The Dinner Party, art installation by Judy Chicago, 1974–1979 (Photo: Donald Woodman/CC BY-SA 4.0)
In 2025 it is no longer surprising to see exhibitions of art made by women, or books that focus on their lives and work. During the last few decades there has been a veritable explosion of interest in female painters, sculptors, architects, textile artists, and performance artists. This richly illustrated course examines the progress made by women artists in Europe and the U.S. since the end of the Second World War. Nancy G. Heller, a professor emerita of art history at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, discusses the relationship of art made by late 20th- and 21st-century women to the work of their male counterparts, placing it within a broader socioeconomic, political, and aesthetic context. She also considers the obstacles that remain for women artists.
The first two sessions emphasize important artistic developments from the 1950s and 1960s in which women figured prominently. Subsequent sessions are structured around significant themes and issues tackled by pioneering women artists from the 1970s to the present.
April 17 Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism: Opposing Approaches to Nonfigurative Art
Heller highlights contributions made by American women painters such as Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler to the emotionally fraught style known as Abstract Expressionism, the dominant avant-garde development of the 1950s. She also looks at Minimalism, a direct, structured response to what artists such as Agnes Martin and Anne Truitt regarded as the technical and psychological excesses of Abstract Expressionism.
April 24 Pop and Op Art: The Zeitgeist of the 1960s
Glamorous and enigmatic, Marisol was the most-famous female Pop artist, sculpting humorous and scathingly satirical images of icons from popular culture. Heller compares Marisol’s work to pieces made by Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg, plus several other important female Pop artists. The English painter Bridget Riley was a pioneer of Op Art, in which carefully planned and executed abstract patterns create optical illusions, especially appropriate for an era that celebrated all things psychedelic.
May 1 New Approaches to Depicting the Human Body
While avant-garde art had been synonymous with abstraction in the early 20th century, during the 1970s and beyond many influential women artists found inspiration in an ancient subject: the human body, which they depicted in arresting new ways. Heller illustrates the range of these explorations, from English painter Jenny Saville’s exaggerated, fleshy figures to Carmen Lomas Garza’s faux-naïve images based on her Chicano upbringing; Kiki Smith’s frank, sometimes-shocking references to female biology; and Alison Saar’s equally powerful statements concerning the Black body, made through sculpture and prints.
May 8 Politics, (Often) With a Side of Humor
The varied works that Heller considers include Judy Chicago’s groundbreaking Dinner Party, which re-writes world history, this time celebrating a selection of the myriad women leaders who tended to be left out. Also discussed is Jenny Holzer, whose lines of LED text march up and down countless ceilings, walls, and carved granite benches, encouraging passers-by to stop and consider what they say. Heller briefly examines the work of such different women as French-born sculptor Louise Bourgeois, with her enormous metal spiders, and Serbian native Marina Abramovic, whose performance-art pieces challenge traditional ideas about nudity, time, and more. Overt humor is mixed with political statements concerning identity and stereotypes by Native American Wendy Red Star and Spain’s Pilar Albarracín.
May 15 “Outsider” Art, and Art that is Literally Outside
Some art museums are re-hanging their permanent collections, eliminating the traditional separation between so-called outsider art (created by self-taught artists) and pieces made by those with formal academic training. This forces viewers to see both types of art differently and has led to a re-evaluation of art made by such women as the celebrated Inuit printmaker Kenojuak Ashevak and the multi-generational quilters from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Women have also created extraordinary public art works—from Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Washington’s National Mall to an underwater sculptural installation by Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias that only scuba divers can experience. Heller concludes with a look at Zaha Hadid (born in Iraq, based in London), one of the few women to have achieved global acclaim as an architect.
5 sessions
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