To Be a Lady

to be a

Lady

an international celebration of women in the arts

Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Singapore

GALLERY MISSION Established in 2000, Sundaram Tagore Gallery is devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures. We focus on developing exhibitions and hosting not-for-profit events that encourage spiritual, social and aesthetic dialogues. In a world where communication is instant and cultures are colliding and melding as never before, our goal is to provide venues for art that transcend boundaries of all sorts. With alliances across the globe, our interest in cross-cultural exchange extends beyond the visual arts into many other disciplines, including poetry, literature, performance art, film and music.

new york • hong kong • singapore

TO BE A LADY

by Jason Andrew

You are not a woman. You may try—but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl...

—Mary Anne Evans, aka George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, 1876

For centuries, the word lady has been a nuanced term for women prescribed by social mores. Politeness, good manners and correct attire shaped what it meant to be a lady. To be considered as such was once the goal of every woman across every economic spectrum. At least, that’s what the men thought.

During most of the twentieth century, women have been at the forefront of social and political reform worldwide. From Western suffragettes to activists that took to the streets in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen during the recent Arab Spring, women have played and continue to play pivotal roles in bringing about revolutionary change. Their art, whether directly politically motivated or not, pushes beyond ideological lines to reshape and redefine the world we live in.

It can be argued that the ladies have been part of nearly every art movement over the past century. They can be credited with bursting open the once taboo subjects of politics, societal roles, sex and gender with their work. Their art has come to empower women in all fields of society and continues to ignite debate about inequality, poverty and social exclusion.

Globally, the contribution of women to a society’s transition from preliterate to literate, from a relatively

autonomous community to a nation enmeshed in a world economy has received too little attention from social scientists and policy-makers, not to mention critics, curators and historians.

Acknowledging the grossly imbalanced representation of women in the art world, this ambitious exhibition underscores the collective imagination of women. It was originally conceived in the summer of 2012 and focused solely on American artists; this new expanded edition comprises more than forty works by historic, mid-career and emerging American artists. It also includes important works by prominent artists from China, Egypt, Iceland, Singapore, South Africa and the UK, offering a global sampling that celebrates women on an international scale as they continue to break the mold, re-write history and modernize what it means to be a lady.

To Be a Lady is not intended to be a comprehensive survey, but a very personal selection of art that represents a kaleidoscope of styles, images and personalities that I have come to respect and an aesthetic I admire. Juxtaposing an international selection of established and emerging artists offers the opportunity to compare and contrast how each generation has built upon preceding ones; the ideas, even the process, is passed on.

5

The use of the word lady, here, is a provocation.1 For much of the early twentieth century, and particularly in the West, women have been up against the lady painter image which historian Linda Nochlin suggests was “established in 19th century etiquette books and reinforced by the literature of the times.” 2 Despite what might appear to be great progress for women in the arts, these societal expectations continue into the present, impeding recognition. “I’m an artist not a woman artist,” 3 Lee Krasner said.

Today, to be a lady may still retain a sense of status in some circles. In others, it’s saturated in prejudice, imparting a frivolous or non-serious sensibility. “Lady carries with it overtones recalling the age of chivalry: the exalted stature of the person so referred to, her existence above the common sphere,” writes Robin Tolmach Lakoff in her study of language and woman’s place. “This gives the term a polite sense at first, but we must also remember that these implications are perilous: they suggest that a lady is helpless, and cannot do things for herself. At first blush it is flattering: the object of the flattery feels honored, cherished, and so forth; but by the same token, she is also considered helpless, and not in control of her own destiny.” 4 From our current vantage point, with more than a hundred years of women’s suffrage behind us,5 it could be said that an exhibition curated by gender only reinforces the theory that women and their art need special handling. So why another exhibition of just the ladies? Because, despite great progress, we still have a lot of ground to make up. As women around the world continue to realize their voice and find support for their ideas, the timing could not be more pertinent. Vestiges of another time remain still.

This has been especially apparent given America’s canonization of the male Abstract Expressionists and the staggering statistics of the guys dominating the global art market.

6

In addition to these hierarchical canonizations, contemporary culture remains transfixed, even obsessed, with the Enfant Terrible: those bad boys we all love to hate. This adulation is rampant in the art world and has risen to exhausting proportions in the world of dance. “Why are there no great women choreographers?” There is also a keen priority placed on youth; as if everyone over thirty lacks inspiration or creative pulse. Women remain a statistical minority in today’s gallery world.6 But “The way to beat discrimination in art is by art,” Eva Hesse once said.7 Volumes have been written on many of the more historic figures included in this exhibition. Their art lays the groundwork for those who followed. As historian Eleanor Munro suggests, a lady “would not have to break with her past to become herself as, it seems, the creative male is impelled to overthrow his father by symbolically rejecting his art.” 8 Every artist must overcome boundaries—some being the result of traditional expectations imposed over time. For women in the arts, as in many other fields, a special fortitude and commitment can be seen in the work and lives of those who succeed.

For many, even today, it’s been a grueling struggle against what Nochlin termed “those bailiwicks of white masculine prerogative.” 9 Nochlin suggested that women artists are “more inward-looking, more delicate and nuanced in their treatment of their medium.” 10 I would add that their attentiveness to the process of making is what gives them the ability to flex and extend not only the physical limitations of the materials, but connect to a psychological meaningfulness as well.

A direct contact with materials connects the artists in this exhibition. Whether it is a corporeal sculpture by Louise Nevelson, an expressive canvas by Alice Neel, or a sculptural vignette by Viola Frey, these ladies

exude a tactile process and manipulated rigor. This same rigor can be seen in a more recent generation of international artists including Ghada Amer, Shirin Neshat and Yin Xiuzhen. Irony and satire have no place in their kind of art-making. Even when the work’s meaning is tongue-in-cheek, these artists are engaged with materiality and form in ways that are not ironically distanced. Though not all the work here is socially or politically motivated, it does speak to the contemporary experience.

Lady is a term given to a woman by someone else. These ladies aren’t asking to be given anything. When I look at the artists assembled here, each represented by a signature work, I wonder why women aren’t doing better professionally, aren’t more prominently represented globally. What are the barriers that still exist? Perhaps this exhibition will remind us the world is full of great artists, and many of them happen to be ladies.

Notes 1 I have grown familiar with many of the women selected for this exhibition and use the word lady affectionately and respectfully; yet at the same time I recognize the constraints that the term implies.

The nineteenth amendment to the United States Constitution that guarantees all women the right to vote was ratified in 1920, but there was fifty years of prior experience.

6 According to a 2010 survey of galleries in the Chelsea area

of New York City by the online watch group Brainstormers (Top Offenders 2010, http://www.brainstormersreport. net/TopOffenders2010.html), the highest percentage of women represented by a single gallery was 27 percent.

This particular gallery is now closed. The lowest was a miserable 4 percent. In my own research, I have found some improvement in 2012, with the best representation now reaching a whopping 35 percent (one gallery) and the lowest still at 4 percent, with the averages being around 22 percent.

Cindy Nemser, Art Talk: Conversations with 15 Women Artists (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), p.11.

7

Eleanor Munro, Originals: American Woman Artists (New York: Touchstone / Simon & Schuster, 1979), p. 53.

8

9

Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”

10

Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”

Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” ARTnews, January 1971, p. 69.

2

Michael Kernan, “Out of Pollock’s Shadow: Her Life & Art Seen Whole at Last,” Washington Post, October 23, 1983, L1.

3

Robin Tolmach Lakoff, Language and Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 55.

4

There has been more than a century’s experience with women’s suffrage. New Zealand gave all adult women the vote in 1893. In the United States (apart from a brief experiment in New Jersey, ending in 1807), territories and states started giving women the vote in 1869 (Wyoming) and 1870 (Utah).

5

7

Charmion von Wiegand, born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco, began as a traditional painter in 1926. In 1941, she met Piet Mondrian and they formed a close friendship, which led von Wiegand to become a modernist. Mondrian’s spiritual nature and Neo-Plastic aesthetic became fundamental to von Wiegand’s works of the mid-1940s and by 1947 she had departed from the formal constraints of pure geometric abstraction. Her study of Theosophy, combined with her intimate relationship with Piet Mondrian, lead to innovative compositions that drew inspiration from a growing fascination with Eastern mysticism.

CHARMION VON WIEGAND (American, 1896–1983; lived and worked in New York City) Gouache #88: Southern Sanctuary, 1958 Gouache, graphite and chalk on paper 20 x 14 inches (50.8 x 35.6 cm) Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York

Floor plans of Tibetan temples, mandalas and geometric designs symbolizing the universe—all derived from her study of Zen Buddhism—became prominent components in her paintings and collage at a time when Buddhism was relatively unfamiliar in the West.

11

LOUISE NEVELSON (American, born in Kiev, 1899–1988; lived and worked in New York City) Night Flower One, 1958 Wood painted black 36.25 x 24.75 x 3.75 inches (92.1 x 62.9 x 9.5 cm) © 2013 Estate of Louise Nevelson/ Artists Rights Society (ARS). Courtesy Pace, New York

Louise Nevelson is one of the most recognizable artists of the twentieth century thanks to her monumental monochromatic wood sculptures. Experimenting early on in conceptual art using found objects, she quickly found her voice collecting wood objects of all types and assembling them in unique and innovative ways.

Embracing both Eastern and Western sensibilities, her work recalls traditions as diverse as Japanese Buddhist temples and early modernists’ assemblage. Although Nevelson’s first New York show was in 1941, it wasn’t until she was nearly sixty that she garnered the reputation as a pioneering grand dame of the art world and one of America’s foremost artists.

I give the work order, by one tone … Black means totality.

It means: contains all … Black is not death. Black is harmony.

— Louise Nevelson

12

Alice Neel is widely regarded as one of the greatest figurative painters of the twentieth century. A New York painter through and through she developed an expressionistic approach to the traditional forms of portraiture, landscape and still life. Her eccentric choice of subjects included primarily those closest to her including family, friends and an eclectic variety of locals: writers, poets, artists. Through her forthright and at times humorous touch, her work engaged with ongoing political and social issues, including gender, racial inequality and labor struggles.

ALICE NEEL (American, 1900–1984; lived and worked in New York City) Sunset in Spanish Harlem, 1958 Oil on canvas 39 x 22 inches (99.1 x 55.9 cm) Collection of AXA Equitable, New York Photo Š Jason Mandella

Not so unlike many women artists included in this exhibition, Neel was remarkably impervious to the fluctuating artistic movements she witnessed, and she famously reaffirmed her commitment to the human body at a time when her avant-garde contemporaries were denouncing figuration.

13

JANICE BIALA (American, born in Bialystok, Poland, 1904–2001; lived and worked in Paris and New York City) Red Still Life, 1957 Oil on canvas 35 x 46 inches (88.9 x 116.8 cm) Estate of Janice Biala, courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York

Well-regarded in France and the United States, Biala is most noted for her paintings of intimate interiors, portraits of famous friends and the places she traveled. In 1930, on a trip to Paris, she met and fell in love with the English novelist Ford Madox Ford, whom she remained with until his death in 1939. Biala became the perfect representative of American bohemia in France, signing her paintings simply as Biala. Upon her return to New York City she became one of the few women associated with the New York School. Biala and Louise Bourgeois were the only women invited to participate in Artists’ Session at Studio 35, a historic meeting of the Abstract Expressionists in April 1950.

All of Biala’s paintings seem touched by a tough ingenuousness—never sentimental or naïve, but slightly nostalgic in their playful intimacy. Suffusing them is the outlook of a painter who has found what she needs and knows what she wants to do. The results glow with a wondrous candor.

— John Goodrich in The New York Sun, December 13, 2007

14

Elaine de Kooning dedicated a significant part of her early life and career to relentlessly promoting the talent of her husband, while skillfully positioning herself as an art critic for major art magazines and as a well-versed art lecturer. But as she situated herself among the most critically acclaimed creative minds of the period, Elaine de Kooning the artist was deftly creating a body of work of exceptional range that was all her own.

Although she wavered between pure and figurative abstractions throughout her life, de Kooning’s portraits, which she executed throughout most of her career, were perhaps her most unique work. This mastery of the portrait genre was confirmed when she was commissioned to paint President John F. Kennedy for the Truman Library in 1963, just before his death.

ELAINE DE KOONING (American, 1918–1989; lived and worked on Long Island and in New York City) The Woman Who Didn’t Show Up, 1962 Oil on canvas 60.5 x 40 .5 inches (153.67 x 102.87 cm) Levis Fine Art, New York

15

GRACE HARTIGAN (American, 1922–2008; lived and worked in Baltimore and New York City) Pomegranate, 1961–62 Oil on canvas 62.75 x 50 inches (159.4 x 127 cm) Private Collection, New York Photo © Kris Graves

16

Grace Hartigan’s remarkable career began in the early 1950s as one of the few women recognized among the male-dominated New York School of Abstract Expressionism.

As the only woman selected to exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art’s influential traveling show The New American Painting (1958), which toured eight European countries and introduced the world to Abstract Expressionism, she challenged the notion that only men could paint big.

Never completely breaking from figuration, Hartigan integrated recognizably representational images including those from art history and pop culture. Her work has been championed for its intense colors, broad shapes executed with loose brushwork and a strong, heavy line as evidenced here in the stellar painting Pomegranate.

Shirley Goldfarb arrived in Paris from New York City in 1954, joining an expatriate community that included Joan Mitchell, Shirley Jaffe and Janice Biala. In Paris, she came into her own as an artist, diffusing the painterly action of Abstract Expressionism with a sense of light and color owed to her new adoptive city.

Goldfarb’s days in Paris were marked by walks to a café where she would sit, write and reflect on what she saw. Her paintings express these daily rituals, resulting in keen, subtle and warm canvases that often paid tribute to her vibrant life.

SHIRLEY GOLDFARB (American, 1925–1980; lived and worked in Paris) Orage, 1955 Oil on canvas 51 x 76.75 inches (129.5 x 195 cm) Estate of Shirley Goldfarb, courtesy Loretta Howard Gallery, New York

Goldfarb was an active participant in experimental happenings and films; she embraced the connection between art and life. Her paintings run parallel to her longstanding practice of journaling and recording video, documenting life in the café, at home and in the studio.

17

RUTH ASAWA (American, 1926–2013; lived and worked in San Francisco) Plane Tree #13, 1959 Black ink on coated paper 12.5 x 19 inches (31.8 x 48.3 cm) Courtesy Amy Wolf Fine Art and Elrick-Manley Fine Art, New York

Ruth Asawa and her family were interned after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Her first art lessons came from Walt Disney Studios artists who visited the internment camp during the Second World War. At Black Mountain College, she found her unique aesthetic voice among many of America’s great vanguard artists: Josef and Anni Albers and architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller influenced her early career. During a trip to Toluca, Mexico, in 1947, she learned to crochet; today she is best known for her wire crocheted sculptures.

Asawa often thought out her ideas by sketching with ink on wax-coated paper.

Her drawings, much like her sculpture, were created through the repetition of a single calligraphic motion.

She drew inspiration from nature. This series of works features the plane tree, which she sketched during visits to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

20

Helen Frankenthaler is one of the great American artists of the twentieth century.

Celebrated as a Color Field painter, Frankenthaler is credited with advancing the methods of mid-century painterly abstraction.

In the early 1950s, Frankenthaler began experimenting with stain painting inspired by the work of Jackson Pollock. She thinned her paints with turpentine and applied large washes of color onto unprimed canvas. Expanding upon her soak-stain technique, she worked with a counterpoise of painterly drawing and areas of affective color, at times with an ambiguous figuration, at others in a more sparsely abstract mode.

HELEN FRANKENTHALER (American, 1928–2011) Race Point, 1969 Oil on canvas 54.5 x 19 inches (138.4 x 48.3 cm) Private collection, courtesy Norte Maar Photo © Kris Graves

From 1958 to 1971, Frankenthaler was married to the Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell. For a short period the couple summered at the tip of Cape Cod in Provincetown, Massachusetts. This painting, Race Point, is titled after one of the Cape’s most famous beaches.

21

JAY DEFEO (American, 1929–1989; lived and worked in Berkeley, California) Untitled (Florence), 1952 Tempera and ink with collage on paper 20 x 14.75 inches (50.8 x 37.5 cm) © 2013 The Jay DeFeo Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York

Despite her iconic status as creator of the epic painting The Rose (1958–1966), entire bodies of work by Jay DeFeo remain largely unknown. Her early work has only recently been rediscovered.

DeFeo toured Europe from 1951 to 1952. As Dana Miller has written in her exhibition catalogue for the 2013 Jay DeFeo retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art: “Her impressions of Europe as a whole were affected by the patina of age that blanketed her surroundings, in particular the eroded exteriors of the buildings—a textural wear that would come to inform the surfaces of many of her later works.”

“Textural wear” and architectural structure can be seen in this work, which combines abstract gesture with a carving out of space suggestive of windows or a city plaza in which centuries of time have passed.

22

Niki de Saint Phalle was a self-taught French sculptor, painter and filmmaker. A lover of myths, she developed a style of vibrant color, fanciful figures and imaginative creatures with convergent themes of life and death, pleasure and destruction.

In 1963, de Saint Phalle performed the first of a series of “shooting paintings” that happened in the United States. Sponsored by the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles, de Saint Phalle made her monumental work King Kong. This drawing is a study for the relief sculpture “the monster” that is one of several pictorial elements of the larger King Kong tableau. The complete work was installed at the Dwan Gallery for de Saint Phalle’s solo exhibition in January 1964. Part drawing, part correspondence, the drawing captures de Saint Phalle’s creative, playful and impulsive spirit as well as her love of horror movies.

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE (French, 1930–2002; lived and worked in Paris and New York City) Study for sculpture Tyrannosaurus Rex, c.1963 Marker, ink, pencil on paper 14.2 x 19.3 inches (36 x 49 cm) Virginia Dwan Collection, New York, courtesy Norte Maar

23

SUSAN WEIL (American, born New York City, b.1930; lives and works in New York) The Queen’s Tea Party, 2011 Acrylic on canvas 48.5 x 48 inches (123.1 x 121.9 cm) Sundaram Tagore Gallery

Susan Weil has been a continual force in the art world, straddling the line between the figurative and the abstract. She emerged from Black Mountain College in the late 1940s and took New York by storm with a diverse oeuvre of collage, sculpture and prints. An influential member of the New York School, Weil continues to embrace serious and playful elements in her work. She has never been afraid to pursue figuration, unabashedly drawing inspiration from nature, literature, photography and her personal history.

Through her cropped, cut and reconfigured compositions, Weil deconstructs and reconstructs images, setting figures in motion, forcing the viewer to contemplate numerous perspectives at once. In her skilled hands, the result isn’t dissonance and chaos but a harmonious sense of fluid movement. Her dynamic assemblages hover between the abstract and concrete, and between painting and sculpture.

24

Dorothea Rockburne arrived at Black Mountain College at the age of 18. Even at this age, she was aware of her path in life and credits her interest in the intersection between art, nature and mathematics to professor Max Dehn, a one-time colleague and long-time friend of Albert Einstein. Dehn tutored her in mathematics and directed her to Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry.

Rockburne’s work of the late 1960s and early 1970s in New York involved crude materials such as cutting oil and Kraft paper, which she gave structure through folding and refolding according to abstract mathematical theorems. Her study of the Golden Mean—found throughout nature, astronomy, music, architecture, art and the human body—is explored in her Copal Series. Even in seemingly barren compositions such as Copal #14 (1977), the artist offers a gestural link that in some way connects us all.

DOROTHEA ROCKBURNE (American, born Montreal, b.1932; lives and works in New York City) Copal #14, 1977 Kraft paper, copal oil varnish, Prismacolor pencil #3, 3M 415 tape 39 x 29 inches (99 x 73.7 cm) © 2013 Dorothea Rockburne / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York Courtesy of the artist and Van Doren Waxter Gallery, New York

25

VIOLA FREY (American, 1933–2004; lived and worked in Berkeley, California) Man in Suit & Column, 1996 Ceramic 30.5 x 27 x 16 inches (77.5 x 68.6 x 40.6 cm) © Artists’ Legacy Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Courtesy Nancy Hoffman Gallery

26

A pioneer of California ceramics best known for her colossal statues, Viola Frey is one of the most influential sculptors of the twentieth century.

Frey emerged from the Abstract Expressionist traditions of the 1950s where painting, craft and design were merging and diverging in dynamic ways. She adopted her unique style and visual vocabulary through her life-long fascination with mass-produced ceramic figurines, which she collected from flea markets. Frey began capturing and recounting her own personal relationships—recollections through ceramic vignettes.

Frey expanded the traditional boundaries of ceramic sculpture, making mammoth work in clay. Her influence expanded far past the Bay Area where she spent most of her life teaching and creating art. Primitive and childlike in style, Frey’s work couples a rawness and innocence with the cold persona associated with the shallowness of suburban culture.

For more than four decades, Hermine Ford has explored the theme of human experience as it relates to shifting continents, changing climates, archeological discoveries and over-lapping cultural histories. Ford renders in both large pattern and subtle detail the trueness of intimate histories: that which can only be discovered in long walks where land meets the sea, on medieval cobblestone, on modern concrete streets. Always a witness to the architectural battle between man and nature—a measured life in the shadow of a sun dial—Ford’s paintings show a courage to persist and evolve with the world, embracing the quiet and raging, civilization upon civilization, time upon time.

HERMINE FORD (American, b.1939; lives and works in Nova Scotia and New York City) Bird Music, 2012 Oil paint, ink, watercolor, gouache, pencil and colored pencil on canvas on shaped wood panel 87 x 38.75 x .75 inches (221 x 98.4 x 2 cm) Courtesy the artist and Norte Maar

27

NANCY GROSSMAN (American, b.1940; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York) Combustion Scapes: Collapsing Fire Field, 1994 Mixed-media collage drawing 38 x 50 inches (96.5 x 127 cm) Courtesy Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York

28

No other artist has challenged the ideas of gender identity and gender fluidity more than Nancy Grossman. Most recognized for her figurative sculpture that use straps, spikes, zippers, leather and ropes to imply sexual ambiguity with concerns about the physicality of the body, Grossman’s collages continue this exploration and love for material.

Inspired by the dramatic and volatile volcanic fields of Hawaii, Grossman created this work, Combustion Scapes: Collapsing Fire Field (1994). Tactile and provocative, this work portrays a heated inner turmoil associated with the artist’s psychological personal struggle with violence and sex.

Elizabeth Murray rid the world of the rectangular picture plane, building stretchers and shaped forms that better represented the way she saw the world. Her distinctive canvases break with the art-historical tradition of illusionistic space in two-dimensions, jutting out from the wall as sculptural form. Murray playfully blurs the line between the painting as object, and the painting as a space for depicting objects. Filled with a unique sense of humor about life, her lively and bold work reveals a fascination with dream states and often depicts the psychological underbelly of domestic life.

ELIZABETH MURRAY (American, 1940–2007; lived and worked in New York City) The Unscrew Painting, 1993 Oil on canvas on wood 73 x 71 x 12 inches (185.4 x 180.3 x 30.5 cm) © 2013 The Murray-Holman Family Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Kerry Ryan McFate / Courtesy Pace, New York

29

PAT STEIR (American, b.1940; lives and works in Vermont and New York City) Painting with Red and Gold in the Center, 2012 Oil on canvas 60 x 50 inches (152.4 x 127 cm) Courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York

32

In 1988, Pat Steir began to experiment with pouring, dripping, pushing and squirting paint onto a prepared canvas. The result of which became the artist’s first Waterfall paintings and liberated Steir almost overnight from years of relying on imagery; she let the record of the process become the image itself.

In essence, Steir intentionally removes herself from the action, allowing gravity, time and the environment to determine the work’s result. She positions nature and its elemental forces as active participants. In this vein, Steir is also profoundly influenced by Chinese painting traditions and techniques, especially the inky marks of the eighth- and ninth-century Yi-pin “ink-splashing” painters, and Taoist philosophy’s aspiration for harmonious, unfettered connections between man, nature and the cosmos.

The monumental plate paintings by Jennifer Bartlett have captivated the art world for more than three decades. Blending conceptualism with painterly form, these works are among Bartlett’s most celebrated and reflect the artist’s ongoing fascination with systems, color and shape.

While naturally engaged with the most serious artistic movements of the late 1960s—Minimalism, Conceptualism and Process Art—Bartlett showed from the start a temperament that favored expansiveness and inclusiveness over reductionism.

JENNIFER BARTLETT (American, b.1941, lives and works in New York City) Count, 1972 Enamel over silkscreen grid on baked steel plates Overall: 38 x 38 inches (96.5 x 96.5 cm) Private collection, courtesy of Norte Maar

Count (1972) originates from this early era where we see her establishing a vocabulary of grids, dots and patterns to explore variation on compositional themes.

The 12-inch-square enameled steel plates act both as the basic unit of composition and as the painting surface itself.

33

LYNDA BENGLIS (American, b.1941; lives and works in New York City and Santa Fe, New Mexico) Beatrice, 1979 Chicken wire, plaster, gesso and gold leaf 39 x 19 x 9 inches (99.1 x 48.3 x 22.9 cm) Š 2013 Lynda Benglis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York

Arriving on the New York art scene in the late 1960s with her poured latex and foam works, Lynda Benglis created a retort to the male- dominated painting and sculpture inspired by Minimalism and Process Art. Known for her exploration of metaphorical, sexual and biomorphic shapes, Benglis is concerned with the physicality of form and its effect on viewers. She uses a range of materials to render dynamic impressions of mass and surface: soft becomes hard, hard becomes soft and gestures are frozen.

In Benglis’ work, the act of artistic creation is embedded in presentation of process and the expression of movement in materials. While this can be seen as a more formalistic pursuit, within her work it becomes an act of transformation, an alchemical presentation in which material presence combines with artistic manipulation as an extension of the body.

34

Judith Murray has created a trademark language that is abstract and deeply expressive. Oil paintings from early in her career exhibited stark and incisive forms in red, white, yellow and black. The vertical bar down the right-hand edge of the canvas that first appeared in those paintings has become a permanent element in all her work, in effect anchoring the rest of the canvas to the frame. Over the years, she has remained faithful to the use of only these four colors, mixing and combining them to produce a seemingly infinite variety of hues.

JUDITH MURRAY (American, b. 1941; lives and works in New York City) Elements, 2011 Oil on linen 36 x 40 inches (91.4 x 101.6 cm) Sundaram Tagore Gallery

The restricted palette has given a kind of subliminal stability to Murray’s work.

In her latest paintings, scattered among the animated brushstrokes are abstract, eccentric geometric shapes in her basic four colors that combine these multiple compositional components to make a single statement.

35

HUNG LIU (Chinese, b.1948; lives and works in Oakland, California) Untitled (100 Flowers / Mountain Lady), 2012 Mixed media (triptych) 28 x 39.5 inches (71.1 x 100.3 cm) Courtesy of Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York

Hung Liu was born in Changchun, China, and grew up in Beijing. In 1968, she was sent to the countryside to work in rice and wheat fields for four years. She lived through the Cultural Revolution, and moved to California by the time of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Hung Liu’s paintings are steeped in Chinese culture, contemporary and ancient.

Her art is born of a traditional Chinese art education. She fuses images from seventh-century Tang tomb mural paintings of princes and princesses with Western imagery.

Liu plumbs the depths of her life experience as well as all that interests her about history, gender, identity, Chinese politics and culture. She intelligently combines this broad range into compositions that pose questions while offering a moment to stop and contemplate all that is bold and beautiful in her universe.

36

Celebrated photographer Annie Leibovitz began her career as a photojournalist for Rolling Stone magazine in 1970 while she was still a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1983, she joined the staff of Vanity Fair magazine, where, over three decades, she has developed a large and influential body of evocative portraits— images of actors, directors, writers, musicians, athletes, politicians and corporate titans—which offers up a collective portrait of contemporary life.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ (American, born in Waterbury, Connecticut, b. 1949) Karen Finley, Nyack, New York, 1992 Archival pigment print, edition 1/10 40 x 60 inches (102 x 152.5 cm) Photograph © Annie Leibovitz Sundaram Tagore Gallery

37

APRIL GORNIK (American, b.1953; lives and works on Long Island, New York) Other Deserts, 2011 Oil on linen 26 x 26 inches (66 x 66 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Danese Corey Gallery, LLC

Both nostalgic and postmodern, April Gornik’s paintings of unpopulated land and sea, all under brilliant and powerful skies, are the result of her endless quest to capture the nuances of natural light.

Occasionally based upon actual locations, but for the most part originating from Gornik’s imagination, her landscapes express an intense fascination with the perceptual effects of nature and the elements—an observed reality and a world abstracted.

Extending and engaging nature’s proscenium, she examines it in its purest state, capturing its solitude, enormity and the intrinsic serenity associated with land untouched. In Other Deserts, she seeks to bring a re-experience of primal nature.

40

Shirin Neshat’s videos, films and photographs have garnered international attention for their depiction of a very personal struggle with issues of exile, cultural identity and the role of women in Islamic society.

Born in Qazvin, Iran, her work is nothing if not metaphorical. Her photographs of the early 1990s directly explored notions of femininity in relationship to fundamentalism and militancy in her home country. Her subsequent work departs dramatically from overtly political content or critique in favor of a more poetic imagery and narrative.

SHIRIN NESHAT (Iranian, b.1957; lives and works in New York City) Film Still: Possessed Series, 2001 Cibachrome print, edition 5/5 47.5 x 60 inches (120.7 x 152.4 cm) Sundaram Tagore Gallery

In all her work she remains dedicated to presenting narratives that go beyond the individual, personifying instead a symbolic state of mind, a collective force or a state of nature that leads to inevitable social upheaval.

41

TAMARA GONZALES (American, b.1959; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York) buddy, 2011 Spray paint on canvas 36 x 30 inches (91.4 x 76.2 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Norte Maar

42

Tamara Gonzales pushes paint to the optical extreme through her unique process of spray painting through found lace tablecloths, doilies and curtains. Vibrant and witty, layered and textured, her compositions combine large gesture with tight pattern that pay homage to the grand heroic gestures of the postwar painters, while capturing an all-over free spirit found in the graffiti that appears daily on the streets near her studio in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.

Ghada Amer explores the dichotomies of an uneasy world confronting the language of hostility and finality with unsettled narratives of longing and love. Through her multidisciplinary philosophy she addresses gender roles and the perception of women in society. Not content with merely critiquing inequality, however, Amer’s work is at once pointed, funny and profoundly erotic, exploiting these competing emotions to dig deeper into societal norms.

Embracing both the body and language as twin avenues to explore the human condition, Baisers #1 shifts between a narrative space and a physical one, sometimes occupying both simultaneously. Tackling themes of politics and sexuality, this work—though intricate in its detail and delicate in its appearance—proposes a scenario of a kiss offered up with great strength and will.

GHADA AMER (Egyptian, b.1963; lives and works in New York City) Baisers #1, 2012 Gold-plated bronze, edition 4/6 22.5 x 16 x 20 inches (57.2 x 40.6 x 50.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Kukje Gallery, Seoul / Tina Kim Gallery, New York Photo © Christopher Burke Studios

43

HILDUR ÁSGEIRSDÓTTIR JÓNSSON (Icelandic, b.1963; lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio) Peak, 2013 Silk weaving 48 x 45 inches (122 x 114 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Pocket Utopia, New York

For more than fifteen years, Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson has merged painting and weaving, creating paintings on hand-dyed, woven silk thread. Jónsson’s lush paintings begin from images of the singular landscape of her native Iceland.

Addressing numerous Icelandic landmarks, she has created series devoted to Vatnajökull, Iceland’s largest glacier, and Hekla, a stratovolcano that is one of the country’s most active.

Born in Reykjavík, Jónsson currently lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. Twice a year she returns to Iceland, taking photographs as she hikes through the landscape.

Details of the photographs, from mountainous silhouettes to glacial crevasses, become isolated, cropped and enlarged as Jónsson transfers the imagery to woven paintings in her Cleveland studio. In the process, her original sources are abstracted, as the paintings suggest a range of imagery from non-representational lines and shapes to elemental forms, such as cells, rocks and galaxies.

44

Jane Lee is one of Singapore’s most noted contemporary artists. She explores the nature of the way paintings are constructed by treating its components—stretcher, canvas and the paint itself—in new ways. In the process, she is re-examining the significance of painting and the relevance of contemporary art practice.

The surfaces of her paintings are highly tactile and sensuous, and as in the case of Juju (2013), often dimensional enough to be considered sculptures. In some cases, Lee dispenses with canvas, extruding acrylic paint directly on wooden stretchers, which results in a hollow, three-dimensional object. Another of Lee’s techniques is to create works that appear to move: they fall, unroll, hang or droop, suggesting, in the process, everyday objects. With this strategy of activating the spaces in which her works are presented, she uses space itself as a medium.

JANE LEE (Singaporean, b.1963; lives and works in Singapore) Juju, 2013 Dry acrylic paint, acrylic heavy gel on fiberglass base canvas 43.3 inches diameter (110 cm) Sundaram Tagore Gallery

45

YIN XIUZHEN (Chinese, b.1963; lives and works in Beijing) Body Temperature No. 6, 2010 Clothes, aluminum plate 85.8 x 25.4 x 3.9 inches (218 x 64.6 x 10 cm) Š Yin Xiuzhen, courtesy Pace, Beijing

A leading figure in contemporary Chinese art, Yin Xiuzhen has worked primarily in site-specific installation and sculpture since the early 1990s. She is best known for works that incorporate secondhand objects. By utilizing recycled materials as sculptural documents of memory, she personalizes objects and references the lives of specific individuals who are often neglected in the drive toward excessive urbanization, rapid modern development and the growing global economy.

Inspired by the quickly changing environment of her native Beijing, common themes in her work include memory, the past and the present, as well as the complex relationship between individuals and their constantly shifting society. Through collection and assemblage of old materials in a new context, Yin weaves the past with the present, embracing the notion of memory and experience to convey aspects of individual lives in relation to global transformation.

46

Julia K. Gleich’s choreography bridges gaps between traditional ballet form and conceptual post-modern dance. She is recognized as a champion of pointe work and for empowering women as performers and creators. Her films, much like her choreography, play off time, distance and memory.

In 14 Seconds, Gleich amplifies the raw rehearsal process, dissecting the accumulations and repetitions involved in creating two 14-second dance phrases.

The film compresses eight hours of rehearsal over several weeks, highlighting singular progressive developments.

JULIA K. GLEICH (American, b.1965; lives and works in London and New York City) 14 Seconds, 2012 Film with music by Nico Muhly, dancers Michelle Buckley and Sarah Monkman; film length: 08:23:25 Courtesy of the artist and Norte Maar

Gleich opts to reveal this process without words, relying solely on the flow of the body in space, the visual and tactile communication of dancer and choreographer, and the video edit to condense these interactions.

Using video rather than theatrical devices to engage both a kinesthetic sensibility as well as an analytical one, 14 Seconds reveals the process of adding and layering.

47

ZHANG HUI (Chinese, b.1969; lives and works Beijing) Beijing Wawa, 2006 Oil on canvas (triptych) 23.5 x 20 inches (each) (59.7 x 50.8 cm) Courtesy Lillian Heidenberg Fine Art, New York

Zhang Hui’s canvases are a hybrid of reality and fantasy, tradition and modernity.

She studied representations of women in sources such as 1930s Chinese cinema, Cultural Revolution propaganda imagery, advertisements and fashion magazines.

She was searching for a way to depict the modern-day Beijing woman. She created a character to express this: “Beijing Wawa” meaning “Beijing Baby,” which signifies young girls searching for identity within a society driven by the commodification of culture.

The subject of childhoods lost under Mao is a common one in China, but Zhang is looking at her own generation and at a new loss of innocence stolen by new ideals and vacant dreams. Beijing Wawa reflects a complex, emotional landscape within the portraits of young girls; there is a presence of power balanced with vulnerability, beauty with scars, and youth with maturity.

48

Austin Thomas works in collage, sculpture and social architecture, maintaining an overall simplicity. Her varied artworks are broadly described as “delineating and creating social sculpture.” Like a Precisionist, Thomas tightly balances seemly random elements of cut, torn, folded and glued paper to create deceptively delicate studies, which seem caught sometimes in the act of unfolding. Sketching is a vital part of her art-making, yet in all her work the sculptural form takes precedent and the result is a rich combination of images that narrate a sophisticated unconscious and bring to mind the wants and dreams, memories and mistakes of the human experience.

AUSTIN THOMAS (American, b.1969; lives and works in New York City) Round Place Square, 2010 Collage with ink and graphite 42 x 42 inches (106.7 x 106.7 cm) Private Collection, Brooklyn, New York, courtesy Pocket Utopia Gallery Photo © Jason Mandella

49

YTO BARRADA (French, b.1971; lives and works in Tangier and Paris) Blue Scaffold, 2008/2011 Cibachrome print, edition 1/5 31.5 x 31.5 inches (80 x 80 cm) Š Yto Barrada, courtesy Pace, London

Yto Barrada was born in Paris in 1971 and was educated in Tangier. She later studied history and political science at the Sorbonne, Paris, and photography at the International Center of Photography, New York.

Barrada became interested in photography in an accidental way. As a political science student living in the West Bank, she was studying and documenting the strategies of people negotiating with the Israeli police and military police at roadblocks attempting to cross into Israel. The unrestrictive freedom of the camera lens captivated her interests.

Her photographs, films and sculpture address the complex realities of identity, closeness, distance and immigration as they impact daily life. Blue Scaffold captures the urban development in an ever-changing landscape of Tangier.

52

Inspired by other women photographers such as Sally Mann and Diane Arbus, Hellen van Meene’s images of adolescents possess an extremely quiet and forceful beauty.

Van Meene does not see her work outright as portraiture but as capturing a mood and exploring, as the artist explains, “adolescent situations and attitudes, which represent the type of ‘normality’ we don’t usually share with others, but keep to ourselves.”

Fascinated with the grace and awkwardness that are the physical and psychological hallmarks of this age, van Meene delves into the territory of socially engaged documentary, creating a sense of her subjects being caught or confined between two lives.

HELLEN VAN MEENE (Dutch, b.1971; lives and works in Heiloo, The Netherlands) Untitled #303, 2008 Cibachrome print, edition 2/10 16 x 16 inches (40.6 x 40.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York

Sensual and painterly, her photographs combine a documentary language with elements of fantasy, performance and psychological space.

53

GOLNAZ FATHI (Iranian, b.1972; lives and works in Tehran and Paris) Untitled, 2007 Pen and varnish on canvas 39.4 x 39.4 inches (100 x 100 cm) Sundaram Tagore Gallery

54

Iranian artist Golnaz Fathi, born in Tehran in 1972, studied classical calligraphy intensively for six years before she established her own style of working. She received a Bachelor of Arts in graphics from Azad Art University, Tehran, and studied at the Iranian Society of Calligraphy where she gained prominence as one of few young women practicing in a male-dominated field.

Fathi uses texts and letters as formal elements, transforming traditional calligraphy into a personal artistic language. Using only a fine pen on raw canvas, she inscribes thousands of tiny lines composed of minute markings that echo the forms of Iranian calligraphy. The strong graphic and geometric quality of her work also merges influences from East and West, evoking the approaches of American Abstract Expressionists, The French School of Lyrical Abstraction and Asian modernists.

In recent years, Zanele Muholi has focused her attention on documenting the lives of gay, lesbian and transgender people in South Africa and beyond. As a photographer and activist, she records challenges they face. Intensely intimate, her work is considered controversial especially in her native country where traditional views collide with the more tolerant attitudes of a modern, globalized society.

It’s about our lives, as a community, trying to make sense and negotiate a space in homophobic spaces. It’s not about me… but of other people, who are very important to me, whose lives are so dear to me.

— Zanele Muholi

ZANELE MUHOLI (South African, b.1972; lives and works in Umlazi, Durban) Thobeka Mavundla, Kwanele South, Katlehong, Johannesburg, 2012 Cibachrome print, edition 1/8 30 x 20 inches (76 x 51 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York

55

VANESSA GERMAN (American, b.1976; lives and works in Homewood, Pennsylvania) Toaster, 2011 Found glass bottle, hand-wrought beads: fabric, earth, string, thread, hair, mantle bird, electric outlet, cowrie, buttons, spark plugs, old doll parts, plaster, wood, wood paint, vintage matchbooks, found toaster, image: slave ownership photograph of Delilah, found jewelry, found carved wooden banana, fabric 31.5 x 14 x 12 inches (80 x 35.5 x 40.4 cm) Private collection, Brooklyn, New York, courtesy Pavel Zoubok Gallery 56

Vanessa German calls on a variety of skills to create symbolic works composed of found objects. She explores issues such as race and gender. Her sculptural arrangements challenge cultural myths and stereotypes.

As a sculptor, I always work on the things that I love, create things that rise out of that place of ethnic clarity for me. — Vanessa German

Kristen Jensen is a multimedia artist whose projects often require learning new artistic skill sets to realize each idea. Her work explores an area of art that has been termed Romantic Conceptualism, including her relationships with friends, collaborators and mental/physical disorders. Jensen chronicles and counters difficult emotional subjects with obsessive and exhaustive series of sculpture, photography and, recently, painting.

KRISTEN JENSEN (American, b.1976; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York) Untitled, 2012 Unglazed porcelain and white oak 31 x 15 x 19 inches (78.7 x 38.1 x 48.3 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Norte Maar

Ritual and the questioning of the line that exists between strength and weakness, control and disorder finds material form in the porcelain objects […] The work contrasts beauty with destruction, and intimate, emotional explorations with formal investigations of material and media […] Oscillating between more organic abstract forms that suggest rocks or bodily organs to a dinner plate that becomes like the food it is supposed to hold […] Limitations of materiality become psychological, as they thwart my attempts at a controlled outcome.

— Kristen Jensen, Brooklyn, New York, 2012 57

MIYA ANDO (American, b.1978; lives and works in New York City) Sui Getsu Ka Gold, 2013 Hand-dyed anodized aluminum 48 x 72 inches (121.9 x 182.9 cm) Sundaram Tagore Gallery

58

A descendant of Bizen sword makers, Miya Ando was raised among swordsmiths and Buddhist priests in a temple in Okayama, Japan. Combining traditional techniques with modern industrial technology, Ando skillfully transforms sheets of burnished steel and anodized aluminum into ephemeral abstractions suffused with subtle gradations of color.

At the core of Ando’s practice is the transformation of surfaces. She produces lightreflecting gradients on her metal paintings by applying heat, sandpaper, grinders, acid and patinas, irrevocably altering the material’s chemical properties. It’s by an almost meditative daily repetition of these techniques that Ando is able to subtract, reduce and distill her concept until it reaches its simplest form.

Brooke Moyse champions the heroic in painting. Major decisions are referenced through a dialogue with short gestured statements of color and shape. Her paintings offer a distilled experience that develops slowly over time—as one moment is revealed the next is hidden.

For a period her paintings made distant reference to Old Masters such as Titian whom she has long admired. Yet more and more her compositions have moved away from the landscape eliciting a kind of Pop abstraction with the way they fetishize the brush stroke and flatten the picture plane. Pattern has replaced the horizontal line, suggesting a more expansive space.

BROOKE MOYSE (American, b.1978; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York) Untitled, 2012 Oil on canvas 50 x 44 inches (127 x 111.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Norte Maar

Untitled (2012) is not so unlike the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, in which the act of painting has been reduced to as few elements as possible, aspiring through abstraction and color to transcribe ineffable thoughts and emotions.

59

SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERIES new york new york hong kong singapore

547 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001 • tel 212 677 4520 fax 212 677 4521 • gallery@sundaramtagore.com 1100 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10028 • tel 212 288 2889 57-59 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong • tel 852 2581 9678 fax 852 2581 9673 • hongkong@sundaramtagore.com 01-05 Gillman Barracks, 5 Lock Road, Singapore 108933 • tel 65 6694 3378 • singapore@sundaramtagore.com

President and curator: Sundaram Tagore Director, New York: Susan McCaffrey Director, Hong Kong: Faina Derman Designer: Russell Whitehead

WWW.SUNDARAMTAGORE.COM

Art consultants: Teresa Kelley Bonnie B Lee Sarah Miller Deborah Moreau Mairead O’Connor Benjamin Rosenblatt Melanie Taylor

To Be a Lady is curated by Jason Andrew and organized by Sundaram Tagore Gallery in collaboration with Norte Maar. A 2012 version of this exhibition was funded by the ownership at 1285 Avenue of the Americas as a community-based public service in partnership with Jones Lang LaSalle and presented in New York at the 1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery. © 2013 Sundaram Tagore Gallery Text © 2013 Jason Andrew Image copyright is retained by respective artists, their foundations or their estates.

Artwork in this publication is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in any form without written request. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from Sundaram Tagore Gallery and Norte Maar.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This exhibition would not have been possible without the loan of significant works from the artists, their estates or foundations and their representing galleries. Our sincere thanks to them and their associates.

LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION: Amy Wolf Fine Art and Elrick-Manley Fine Art Artists’ Legacy Foundation AXA Equitable Estate of Janice Biala Cheim & Read The Jay DeFeo Trust Tibor de Nagy Gallery Virginia Dwan Collection Tina Kim Gallery Lillian Heidenberg Fine Art Nancy Hoffman Gallery Loretta Howard Gallery

Levis Fine Art Louise Nevelson Foundation Mitchell-Innes & Nash The Murray-Holman Family Trust Pace Beijing Pace London Pace New York Pavel Zoubok Gallery Pocket Utopia Private Collection, Brooklyn Private Collection, New York Yancey Richardson Gallery Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC

The curator would also like to thank Christina Zuccari, owner of Moro Conservation Studio Inc.; Julia K. Gleich for her endless supply of energetic support; Quentin Langley for his editorial eye; and Andrew Szbody for his assistance.

He would also like to thank everyone at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, especially Julia Occhiogrosso for her attentiveness to a checklist that seemed to fluctuate daily, and Russell Whitehead for his terrific design skills. Also Ichin Zinn and Andrew Lee for their efforts at Sundaram Tagore Gallery Singapore.