Art as a Universal Language, Part 7: Why We Should All Be Feminists

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her "We Should All Be Feminists" TED Talk, asserts that every human being has the responsibility to call him- or herself a feminist.  She points out that when men or women do not embrace feminism, they are literally denying "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities."

She recounts an instance when she went to a restaurant with a male friend in her home country of Nigeria.  She had to have a man accompanying her in order to enter the restaurant, to guarantee she wasn't a prostitute in search of business.  When she tipped the man who helped them find a parking spot, rather than thanking her, the man thanked her friend.  The man thanked the friend when she paid him because it was inconceivable to 
him that a woman could be successful, educated, possess her own money, or make any independent decisions.  Just as Chimamanda Adichie felt overlooked and discounted, this 
is how many women feel all over the world every day. 

Hillary Clinton campaign poster, by Tony Puryear

November 8, 2016 may be the final day of the 227 year history of exclusively male Presidents of the United States. The population of the United States has been 51% female for a long time.  Likewise, 51% of visual artists today are women, according to the National Museum of Women in the Arts.  In spite of this, the Guerrilla Girls (an art-oriented group of women who fight discrimination), remind us that "Less than 4% of the artists in the Modern Art section of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art are women, but 76% of the nudes are female."

Is this really who we are--a society that views women so overwhelmingly voyeuristically, but not intellectually or by their level of skill?  Unfortunately, the lack of outcry among women (and men) against remarks by Donald Trump in the 2016 election make it seem so.  

Check out this video about Fierce Women of Art:

In 1971, Linda Nochlin's essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" was published.  In it, she writes:  

"Why have there been no great women artists?" The question tolls reproachfully in the background of most discussions of the so-called woman problem. But like so many other so-called questions involved in the feminist "controversy," it falsifies the nature of the issue at the same time that it insidiously supplies its own answer: "There are no great women artists because women are incapable of greatness....The question "Why have there been no great women artists?" is simply the top tenth of an iceberg of misinterpretation and misconception; beneath lies a vast dark bulk of shaky idees recues about the nature of art and its situational concomitants, about the nature of human abilities in general and of human excellence in particular, and the role that the social order plays in all of this."

45 years after Nochlin's essay, in 2016, Artnet News posted the Top 100 Lots by Living Artists: 2011-2016.  This list features the 100 most expensive works of art that sold throughout the world for the highest prices during this most recent five year period.  Not one of the works in those top 100 highest priced acquisitions was by a female artist.

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It's certainly time to appreciate the phenomenal women artists in our midst.  They are not only capable of greatness; they've already achieved it ten times over.  It is time to spread knowledge of their works by writing about them, visiting their exhibitions, and collecting their works.  We need to do this not just because they are women, but because they are making incredibly important art that communicates with us through a different lens.

Hung Liu  Duohua:  Falling Flowers  50 x 50" mixed media on panel, 2016

Hung Liu  Dandelion--Cicada  50 x 50" mixed media on panel, 2016

Hung Liu, for instance, is one of the most influential of all women artists painting in the United States today.  Hung labored in the wheat fields of China during Mao's Cultural Revolution; she worked tirelessly for years to get her passport from the Chinese government so she could attend art school in the U.S. She left all she knew behind in China, and came to the U.S. with nothing.  Thanks to her unfaltering work ethic and skill, Hung Liu's paintings are now in virtually every major art museum in the United States.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks of being suspected of being a prostitute when she entered any restaurant or hotel alone in Nigeria, but Hung Liu gives the concubines and peasants of China new life in her paintings. She paints the images of these bedraggled women as if they are royalty, surrounding them with fortuitous symbols and gold.  

Hung Liu  Route 66 with Cat  25-1/4 x 31-1/4"  6-plate color lithograph, 2016

Hung Liu  Black Madonna  2-1/4 x 31-1/4" four-color lithograph, 2016

Hung Liu  Route 66  25-1/4 x 31-1/4"  6-plate color lithograph, 2016

Hung Liu turns her attention to themes of American struggle in her latest series of works, inspired by the great American artist Dorothea Lange's Dust Bowl era photographs.  For Hung Liu, "Every day is Thanksgiving, and every day is also Memorial Day."  She memorializes the grit and determination of so many American women with this new body of work.

Hung Liu's artwork is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at American University's Katzen Art Center, coinciding with this momentous election.  This is important because like Hillary Clinton, Hung Liu is a born warrior.  In a true coup for women in contemporary art, the National Portrait Gallery is commissioning Hung Liu to paint great American actress Meryl Streep's portrait.

Another contemporary art icon is Squeak Carnwath.  Carnwath's paintings are in permanent collections in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and many more.  

Carnwath is an artist-philosopher whose work opens a portal into our every-day collective consciousness.  Playlists, grocery lists, scam emails, color wheels...all ephemera of our shared human experience.  Carnwath's highly personal symbolism in her art feels like the symbolism we use in our own lives.  She is able to elevate the banal to the beautiful in her paintings.  It would be hard for anyone--male or female--to match the artistic gesture, line quality,  and painterliness in Carnwath's work.

Squeak Carnwath  Trip  70 x 70" oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 2012

Squeak Carnwath  Short Shuffle  30 x 30" oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 2014

New Mexico sculptor Karen Yank makes fabulous sculptural public art commissions of monumental scale, in addition to her gallery-scale works.

Karen Yank's Boulder, Colorado Public Art Project, "Current"

There are many more contemporary women artists we need to be celebrating.  Take a moment to look at these amazing artists:

Nina Tichava in her Santa Fe studio

Nina Tichava  Every Other Freckle  40 x 40" painting and collage on panel, 2016

Art as a Universal Language, Part 2: Artist as Historical Storyteller

As I pointed out in Part 1 of this series (Art as a Universal Language, Part 1:  Why Understanding Visual Art is Essential), engaging with visual art of different cultures helps us understand our similarities as a human race.  It helps us develop empathy, and thereby hopefully contributes to a more peaceful global society.

In this, Part 2, I’d like to explore how certain contemporary artists use visual imagery to reveal historical realities.  One of the most acclaimed contemporary artists working today is Chinese American artist Hung Liu.  I have represented Hung Liu for more than a decade, and she continues to be one of the most inspirational artists I have ever known.  She grew up in China under Mao, during the Cultural Revolution.  Her father, an intellectual, had been sent to a labor camp, and Hung only saw him again shortly before he died.   Hung was sent to the countryside to work in the fields with Chinese peasants for four years, as part of the “re-education” system in China.  For a fantastic description of Hung Liu’s life in art, go to this link:  Smithsonian Journal of American Art article on Hung Liu.

Hung Liu, Western Wind
oil on linen, 80 x 80"
Turner Carroll Gallery

Hung’s story is rich and complex, and she dedicates her life to giving the downtrodden people she  worked with a life of beauty in her paintings.  She paints from historical photographs, because for Hung, “Every day is Memorial Day, and every day is Thanksgiving.”  She is grateful that she escaped the turmoil of Maoist China, but she simultaneously immortalizes those who did not, so we will never forget that their struggle.  In “Western Wind,” Hung paints a difficult journey in a manner of grace and beauty.  The drips represent the blurring of  memory.  

Hung Liu, “Goddess of Love, Goddess of Liberty”

mixed media, 1989

Permanent Collection, Dallas Museum of Art

In her painting “Goddess of Love, Goddess of Liberty,” Hung references the historic treatment of women in China.  She reminds us of the  atrocious practice of binding their feet.  Hung was inspired to create this painting after seeing a photograph of a woman who had removed her bandages to show her tiny, 3 inch feet, permanently mangled by being bound.   Hung shows us that unlike European images of female power and strength, in China, women were as subservient and “invisible” as the blank blackboard hanging next to the painting.  The broom in this work references the brooms women used to sweep up the blood after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Hung Liu, “September”

jaquard tapestry

2014

75 x 75”

Turner Carroll Gallery

Even when it isn’t immediately apparent, there is always a strong historical reference in every painting Hung Liu creates.  She feels a sense of urgency to document historically altering events.  “September”, though an exquisitely gorgeous image, was created to memorialize the tragic events at the 9/11 World Trade Center.  Hung uses a Song dynasty bird in this image, emerging through the body of a beautiful Chinese bride, to represent the planes and the towers.  She uses her images to recount monumental historic events, but she can’t help but to “heal” the event by making her images beautiful.  In doing so, she actively participates in our understanding of history.  She says:

History to me is not a noun. It’s a verb. History is constantly changing… You can rewrite history; history was written by the winners. In China, specifically I remember during the Cultural Revolution, one high-ranking comrade was somehow ousted as the public enemy. Way before PhotoShop or the digital age, there were images that were erased from historical photographs. When you saw that, you were shocked at first. How could you change history? He was there, he was with you, but they erased him completely. In China, we always had great slogans: “Serve the people heart and soul.” But who are those people when it comes down to it? Who are the heroes? I learned that history is a verb, and when you have new discoveries in terms of evidence, materials, and witnesses, new kind of recall, or maybe a regime change, history can be rewritten. So that [realization] really liberated me.

For the most comprehensive book on Hung’s art and life (in Chinese and English), click here.

Traian Filip

“The Wall” (“Oltro il mure delle parole”)

intaglio etching, a la poupee

ap/30, 29.75 x 22”

Turner Carroll Gallery

Some artists use iconography from the history of art, as Visual Code.  Traian Filip, Head of Romanian State Engraving Studios under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, used symbolism to relay the suffering of Romanians under Ceausescu, and ultimately to orchestrate his own escape. “Oltri il muro delle parole” (After the wall of the words), portrays Traian’s assessment of life in Romania during Ceausescu’s Communist regime.  He places the dictator’s head on the body of a starved dog (Romania), with a birdcage on his head, symbolizing that “his thoughts were bought.”  A self portrait of the artist with a sword, caught between the oppressive dictator’s “wall of words” and the sword, shows how trapped he felt.  In the background, an angel juggles and the floating ship represents a hope for escape.  There are many more examples of symbolic cries for help in this etching.  When it was shown in Italy, it was purchased by the Vatican Museum.   Romanian story of oppression.  

Traian exhibited imagery such as this, throughout the world, to tell the Romanian story of oppression.  He could not attend these exhibitions himself, but his images told the secrets of the repressive Ceausescu regime.  When Filip’s etchings were exhibited in Sweden, the Swedish government understood his visual messages and initially helped him escape.  Filip’s highly symbolic images are now found in museums throughout the world.  I wrote (with Michael Carroll) a book about Traian, titled Traiain Alexandru Filip:  His Art and Life.  

Traian Filip, Il Chaos

a la poupee intaglio etching

Turner Carroll Gallery

Traian writes an Italian inscription in this work, that translates as “The sky, the earth, and between the earth and the sky--chaos.”  He places the likeness of the Romanian dictator on the body of a child riding a rocking horse and donning a dunce cap.  Meanwhile, a wicked-looking cat claws off the face of the harlequin, aka the fool, or every-man, in traditional iconography.  Traian speaks volumes about the ridiculous political situation in Romania, with this etching.

Traiain Filip

"La Pace del Nulla" ("The Peace of Nothing")

a la poupee intaglio etching

1985

19.5 x 19.4”

Turner Carroll Gallery

This etching is titled “The Peace of Nothing.”  Traian shows the desperation of the times, with hungry child and dog lying on the floor beneath the empty table.  The bird, as if the soul, has already flown away, and the city of Bucharest is swallowed by a deluge in the background.  

Traian Filip “Massacre of the Innocents”

mixed media on wooden door

1993

72 x 31”

“Massacre of the Innocents” takes on an even more grim meaning today, considering the recent barbarism of ISIS.  For Traian, this painting was his quintessential statement of the historical trauma the Ceausescu regime inflicted upon Romania’s innocents. He painted the painting not on a traditional surface, but on an old door.  He did this to show his willingness to sacrifice everything--including warmth and shelter--to express the desperation of Romanians.

Shawn Smith

“Jewel Beetle”

2013, wood, paint

Turner Carroll Gallery

Alan Rath and Shawn Smith document our contemporary history in the U.S., by creating objects that portray our immersion in digital culture.  Americans spend massive amounts of time (up to 11 hours per day, according to a recent Nielsen report), “watching” electronic screens.  Televisions, computers, smart-phones, game consoles--these devices have become our primary mode of communication with the outside world.   Shawn Smith spent his urban, 1980s, childhood, playing video games.  The pixelated Atari game was his window into the natural world.  Describing his gaming life in an interview in Wired magazine,  “I’d never been camping, so I thought that’s what it was: wrestling crocodiles living in pixelated lakes, jumping over scorpions,” Smith says. “The whole idea was to avoid nature and win some gold coins.”

Alan Rath “Neo-Watcher IV” 2001, mixed media sculpture with video Turner Carroll Gallery

Trained as an engineer at M.I.T., Alan Rath embodies the new artist/scientist meme.  His digital, robot-like sculptures “watch us back,” as we watch them. To incorporate how the concept of singularity is ever present in our contemporary society, Rath’s sculptures do not repeat themselves; they evolve and change as they progress.  

From documentarian to commentator, the artist depicts history in a visual language all people can understand, regardless of the language they speak. In so doing, the artist creates a transparent global society, and reveals integral realities that might otherwise go unseen.

End, Part 2

Tonya Turner Carroll

Turner Carroll Gallery and Art Advisors

725 Canyon Road

Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501

United States of America

turnercarroll.com

Art as a Universal Language, Part 1: Why Understanding Visual Art is Essential

As the owner of Turner Carroll Gallery, I spend a lot of time talking and writing about artwork by the phenomenal artists I represent. Lately, I've been consumed by the destruction of some of civilization's greatest artifacts.  Ancient art is one of my passions, and I am devastated to see sites all over the Middle East, one after the other, lost forever. The Buddhas of Bamiyan, Nimrud, Aleppo, Palmyra--all contained visual information that helped us decipher the values and wisdom of the ancient civilizations that created them. With the loss of these artifacts comes the loss of our ability to understand the important messages contained in the history of the cultures that shaped our own.  With these “irreversible acts of annihilation,...the entirety of humanity...loses a piece of its memory as surely as if a slice of our collective brain had been removed by a mad lobotomist.” (Simon Schama, 3/13/15, Financial Times).

•••

Often people remark that they feel visual art is “an inside joke,” filled with its own lingo and mystique.  In reality, visual art is (by nature) the universal symbolic language that can be understood not only by art critics trained in deciphering the meaning of its symbols, but by any human being who cares enough to engage with the image. To ignore the visual image is to make a conscious choice to close oneself to messages other human beings attempt to share.

Cave painting, Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, India

     

Ancient cave painting, Chauvet Cave

Throughout the history of civilization, humans have told stories visually, to communicate with other humans.  Stone Age cave paintings, Mesopotamian cylinder seals, Egyptian tomb reliefs, Native American petroglyphs, religious icons, political propaganda posters, Communist Era Social Realism, and contemporary images of social empowerment all present themselves as creative manifestations of our shared human experience.  

Ancient Mesopotamian low relief image, depicting governance, religion, rites of civilization

Ancient Egyptian relief image depicting love

Human beings have always needed to procure food, governance, emotional connection, and spiritual beliefs to make order of chaotic civilization.  These are the same basic needs human beings possess in contemporary life.  If we take the time to seriously contemplate the art of other cultures, we see that we are one human-kind, and that our similarities far outweigh our social, religious, and political differences.

Thousand armed Avalokitesvara, Budhha of Infinite Compassion

stone Buddhist carvings in Leshan, Sichuan, China.  

(Photo  by McKay Savage)

Navajo drawing by Shemar George

This ancient Chinese carving of Avalokitesvara communicates compassion for all living things. Likewise, a contemporary drawing by a young Navajo boy in the American Southwest uses natural symbols for the four elements to depict the innate harmony of nature.

Hung Liu, China,  “Dandelion 11,”  oil on linen,  2015

Hangama Amiri, Afghanistan, “The Wind Up Dolls of Kabul” 2011

Though from cultures as different as Afghanistan and China, both Hung Liu and Hangama Amiri found the humble dandelion as a symbol of female strength.  Afghan and Chinese cultures might prefer women to be beautiful and graceful, like flowers.  By using the dandelion as an autobiographical symbol in their paintings, these artists show us that while women may be regarded as pretty, fragile, flowers, they are simultaneously strong, stubborn, resilient, and able to spread their essence throughout the world.

Unlike a written or spoken language that takes much time to learn, the pictorial language has immediate impact on both an implicit and an explicit level.  Therefore, if we allow ourselves to engage with the images we see, we can’t help but increase our appreciation for perspectives, cultures, values, and ideas other than our own.  Visual art is the language that helps us realize our interconnectedness in the vastness of the human experience .

This quotation by Mohammed Rabia Chaar, about ISIS's destruction of ancient artifacts in Syria, appeared in the New York Times. "Go and see...how all the ancient (artifacts) have been destroyed and looted, how bulldozers are digging." he said. "The feeling of sickness is growing more and more, day after day….Daesh wants people with no memory, with no history, with no culture, no past, no future."

When we focus on the differences, rather than the similarities, in what the visual language portrays, we disrupt the progress of our global society.  We divide and destroy, rather than enhancing the greatness of humankind.

End of Part 1

Tonya Turner Carroll
Turner Carroll Gallery and Art Advisors
725 Canyon Road
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
United States of America