GWA Newsletter: August

Hidden artworks across London; Christina Quarles on the podcast; a Tuscan Tarot Garden; and all the art you need to see, read, watch, do this month!

Aug 15, 2023

Artwork of the week: Winged Figure by Barbara Hepworth being installed at John Lewis on Oxford Street (1963)

Dear Great Women Art Lovers,

I hope you are all well. Coming at you from a sunny London morning!

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the art that is hidden from us in plain sight. Our towns, cities, and counties are full of it. This came to mind after I visited The National Gallery in London with a friend who, pointing to the floor, said “have you seen these?” I looked at my feet, and a kaleidoscopic mosaic pavement emerged. With images ranging from culture to learning – including Virginia Woolf sitting as Clio, muse of history – I couldn’t believe that I had never thought to look down!

I wrote about this topic for The Guardian last week. Read where I explore Boris Anrep’s mosaics, Barbara Hepworth’s colossal sculpture on the John Lewis flagship store on Oxford Street, or Angelica Kauffman’s roundel paintings on the ceiling of the Royal Academy of Arts. A preview:

“…it made me think about where our attention is directed. It’s not as though these stories or works never existed, it’s the fact that museums haven’t, for the most part, enabled us to notice them. So what we can do is seek out and direct others to these artworks, artists and stories, so we no longer miss out on what is right in front of us.”

I closed this season of The Great Women Artists Podcast with the fantastic Christina Quarles. I was lucky enough to visit her exhibition, Come In From An Endless Place, at Hauser & Wirth Menorca back in June – a gallery housed on an island, surrounded by water on all sides – and interview her onsite. Here’s a preview of our conversation, and don’t miss the show. Listen now:

On finding language through art:

“I am seen as white, but I am half black, half white. Therefore, I have this identity that is a very racialised identity … I was really finding shortcomings in that experience with how I could use language, and find language. I tried to come up with my own language to describe my experience. Ultimately, I found language to be quite a limiting way of talking about this idea of ‘multiplicity’. I found that art was as a visual medium where you could express contradictory ideas with a sense grace and beauty, and joy…”

On leaving spaces blank:

“When you work on paper, nobody ever mentions the blank paper on the page. You're really trained to ignore it. As soon as I worked on canvas, I was like, well, I'll just make my drawings on a canvas. Immediately people were bringing up the fact that there was raw canvas and areas that were not covered in paint.
It made me realise this idea of what can be a neutral ground that we're trained to ignore. I found that to be a lovely parallel for what it is like to move through the world – having moments where there's things you're taught to ignore, that are overlooked, are these neutral givens…”

I’ve been away travelling, visiting my favourite place in the world: Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden in Tuscany – click to watch a walking tour!

It’s a paradise filled with the artist’s ‘Nanas’ (her brilliant, bulbous-formed women). There’s The Empress, whose breasts each hold a bedroom and fully functioning kitchen (image below); The Emperor, a mystical climbing structure, which is often teeming with children; The High Priestess, who spouts water into one of Jean Tinguely’s kinetic iron machines, and so much more.

Click here to navigate the garden. And, if you want an in-depth insight to Niki, don’t miss her granddaughter, Bloum, speaking so lovingly on her grandmother for The Great Women Artists Podcast. And check out this dining room!

I’ve also been learning about some incredible women artists. Let me introduce you to Juana Romani, born Carolina Carlesimo in 1867 in Italy. She was one of the most famous artists of her day. Yet how has it taken now for me to hear of her?

A child when her mother brought her to Paris and when she began work as an artist model, Romani painted Biblical heroines in her signature romantic style. With their long billowing hair, enigmatic poses, Romani's figures exude a mysticism and power that feels both in line with the height of 1900s Paris and fashion today.

She exhibited at the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français from 1888 until 1904, and, as one of the most acclaimed female artists of the era, was known to have "unparalleled" fame. Sadly, in her mid-30s she began suffering paranoid hallucinations, followed by a period of ill-health. She was interned in an asylum "for the insane", and died in 1924, in anonymity.

I wonder how many of the surrealist women artists knew of her? Romani’s paintings are like nothing I've ever seen before: dark, dangerous yet utterly transfixing. I'd love to know more about her – here’s a great article for more.

OK! Here are 5 of your top 5. Love, Katy. Xoxox

PS. Did you spot The Story of Art Without Men in Netflix’s Heartstopper!? I was so excited to see it appear on Isaac’s reading list. Full list here!

5 Shows in the UK

The Pavilion by Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum at London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE (until 13 January)
Life Is More Important Than Art (ft. Susan Hiller) at Whitechapel Gallery (until 17 September)
Unruly Bodies (ft. Shadi Al-Atallah, Giulia Cenci, Miriam Cahn, Camille Henrot, Galli, Paloma Proudfoot) at Goldsmiths CCA (until 3 September)
Evelyn Hofer at The Photographers’ Gallery (until 23 September)
Material Power at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (until 29 October)

5 Shows Overseas

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg: Pollinator Pathmaker at LAS Art Foundation / Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (until 1 November 2026)
Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment at National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (until 20 August)
Nan Goldin: Memory Lost at Louisiana, DK (until 11 October)
Carrie Mae Weems: The Shape of Things at Luma Arles (until 2024)
Agnes Varda at St Trophome Cloister, Arles (24 September)

5 Things to Read

Judith Thurman on The Marchesa Casati in The New Yorker (2003)
Chess by Stefan Zweig (I just devoured this novella for the first time!)
How to be a French Girl by Rose Cleary
Ali Smith on Simone de Beauvoir for the New Statesman
Chris Hayes on Alice Neel’s Marxist Girl for Verso Books

5 Things to Listen to

Jessie Burton on Writing the Miniaturist for BBC Radio 4’s In the Studio
Elif Shafak on Writing in Lockdown for BBC Radio 4’s In the Studio
Patrick Radden Keefe on Longform
Saint Catherine explored by The Rest Is History
Flaneuse: Women Walk the City – Lauren Elkin and Brian Dillon for the London Review of Books Podcast

5 Artists You Should Know About

Marlene Dumas (b.1953)

Steeped in historic and contemporary politics and culture – from reimagining Mary Magdalene to immortalising the infamous – Dumas's paintings pulsate with colour and exude sensuality. She once said: “Painting is about the trace of the human touch. It is about the skin of a surface. A painting is not a postcard.”

Maro Gorky (b.1943)

As well as covering her entire house like a ‘total work of art’, Gorky, who has been working for over six decades, paints those who surrounded her (from people in the local Italian village to her friends and family), to sprawling kaleidoscopically-coloured landscapes.

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra (b.1967)

Born in 1967 in Chile, de la Horra grew up during Pinochet’s seventeen-year military regime. Since the 1990s she has been based in Germany and her works are filled with symbols from Indigenous and marginalised cultures.

Bianca Raffaella

Raffaella’s beautifully hyper-sensitive approach to painting allows for some of the most tactile works: with figures swarming in and out of her feather-like strokes, that range from couples to nudes to angels and self-portraits. Currently on TEAR: Tracey Emin Artist Residency.

Lenore Tawney (1907–2007)

“When I first started I had to make drawings, making what you call tapestries. It’d be like you make a drawing. A sketch, on a big piece of wrapping paper with pencil, you pin it underneath and it’s like a scale. I would put in my own colors as I went and that’s how that was.”

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.