The Fabulous Female Artists: Currently Featured at the Norton Museum of Art
By Whitney Schott, Communications Intern, Norton Museum of ART
For Women’s History Month, we highlighted some of the fabulous female artists who helped pave the way for contemporary female artists today. These women were fearless in gaining recognition during a time when the art world was dominated by male artists within their movements.
Here are a few of the leading female artists we are proud to have in our exhibitions this month at the Norton Museum of Art:
AGNES MARTIN
Agnes Bernice Martin (Mar 22, 1912 — Dec 16, 2004) was an American abstract painter. Although her work is often referred to as Minimalist, she considered herself an Abstract Expressionist. Her work has also been described as an “essay in discretion on inwardness and silence.” Educated at Teachers College, Columbia University (1952), she was publicly known to have suffered from schizophrenia.
Visitors can find three works by Agnes Martin in the Brown Gallery where we are currently showcasing, “A Remarkable Gathering: The Fisher Landau Family Collection,” an exhibition that speaks to Emily Fisher Landau’s ongoing commitment to artists throughout their careers. “This Rain” and “Grey Stone II” both date to early 1960s and illustrate different approaches Martin took to create what she called “sublimity” in her compositions. Martin’s aim was to illustrate her own joyful experiences in an abstract language that could evoke a viewer’s own encounters with beauty and happiness. She created balanced and unified compositions of repeating shapes in gossamer and ambient color that would not be tied to any tangible “thing” but boundless space, stating: “Don’t look at the stars… Look between the rain.”
One of the few female artists who gained recognition in the male-dominated art world of the 1950s and ’60s, Martin is a pivotal figure between two of that era’s dominant movements: Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. Her content — an expression of essential emotions — relates her to the earlier group, the Abstract Expressionists, but her methods — repetition, geometric compositions, and basic means — were adopted by the Minimalists, who came to prominence during the ’60s. Martin’s work, however, is more than a bridge between the two. It stands apart by never losing sight of the subjective, while aspiring toward perfection. “I would like [my pictures] to represent beauty, innocence and happiness,” she said. “I would like them all to represent that. Exaltation.”
This Rain, 1960
Oil on canvas
70 x 70 in. (177.8 x 117.8 cm)
Collection of Emily Fisher Landau
Grey Stone Il, 1961
Oil, gold leaf and pencil on linen
74 % x 73 % in. (189.9 x 187.3 cm)
Collection of Emily Fisher Landau
Untitled #1, 1995
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
60 x 60 in. (152.4 x 152.4 cm).
Collection of Emily Fisher Landau
BARBARA KRUGER
Barbara Kruger (b. Jan 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist known for visual art and graphic design. She is a part of feminism and the Pictures Generation movements. A graduate of Syracuse University and Parsons School of Design, she is grouped with artists such as Jenny Holzer, Sherrie Levine, Martha Rosler, and Cindy Sherman, she is known for her collage style that incorporates black & white photography with declarative text.
Untitled (Pledge), 1988
Photographic silkscreen on vinyl
124 x 80 in. (315 x 203.2 cm)
Collection of Emily Fisher Landau
Barbara Kruger started her career in the late 1960s as an editor and graphic designer for publications such as Mademoiselle and Aperture. Kruger’s time in the commercial field undoubtedly framed the development of her iconic style: black-and-white reproductions of found photography paired with red and white text overlays. Over a four-decade career, the artist rarely produced a composition consisting of solely words. In her text- only works, Kruger often prompts the viewer to question the politics of customary oaths: here, she cites the pledge of Allegiance of the United States of America. Untitled (Pledge) is a precursor to Kruger’s more recent installations that extend to the floors, walls, and even ceilings of a space.
Untitled (Who is free to choose?), 1989
Photoengraving on magnesium
25 ½ x 21 ½ x 3 in. (64.8 x 54.6 x 7.6 cm)
Promised Gift of Howard and Judie Ganek
Barbara Kruger is a part of the Pictures Generation, a group of artists in the 1980s known for their appropriation and critique of pop-culture imagery. Other members of the Pictures Generation include Robert Longo and Richard Prince, whose work is also on view in this gallery.
Kruger’s artworks engage in social commentary through found photography and bold text overlays. This work highlights the artist’s early experimentation with various motifs to address the social climate of the United States in the late 1980s. The use of the American Flag along with the question, “Who is free to choose?” is repeated in one of the artist’s most well-known works, a large-scale mural that critiqued the issue of war, corruption, gender and race.
LOUISE BOURGEOIS
Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (Dec 25, 1911-May 31, 2010) was a French-American artist who exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists. Although her work has much in common with Surrealism and feminist art, she is not affiliated with any particular artistic movement. She was born in Paris and died at the age of 98 in New York. Known for large scale sculpture, installation art, painting, and printmaking, her most notable works include: Spider, Maman, and The Destruction of Father.
Dark patina bronze with steel base
Edition 3 of 6
30 % x 20 3/8 x 15 % in. (76.8 x 51.8 x 40 cm)
Collection of Emily Fisher Landau
Bourgeois exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists; however, her work is in common with Surrealism and feminist art- not formally affiliated with a particular artistic movement.
Known for her psychologically charged artworks, Bourgeois is one of the great figures in modern and contemporary art. Themes in this sculpture — motherhood, gender, the organic world, and mortality are repeated throughout Bourgeois’ career and have long preoccupied the artist. Combining familiar animal and human forms, the artist fluidly brings together the natural and human world, but also provides commentary on gender identity. The merging of exposed ambisexual genitalia central to the front of the sculpture is better understood with the artist’s belief that “… we are all vulnerable in some way… and we are all male-female.”
CANDIDA HÖFER
Candida Höfer (b. Feb 7, 1944) is a German photographer and a former student of conceptual artists and photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like other Becher students, her work is known for technical perfection and a strictly conceptual approach. Educated at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, she taught as a professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe from 1997 to 2000.
The large-scale nature of her work invites the viewer to linger over the architectural details and contemplate the subtle shifts in light that make up the character of the space.
Schloss St. Emmeram Regensburg XV, 2002
Color coupler print
Image: 58 ½ x 47 in. (148.6 x 119.4 cm)
Frame: 73 x 61 x 1 5/8 in. (185.4 x 154.9 x 4.1 cm)
Promised Gift of Howard and Judie Ganek
“I am not a photographer of architecture; I see my work as portraits of spaces,” she said.
Since the 1970s, Höfer has focused on the grandiose yet empty interiors of cultural and institutional spaces such as libraries, theaters and palaces. Through her portraits, Höfer broadly investigates the psychology of space when void of any human presence. Her large scale works invite the viewer to reflect upon the room’s history contemplating its intended and actual uses overtime.
SHERRIE LEVINE
Sherrie Levine (b. Apr 17, 1947) is an American photographer, painter, and conceptual artist. Educated at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, some of her work consists of exact photographic reproductions of the work of other photographers.
She is known for Re-photography, Painting, Sculpture, Conceptual Art, and Appropriation Art — much like Louise Lawler, Vikky Alexander, and Barbara Kruger, who came into prominence in New York’s East Village in the 1980s. “The importance of appropriation art in contemporary culture lies in its ability to fuse broad cultural images as a whole and direct them towards narrower contexts of interpretation.” When coming under criticism with her appropriated works, most notably, Walker Evans’ depression-era images, the role of appropriation within Levine’s work also helped her to link the ‘rarefied art object’ and ‘mass-produced’ works to the extent that she perceived her appropriated works to be no less products of mass culture than the images of Elvis Presley or Liz Taylor appropriated and reproduced by Andy Warhol.
Untitled, 1987
Casein on lead
20 x 20 in. (50.8 x 50.8 cm)
Collection of Emily Fisher Landau
Untitled, 1988
Casein on lead
40 x 20 in. (101.6 x 50.8 cm)
Collection of Emily Fisher Landau
Typical of her fellow Picture Generation artists, Levine confronts consumerism and mass media but deviates in her questioning of what constitutes a popular or famous Western artwork.
In the 1987 composition, Levine references a chess board while in the 1988 work, combines chess imagery with the backgammon-inspired pattern. In both works, Levine’s contextualization of the found objects plays with the lineage of the “anti-art” movement, Dada. As a motif and pastime, the game of chess fascinated the Dadaists, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray.
Duchamp’s development of the “ready-made” and interpretation of everyday objects as art especially affected Levine. She has stated, “I have become interested in issues of authenticity, identity and property, that is to say, what do we own? What is the same?”
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE
Georgia Totto O’Keeffe (Nov 15, 1887 — Mar 6, 1986) is known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York City skyscrapers and New Mexico landscapes. Married to the art dealer and photographer Alfred Stieglitz (m. 1924–1946), she has been called “the Mother of American Modernism,” but can also be considered part of Precisionism. Stieglitz had an affair with Dorothy Norman and O’Keeffe suffered from depression, but she is as well remembered for her independent spirit and as a female role model, as she is for her dramatic and innovative works of art.
Ladder to the Moon, 1958
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)
Collection of Emily Fisher Landau
A painter of the American southwest landscape, this surreal artwork denotes a shift in O’Keeffe’s earlier representations of the desert as seen in the nearby Dry Waterfall. This painting and others from the late-1950s show O’Keefe’s increased proclivity towards abstraction. Critics recognized these paintings as a precursor to the development of color field painting, identifying a common ground with much younger abstract painters such as Mark Rothko and Ellsworth Kelly. Writing in 1969 for the Tate Modern, curator E.C. Goossen stated: “In its uncompromising objectivity, O’Keeffe’s intense vision seems more coordinated with the art of the last decade than with that of her own generation.” Emily Fisher Landau was introduced to O’Keeffe through the New York designer, Bill Katz. Together, they visited the artist numerous times at her ranch in New Mexico, acquiring six O’Keeffe paintings.
Dry Waterfall, 1951 Oil on canvas
30 x 16 in. (76.2 x 40.6 cm)
Collection of Emily Fisher Landau
White Iris, circa 1926
Oil on canvas
24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm)
Collection of Emily Fisher Landau
Pink Tulip, 1925 Oil on canvas
32 x 12 in. (81.2 x 30.4 cm)
Collection of Emily Fisher Landau
This painting and White Iris, seen to the left, epitomize Georgia O’Keeffe’s experimentation with the genre of still life flower painting, choosing to enlarge their structure with tightly cropped compositions. O’Keeffe wrote about her interests in this approach, explaining “… in a way, nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven’t time… So I said to myself — I’ll paint what I see — what the flower is to me, but I’ll paint it big, and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it.”
Agnes Martin and Georgia O’Keeffe were friends so the curator’s decision to put them next to each other within the museum is significant.
All in all, female artists, although certainly more highly recognized today, still have a way to go in terms of making the value of their work equal to their male counterparts.
If you’re in the Palm Beach area, don’t miss the opportunity to see the work of these fabulous female artists on view at the Norton Museum until Sept 11, 2022.
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MORE ON THE NORTON MUSEUM OF ART
All Current Exhibitions Currently on View
From Hassam to Wyeth: Gifts from Doris and Shouky Shaheen (through May 1), showcasing major oil and watercolors from American artists in the late 19th to mid-20th centuries that were gifted to the Norton in 2020.
The Howard and Judie Ganek Collection (February 5 — September 25, 2022), featuring a selection of paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and photo-based contemporary works from a promised gift to the Norton that has transformed its holdings of contemporary art.
A Remarkable Gathering: The Fisher Landau Family Collection (March 13 — September 11, 2022), a temporary exhibition featuring paintings and sculptures by many of the most celebrated artists of the late-20th century on loan to the Norton.
Together, the four exhibitions illustrate the vibrancy of the area’s arts community and the strong ties the Norton has established with local collectors.
Works from the Museum’s permanent collections are on view year-round and include Photography, Modern/Contemporary, Chinese, European and American art.
Student Exhibition
The Student Exhibition is now on view: Drawing Transformed in the Chris and Bernard Marden Community Gallery.
(On view from February 25 to May 15, 2022 )
Drawing has always been a primary artistic medium for investigation and discovery, providing the opportunity for artists to visualize their ideas or test and develop new concepts. Last fall, the Norton Museum of Art invited students from Palm Beach County public, private, parochial and charter schools to investigate approaches to expression and representation through drawing. Drawing Transformed documents the diverse practices and unconventional materials that more than fifty students explored; through inquiry, imagination and experimentation, students found multiple ways to manipulate line and tone, pushing the boundaries and delivering innovative results. In support of their visual work, students wrote artists’ statements that provide insight into their themes, processes, and references. (You can scan the QR code found in the gallery to read the students’ statements.)
The Norton Museum of Art is thankful to all principals and teachers for supporting the arts in education, and to the students for sharing their exciting work this school year.
School and Teacher Programs are made possible by the generosity of the Itto A. Willits Charitable Foundation, with additional support provided by the William Randolph Hearst Endowment Fund for Education and Outreach Programs.
According to Veronica Hatch, Assistant to the Associate Curator of Education for School and Teacher Programs at The Norton, we had more than 160 artwork submissions from 50 participating schools from Palm Beach County public, private, parochial and charter schools. Eighty artworks were accepted to the exhibition.
Teachers attended a workshop which introduced them to the theme and submissions guidelines prior to the show, then they worked with students in the classrooms using various mediums and unconventional materials that explored drawing, sketching, and were asked to use line (sketches) to transform drawing using exploration and innovation in their practice. You can refer to the intro wall text attached for more detailed information on theme and ideas for the show.
Most schools submitted between 2 to 5 artworks, and we picked at least one from each school that submitted artwork. Each student had to write a student statement, these were helpful to tie the theme to the final artwork and some students submitted sketches to document their process to link to overarching theme of Drawing Transformed.
SPECIAL GUEST WORKS ON VIEW INCLUDE: THE CALDER ART CAR, SOROLLA AND MONET
The Special Guest Series highlights exceptional works of art from public and private collections placed on view for an extended period of time, organized by the Norton Museum of Art.
Located in the Maurer Lobby is one of our special guests the Calder Art BMW Car.
In 1974, French auctioneer and race car driver Hervé Poulain commissioned American artist Alexander Calder to paint a BMW race car. One year later, the momentous collaboration was realized. Calder devised dynamic forms in bold colors across the car’s wings, bonnet, and roof that recall the artist’s famous mobiles and stabiles, but also his two-dimensional works.
The Calder BMW Art Car debuted at 24 Heures du Mans (24 Hours of Le Mans), a famous sports car race held annually in France, and was later exhibited widely, including at the artist’s major 1976 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Artist’s Proof realizes Calder’s dream of creating his own example of the first BMW Art Car, operating as the kinetic work of art that he intended. Conceived by BMW Group Classic for the Calder Foundation, it was meticulously built from a 1974 BMW 3.0 CSL. The two organizations consulted with key members of the initial project including Poulain and Walter Maurer, who completed the technical painting of the 1975 Calder BMW Art Car as well as of the Artist’s Proof in 2021. The Calder BMW Art Car will be on view through April 24, 2022.
Another special guest on view is by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Spanish, 1862–1923), Beaching the Boat (Afternoon Light), made in 1903.
Another incredible special guest we had on view was by Claude Monet, The Water Lily Pond (Clouds), made in 1903. The Water Lily Pond (Clouds), is one of over two-hundred and fifty canvases created by Claude Monet depicting painted gardens and natural subjects. For decades, the artist’s well-known focus on water lilies was solidified with his move to Giverny, France, in 1883. There he constructed a special pond for the aquatic flowers, with a Japanese foot bridge at one end and waited for growth to mature to a suitable lushness before depicting the pond on canvas.
In The Water Lily Pond (Clouds), the blooms appear to drift over a vast inverted sky with clouds that appear closer to the viewer than the water itself, which is why at a 1917 auction in which the picture was sold, viewers believed the canvas had been hung upside down. This loan was made possible through a reciprocal exchange with The Dallas Museum of Art.
Works of Sculpture in the Garden
In 2019, the Norton transformed 20,000 square feet of parking lot into a 37,200-square-foot garden, a major step in realizing architect Lord Norman Foster’s vision for “a museum in a garden.” The lush sub-tropical garden thrives on the south and east sides of the Museum, with outdoor sculptures on view throughout by artists including Keith Haring, Antony Gormley, Jenny Holzer, Franz West, Fernand Léger, Paul Manship, Ugo Rondinone, Joel Shapiro, and others. Many of these sculptures are recent gifts to the Norton, with a significant group generously donated by Pamela and Robert B. Goergen in 2018. A rich layering of plants and trees creates a backdrop for displaying sculptural works. The introduction of mature trees creates instant shade that allows a rich mix of plants to thrive and form a cooling micro-climate for visitor comfort.
Starting May 1, 2022 the museum is open 6 days a week and closed on Wednesdays
MUSEUM HOURS:
Monday-Thursday, Saturday: 10am — 5pm
Friday: 10am — 10pm
Sunday: 11am — 5pm
Admission:
Members FREE
General $18
Seniors (60+) $15
Students with valid school ID $5
Children 12 and under FREE
City of West Palm Beach Residents are FREE on Saturdays.
For more information, please visit norton.org
