphigénie cemented her importance as a stage actress and launched what would become a 60-year career and a pan-European reputation as “the Divine Sarah." While acting, Bernhardt began studying sculpture with Mathieu Meusnier and Emilio Franchesci and became passionately devoted to the art.
By 1874, she was exhibiting her work at the Paris Salon, which she continued to do until 1886. Exhibitions of the artist’s sculpture were held in London, New York, and Philadelphia. Bernhardt participated in the World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900.
What matters poverty?
What matters anything
to him who is enamored of our art?
Does he not carry in himself every joy
and every beauty?
~Sarah Bernhardt
Marzia Migliora
b. 1972, Alessandria, Italy
Pleaure, 2002
Leather and thorns
"In Pleasure, she explores one of life's dualities: pleasure/pain. The supple leather of this pair of wedding gloves evokes the appealing sensation of touch. The thorns that stud their interior make them, ironically, untouchable. Such physical sensations evoke equivalent psychological ones."
b. 1908, Brookly; d. 1984, NYC
The Springs, 1964
Oil on canvas
b. 1961, Rio de Janeiro
Untitled, 1991
Iron
(I love how this looks like an organic tumble weed that looks like it would be rather light but it's made of iron wire and wigs about ninety pounds!)
E.V. Day
b. 1967, New York City
G-Force Dive, 2001
Spandex thongs with resin, monofilament, and turnbuckles
b. 1974, Poughkeepsie, New York
Provisions, 2008
Lithograph
Loved this artist (above) which are influence by old fairy tails and Indian Miniatures. So groovy. To see more of these, click here after you read the rest of the post.
b. 1965, New Orleans
Single Rose, 1997
Chromatic Print
Active ca. 1607-1630s, Antwerp, the Netherlands
A Still Life of Lilies, Roses, Iris, Pansies, Columbine,
Love-in-a-Mist-, Larkspur, and Other Flowers
in a Glass Vase on a Table Top,
Flanked by a Rose and a Carnation,
ca. 1610
Detail of Clara Peeters Still Life from 1610
"A pioneer in the field of still-life painting, Clara Peeters is the only Flemish woman known to have specialized in such pictures as early as the first decade of the 17th century."
I paint people to learn to know them.
~Suzanne Valadon
I got one of these buttons for the Women's March, benefitting the ACLU and Planned Parenthood with the sign language for I Love You.
Lauren, Shea and I, out in front of the museum! In honor of the Women's March on Washington, entry was free all weekend!
Women should be someone and not something.
~Mary Cassatt
A celebratory cocktail, bought for us by the sweet restaurant manager, in honor of the March!
You can find out more about the artists, under Artist Profiles on the Museum's Website Here
I have touched with a sense of art some people –
they felt the love and the life.
Can you offer me anything
to compare to that joy for an artist?
~Mary Cassatt
3 comments:
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed your coverage of this amazing museum. These paintings are incredible. Thanks for the detail,
and thank you for sharing.
xo
What a gorgeous place and a post you made in honor of it. I didn't realize it existed - my daughter was just in D.C. too for the march - I will tell her about this museum so she can go there next visit 💝
WHat a gorgeous place. Thanks for sharing so many beautiful paintings and talented female artists.
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