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GWA Newsletter April #2

The mysterious story of the photographing nanny; USA updates; the artist who teaches us how we consume images today; and all the art you need to know, read, do and see this week!

Katy Hessel

Apr 19, 2023

Exhibition of the week: *Sarah Sze: Timelapse* at Guggenheim

Dear Great Women Art Lovers,

I hope you are all well. Coming at you from another sunny spring day in NYC! With less than two weeks until The Story of Art Without Men publishes here in the US (preorder your copy here), we’ve been busy planning talks and events, collaborations with the world’s greatest museum (!!), and some very exciting features. All to be announced soon.

A few updates: The Great Women Artists Podcast returned last week with an episode featuring the legendary artist, Sonia Boyce. We discussed her upbringing in London; visiting Whitechapel Gallery as a kid; her epic win at the Venice Biennale last summer; collecting posters, articles and vinyl covers that honour Black British women musicians for her Devotional Collection; and the power of friendship between artists – Boyce was a major player in the Black Arts Movement of the 1980s. Take a listen. Here’s a preview:

"We were part of that generation of get up and do it yourselves. But much of the art history that I've been taught was about the way movements emerge through familial networks of artists who gathered … We were friends and we were also professionally trying to get stuff done, but in a very DIY way. It's the arrogance of youth that one can have – you approach a space and say, 'We want to do something here'.”

Today we released the season’s second episode on Vivian Maier (1926–2009), the very private yet supremely inquisitive street photographer who spent her days working as a nanny. Despite taking pictures incessantly and amassing more than 100,000 negatives, Maier never published or exhibited her work in her lifetime. You can listen to this fascinating story now. A preview:

“…it was a secret to not let people know, which is why I think her mother invented her birthplace, her parents’ names, her birth certificate – the record of her birth does not have a father listed. All of this, I think, helped form who she was.”

For the Guardian this week, I wrote my column on Sarah Sze’s visualisations of the overload of images in the 21st century – and our 'new ways' of experiencing art. (Visiting her Guggenheim exhibition got me thinking about this.) Also referenced is John Berger's Ways of Seeing, and Philip Glass's thoughts on music: “an underground river … it’s always there” – something that sparked my mind after watching a play about his Glassworks here in NYC. Read now. A preview:

Berger states that “original paintings are still unique … they look different from how they look on the television screen or on postcards … reproductions distort”. Through her laboratory-like worlds of shattered imagery, Sze allows me to attempt to understand how we are consuming images. But it also makes me question, through the abundance of technology, whether we are losing the sensory experience of viewing art, or being in the world at large.

For those in the US: Last Monday we announced the US Book Tour for The Story of Art Without Men (out 2 May) with talks and events at the Guggenheim in NYC (book included in ticket price), Hirshhorn in DC, MFA Boston, Barnes in Philadelphia, stops in LA and San Francisco, and more. Preorder your copy here. ( + Signed copies available from Barnes & Noble!)

Can’t make them? On 25 May 3pm PT / 6pm EST I will be giving an online talk for paid Substack subscribers on the book and answering all your questions. I hope to meet some of you there! Sign up here.

Last week, I visited every independent bookshop in the City to sign lots of special copies. Pick up (or preorder) yours from the likes of Three Lives, Rizzoli Bookstore, The Corner Bookstore, Strand Book Store, 192 Books, and more.

Have you seen the Barbican exhibition on Alice Neel? For those who haven’t yet – what have you been doing? – you can watch my tour of Hot Off The Griddle – a title taken from a great quote of hers:

"One of the reasons I painted was to catch life as it goes by, right hot off the griddle, because when painting or writing are good it's taken right out of life itself, to my mind"

Looking ahead: for those in the UK, I’ll be speaking at Hay Festival on Sunday 4 June (as well as interviewing Jeremy Deller and Will Gompertz on Friday 2nd).

As always, stay up to date with our IG to check out all the shows we’re visiting in NYC. Also, I love making playlists, so follow along to my NYC mixtape if you’re interested. OK – let’s take a look at everything you need to see, read, do, and discover.

Love, Katy. Xoxo

5 Shows in the UK

Alberta Whittle at the Holburne Museum (until 8 May)
Florence Peake at Southwark Park Galleries (until 2 July)
Hilma af Klint at Tate Modern (opens 20 April, until 3 September)
Kudzanai-Violet Hwami at Victoria Miro (until 13 May)
Tschabalala Self at the De La Warr Pavilion (until 29 October)

5 Shows Overseas

Carrie Mae Weems at the Getty, LA (until 9 July)
Dana Schutz at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (until 11 June)
Helen Frankenthaler at Gagosian, NYC (until 22 April)
Marilyn Minter at LGDR, NYC (until 3 June)
Nicole Eisenman at the Print Center New York, NYC (until 13 May)

5 Things to Read

John-Baptiste Oduor on Steve McQueen’s ‘Grenfell’ for ArtReview
Lamorna Ash on learning poetry on her visit to a remote Scottish island for the New Statesman (always tune into Lamorna every other Monday!)
Lucie Elven on Cecilia Vicuña’s Turbine Hall installation at Tate Modern for the LRB
Roberta Smith, ‘I Was Wrong About Cecily Brown’ for the New York Times
Read about the NY resident who commissioned the signatures of famous historical women-artists into the wet cement outside her home on the Upper East Side in Hyperallergic

Bonus link: I really enjoyed reading Dan Chandler in the Guardian on the future of Labour and the philosopher John Rawls (who also has a great In Our Time episode, if you want to expand your mind). I am super excited for Dan’s upcoming book, Free and Equal, which publishes tomorrow in the UK.

5 Artists Discovered

Sosa Joseph (b.1971)

Joseph lives and works in Mattancherry in Fort Kochi, India, and often paints the bazaar near to her studio filled with women and animals. She says: “I think the idea is to look beyond the women, and the local things… I am more interested in the sum of the references and what they could mean. I don’t decide what my painting will be about before making it.”

Arisa Yoshioka (b.2000)

Yoshioka grew up between Mongolia and Japan. She paints uncanny, figurative paintings using a woody palette – browns, dark greens and muted reds – that come together to create an almost cracking window into her world.

Sylvia Sleigh (1916-2010)

Sleigh painted her community in her vibrant, Neo-Realist paintings. She repossesses a male-dominated art history by presenting men in idealised and provocative Venus-like poses, directly citing works by nineteenth-century painters. She has said: “To me, women were often portrayed as sex objects in humiliating poses. I wanted to give my perspective. I liked to portray both man and woman as intelligent and thoughtful people with dignity and humanism that emphasised love and joy.”

Nina Katchadourian (b.1968)

I saw Katchadourian’s exhibition at The Morgan Library last Friday, and fell in love with her series Sorted Books – where she puts books from people's personal collection together and makes poems out the titles. Here are more!

Aliza Nisenbaum (b.1977)

This weekend, I am super excited to visit Queens, Lindo y Querido by figurative painter Aliza Nisenbaum, at the Queens Museum. Dazzling, colossal and meticulously rendered paintings chronicle the artist’s years-long engagement with the people of the local neighbourhood, Corona.

5 Things to do

19 April: Artist talk with Chila Kumari Singh Burman talk at the Zabludowicz Collection

20 April: Online talk on the Legacies of the Ball’s Plantation with Alberta Whittle, Natalie McGuire and Allison Thompson, chaired by Dorothy Price and hosted by the Holburne Museum

21 April: Curator tour of Berthe Morisot with Dr Lois Oliver at Dulwich Picture Gallery

23-24 April: Fran Leibowitz at London Palladium

27-30 April: London Library Lit Fest. (Not to be missed!)

That’s it from me! Happy GWA’ing. Thank you for reading this Substack. If you think someone else might enjoy this too, please spread the word and share this article. If you have any feedback, please comment below.