The Great Women Artists

In episode 49 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the incredible data journalist and artist, MONA CHALABI!!!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Currently the Data editor of the Guardian US, a position she has held for the past seven years, the London-born but now New York-based Chalabi is known for her outstanding data-informed visualisations and drawings that range from addressing stats around gender imbalances in museums, to hate crimes and immigration issues to what time of day Americans might eat pizza. Bold, full of colour, and often hand-drawn directly onto graph or square paper, it is with humour and wit that Chalabi pushes boundaries to challenge societal assumptions and habits that have come to affect the way we live and think.  Having exhibited at the Tate, Design Museum, the V&A Glasgow and more, and created illustrations for the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Netflix – as well as to her 400,000+ strong Instagram following, where you can find so much of her work – Chalabi has also written and presented for the BBC, National Geographic, Channel 4 and VICE, and was nominated for an Emmy for her video series Vagina Dispatches for the Guardian.  Commended by the Royal Statistical society, nominated for a Beazley Design of the Year award, and a former columnist for Five Thirty Eight called Dear Mona, Chalabi is translating spreadsheets into written pieces, illustration, audio and film for the modern-day consumer, allowing us all to enjoy, interact with her reliable data sources, as she breaks down the wall between complex information, art and illustration.  And on a personal level, it has been this year more than ever, with the current Coronavirus pandemic, Black Lives Matter Movement and the American election, that Mona’s data-informed works have resonated with people around the world. By using the power of art and illustration, she has allowed us to consume complex information in ways that I never thought possible.  WORKS + CHART DISCUSSED IN THE EPISODE! MONA'S INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/monachalabi/ MONA'S WEBSITE: https://monachalabi.com/ Trump's Federal Income Tax: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFr6e73lkK6/ Mandatory paid vacation: https://www.instagram.com/p/CE1kpM5FhWR/ Rectal bleeding: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bc-WtaRF-zg/ Mark Zuckerberg's donation to Coronavirus: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-StLvnFtOE/  Museum statistics: https://www.instagram.com/p/BxGBMU7HuUh/ 100 New Yorkers: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBTKeNNl4NZ/ US Police Training: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBLWZM8lmUL/ Understanding Police Brutality: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAz86y0FYqM/ Breonna Taylor: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFh6Uu1Fpn8/ Active KKK Groups: https://www.instagram.com/p/BYMAj-xFJOf/ Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Laura Hendry  Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Highly esteemed National Gallery curator, Letizia Treves, discusses the revolutionary Baroque artist, Artemisia Gentileschi, known for her large-scale Biblical paintings. The episode dives into Gentileschi's resilience, her letters, and the impact of her exhibition at the National Gallery.

In episode 47 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the highly esteemed, Cambridge University Art History professor and Surrealist EXPERT, Alyce Mahon on the magical LEONOR FINI (1907–1996) !!!!  [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] The MATRIARCH of 20th century painting, known for her highly original works of supernatural portraits that empowered her female protagonists in the forms of sphinxes, Fini switched up gender roles like no other and was one of the most ground-breaking painters of the twentieth century. Born in Buenos Aires of mixed Spanish, Italian, and Argentine descent, Leonor escaped Argentina when she was 18 months old with her young mother, who raised her in Trieste where she was exposed to Mannerist and Renaissance painting, and her uncle's library where she read Freud and Jung. Fini, although known for her meticulously executed paintings, was completely self-taught.  With her intelligence, famous wit and charisma, she had garnered celebrity status in the Paris Avant Garde by the early 30s, and was exhibiting in the major surrealist exhibitions. But it was her portraits made in the late 30s and images of women in the forms of sphinxes that garnered her attention.  With the predominant themes in her art being sexual tensions, mysteries and games, her favoured subjects explored the interplay between the dominant female and the passive male. In many of her most powerful works the female takes the form of the sphinx to which she felt a strong identification. Whilst many of her peers ventured to New York and Mexico after World War II, Fini moved first to Rome and then back to Paris where she became an acclaimed set and costume designer for the likes of Fellini's film, Eight and a Half, and designed dresses and masquerades for Brigitte Bardot. WORKS DISCUSSED:  Self Portrait with a Scorpion (1938) Portrait of Meret Oppenheim (1938) The Alcove: An Interior with Three Women or The Black Room (1939) The Alcove/Self Portrait with Nico Papatakis (1941) Little Hermit Sphinx (Tate Collection) (1948) The Angel of Anatomy (1949) FURTHER LINKS! Alyce's fantastic exhibition: https://www.museumofsex.com/portfolio_page/leonor-fini/ Alyce's book! https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691141619/the-marquis-de-sade-and-the-avant-garde (use the code MAHON20 for 25% off!) https://www.weinstein.com/artists/leonor-fini/ https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/leonor-fini-5287 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Laura Hendry  Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

To mark the FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of @thegreatwomenartists Instagram, in this very special episode, Katy Hessel interviews the trailblazing, fearless, ICONS Kathë Kollwitz and Frida Kahlo of the GUERRILLA GIRLS !!!!!  [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] I don’t think I have ever been so excited! The anonymous feminist activist artist collective founded in 1985, who go by the guises of deceased female artists, the Guerrilla Girls are known to wear masks in public and use facts, humour, and outrageous and bold visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias in art, film, politics and in pop culture.  Working tirelessly for the past 35 years, the Guerrilla Girls have constantly fought discrimination and supported human rights for all people and all genders through their data-based artwork, which has been exhibited on buses, billboards, some of the biggest museums in the world – from the Tate to the Whitney – but also our very own bedrooms, including my own, with their aim being to spread equality and action through more than ninety posters, mugs, tea-towels, workbooks and more. Best known for their outrageous and witty statements including, “do women have to be naked to get into the met museum”, or “the advantages of being a woman artist”, it is through humour, bold graphics and data that the Guerrilla Girls catch our attention, and leave us wondering how just did museums get away with celebrating the history of patriarchy, as opposed to the history of art.  The most inspiring, encouraging, educational and unfortunately very needed artist collective out there, the Guerrilla Girls have changed – and are still changing – the story of art, one stunt at a time. I have been lucky enough to be the owner of much of their merchandise, and am delighted to say that they have just brought out a staggering new book,  The Guerrilla Girls: The Art of Behaving Badly, the first publication to catalog the entire career of the Guerrilla Girls from 1985 to present. ENJOY!!!!! FURTHER LINKS! https://www.guerrillagirls.com/ New book! https://www.guerrillagirls.com/store/the-art-of-behaving-badly Projects! https://www.guerrillagirls.com/projects Exhibitions! https://www.guerrillagirls.com/exhibitionshttps://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/guerrilla-girls-6858 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Amber Miller (@amber_m.iller) Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 45 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews one of the greatest painters to ever live, the inimitable CECILY BROWN!!!!!   [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] I am SO EXCITED to release this episode which chronicles the UK-born, US-based Brown's incredible painterly career from the 1990s–present day! With her work steeped in art history, referencing the likes of Rubens, to Goya to Bacon and de Kooning, Cecily Brown is known for her all-encompassing, small-to-colossal scale paintings that portray the medium in a continual state of flux, constantly blurring the lines between abstraction and figuration, truth and fiction, liquid and solid.   Always ALIVE with erotic energy, witnessing a Cecily Brown in the flesh is like seeing four-hundred years worth of painting unfold before your eyes. Every corner and inch of the canvas is activated, frenzied and fractured so intensely that you can’t help but project ideas around desire, life, and death, with the painting’s momentous fleshy and battle-like strokes and tones.  Born in the UK in the late 1960s, Cecily Brown was granted a garage to paint by the esteemed British painter (and former GWA Podcast guest) Maggi Hambling, before going on to study at London’s Slade School of Fine Art. And in 1994, after a stint in America two years before, she relocated to New York City, where she has lived ever since, continuing the legacy of the renowned New York School artists.  The subject of solo exhibitions at major institutions around the world, including the MFA Boston, Hirshhorn in Washington, Modern Art Oxford, and my favourite Louisiana Museum in Denmark, as well as countless shows at galleries including Thomas Dane and Paula Cooper, where I have been lucky enough to witness her work, Cecily is considered one of the most influential painters alive right now.  And NOW she has recently opened a staggeringly brilliant exhibition at Blenheim Palace here in England, where she has conceived an entirely new body of work that responds to the Palace’s history, through hunting and battle scenes, as well as a brilliant commentary on the state of Britain right now and the romanticised but complex nature of British society.  FURTHER LINKS! https://www.blenheimpalace.com/whats-on/events/cecily-brown-art-exhibition/ All the Nightmares Came Today, 2012: https://www.artspace.com/cecily_brown/all-the-nightmares-came-today Current exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery: https://www.paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/cecily-brown-2020-10-15/selected-works Louisiana show: https://louisiana.master.re-cph.dk/en/exhibition/cecily-brown https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/cecily-brown-totally-unaware Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Amber Miller (@amber_m.iller) Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 44 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the highly esteemed, pioneering art historian, Wanda M Corn on the legendary painter, GEORGIA O'KEEFFE (1887–1986) !!!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] I am SO EXCITED to release this episode with Wanda Corn who not only **KNEW** Georgia O'Keeffe in the 1980s, but who is the curator of the staggeringly brilliant and HIGHLY successful exhibition, Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern at New York’s The Brooklyn Museum in 2017, which toured around the US. This was an exhibition that looked at how the renowned modernist artist proclaimed her progressive, independent lifestyle through a self-crafted person – from the way she dressed to how she posed for photographs – expanding our understanding of who O’Keeffe was, and her determination to be in charge of how the world understood her identity and artistic values.  The ICON of American painting Georgia O'Keeffe is one of the greatest artists to ever live. Known for her incredibly rendered paintings of magnified flowers, American skyscrapers, to skulls and landscapes evocative of the dry New Mexican landscape in which she lived, O'Keeffe captured the most serene works that didn't just reflect the world around her, but the evolution of modernism in the 20th century. No one captured nature in its many forms like O'Keeffe. Learning to paint at the turn of the 1900s, O'Keeffe transformed traditional subjects – the landscape and still life – into a modernist language. After venturing to the deep Southwest in 1929, it was through painting that she documented the starkness and alien-ness of a place that had so rarely been recorded in oil paint.  Wanda Corn is a former Professor at Stanford University, and a LEADING scholar of late 19th and early 20th century American art and photography. A writer, curator, editor and lecturer, Wanda has received countless awards and fellowships for her tireless work to art history over the past few decades! And is the MOST enthusiastic and engaging speaker. THANK YOU WANDA!! FURTHER LINKS! The book of the show! https://prestelpublishing.randomhouse.de/book/Georgia-OKeeffe/Wanda-Corn/Prestel-com/e516673.rhd A video of Wanda's exhibition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTYqxARzOlchttps://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/touring/georgia_okeeffe_living_modern https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-great-american-thing/wanda-m-corn/9780520231993 https://www.okeeffemuseum.org/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quG3EHonOns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v8E7460eTU Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Amber Miller (@amber_m.iller) Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 43 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews one of the most incredible artists working in the world right now, the brilliant TOYIN OJIH ODUTOLA. [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Working exclusively in drawing materials including pen, pastel, charcoal, and chalk, the Nigerian-born and New York-based artist is known for her astoundingly-beautiful, electric-like and meticulously rendered figurative works. Based on imaginary characters who inhabit opulent interiors and verdant landscapes, Ojih Odutola’s work can be exclusively monochrome or drenched in dazzling colours. With her starting point being not the pen, but rather her mind, she begins each series by creating narratives that play out through a series of works that suggest the structure of episodes or chapters, in their cinematic-like ways. As viewers, these sometimes-immersive series leave you physically and psychologically transported into other worlds as they probe questions about the state of our current world through their presentations of alternative histories, with the artist herself joining the story as she takes up fictional roles including a private secretary, or the director of a research initiative. A 2017 exhibition, To Wander Determined at The Whitney Museum in New York, which I was lucky enough to witness, presented an interconnected series of fictional portraits chronicling the lives of two aristocratic Nigerian families, and her most recent exhibition, A Countervailing Theory at London’s Barbican Centre, tells the story of an ancient civilisation ruled by female warriors (the Eshu) and served by male labourers (the Koba). Referencing ancient history, popular culture, anime, fan-fiction, to contemporary politics, Toyin is reinterpreting the artistic landscape like no other. By playing with traditions of portraiture, she is pushing the genre beyond its roots into the realm to the psychological, the speculative and the seemingly impossible. And it is her most recent exhibition, A Countervailing Theory, which features a staggering cycle of forty new large-scale drawings that explore the complexities of our system, and challenge established norms!!!! WOW. I am completely blown away by Toyin Ojih Odutola in this episode. PLEASE LISTEN !!!! and thank you :) FURTHER LINKS: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2020/event/toyin-ojih-odutola-a-countervailing-theory https://www.npg.org.uk/blog/zadie-smith-and-toyin-ojih-odutola https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/17/toyin-ojih-odutolas-visions-of-power https://jackshainman.com/artists/toyin_ojih_odutola https://whitney.org/exhibitions/toyinojihodutola Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Amber Miller (@amber_m.iller) Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 42 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the sensational painter, CHLOE WISE!!!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Canada-born and now NYC-based, Chloe Wise captures the strange times we are living more poignantly – and sometimes disturbingly – more than any artist I know!!  Working in a range of materials, from beautifully-rendered painting, to sculpture, video and installation, Wise’s works are filled with portraits of her friends and acquaintances, food, and everyday objects that pay particular attention to our consumer-culture-obsessed and hyper-sanitised world. Perfectly rendered with an almost airbrush-like quality, Chloe’s paintings in particular comment on how advertising, fashion, and multinational brands feed into our everyday lives. By incorporating these well-known symbols and logos into her work, she makes us question not only our everyday need to consume, but our obsession with portraying an outwardly perfect version of ourself, which is why another side of her work (the videos!) are such a great antidote to her painting, as it shows us an awkward truth of the world: unsanitized, airbrushed, and often set up in an anonymous office-like environment. Steeped in the history of art and the history of portraiture with their triangular forms, large group scenes emulating a Biblical or historical narrative, use of drapery evocative of Botticelli or Bernini, and hands connecting the emotion of each figure, it is with a wry sense of humour that Wise nods to the canon which explore the shared projected desires built around food and the female body.  ENJOY!! This is one of the funnest, most interesting, and THOUGHT PROVOKING episodes of the GWA Podcast. We discuss everything from her painting to living in Trump's America to our mass-consumed world, and of course our love for ALICE NEEL! Further links:  https://www.chloewise.com/ https://www.alminerech.com/artists/3760-chloe-wise https://alminerech.viewingrooms.com/viewing-room/11-chloe-wise-second-nature/ This episode is sponsored by Alighieri https://alighieri.co.uk/ @alighieri_jewellery Use the code: TGWA for 10% off! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Amber Miller (@amber_m.iller) Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

WELCOME BACK TO SEASON 4!! In episode 41 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the world-renowned, Guggenheim curator and Director of Collections, Tracey Bashkoff on the staggeringly PIONEERING... HILMA AF KLINT!!!  [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] And WOW. What an INSIGHT into one of the world's greatest and innovative artists: who experimented with Abstraction BEFORE the likes of Kandinsky and Mondrian, but whose paintings (who no one knew she was making!) were not discovered until 20+ years after the artist's death in 1944.  Guided by a spirit, Hilma af Klint created mesmerising, and colossal-scale work that documented the evolution of life and the world. Not telling anyone except her Spiritualist circle that she was making these (bar the Theosophist, Rudolph Steiner, who may or may not have tipped people off!!! Listen for more!), Hilma af Klint painted her series "Paintings for the Temple" (100s of paintings in just two years!) which she envisioned to be one day housed in a 'round, spiral-like temple' (!!!), which feels scarily like the actual Guggenheim....!!! And wow has she had a resurgence. Between the years 2018–2019, Tracey Bashkoff curated the most successful exhibition the Guggenheim has ever seen. An exhibition that not only stunned the world and disrupted art history for ever, but saw a record number of visitors attend (over 600,000 nearly double that of the previous year’s Giacometti show), forced the museum to extend their evening hours and be open seven days a week despite the show running for a staggering six months! This show was of course, "Hilma Af Klint: Paintings for the Future", a groundbreaking exhibition that filled every corner of the gallery by the little-known Swedish artist, whose first ever US solo exhibition it was, held 75 years after her death. ENJOY! This is genuinely the most fascinating story of an artist I have EVER witnessed! Further information: https://www.guggenheim.org/video/hilma-af-klint https://www.guggenheim.org/blogs/checklist/who-was-hilma-af-klint-at-the-guggenheim-paintings-by-an-artist-ahead-of-her-time  https://www.guggenheim.org/blogs/checklist/guggenheim-curators-answer-questions-about-hilma-af-klint https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/arts/design/hilma-af-klint-review-guggenheim.html  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/hilma-af-klints-visionary-paintings This episode is sponsored by Alighieri https://alighieri.co.uk/ @alighieri_jewellery Use the code: TGWA for 10% off! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Amber Miller (@amber_m.iller) Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 40 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the world-renowned art historian, Dr Melanie Herzog on the TRAILBLAZING American artist, ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915–2012). [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] And WOW! This was such an insight into one of the MOST seminal artists (teacher, pioneer, and PERSON!) who lived throughout almost the entirety of the 20th century, and whose aim in her art was to tell stories, fight for justice, and make art accessible to ALL!!! "I have always wanted my art to service my people—to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential.” Elizabeth Catlett was known for her powerful sculptures, paintings, and prints that explored themes around race, feminism, and SOCIAL JUSTICE! Born in DC, Catlett attended the ESTEEMED Howard University in the 30s under the legend who was Lois Mailou Jones, before completing her MFA at Iowa under the American artist Grant Wood who inspired her to "take as your subjects what you know best" ! She became instrumental in the Harlem Renaissance, before moving to Mexico in 1946, where she became heavily involved in political movements and joined the radical artists' collective called "Taller de Gráfica Popular". She remained in Mexico for the rest of her life, and only came back to the USA once for her major Studio Museum in Harlem exhibition. The grandchild of freed slaves, Catlett was instrumental in pioneering a style that merged abstraction and figuration in a Modernist aesthetic – curvaceous figures and features with thick sharp lines – whilst also bringing in influences from African and Mexican art traditions. Whilst alive (she passed in 2012 age 96) she divided her time between Mexico and the US which heavily informed her approach to form and printmaking. Catlett's artistic aim was to convey social messages through her heavily political work which saw her reflect the civil rights struggles in which she participated.  ENJOY!!! Further information! https://www.moma.org/collection/works/88189https://www.moma.org/collection/works/67108?sov_referrer=artist&artist_id=1037&page=1https://www.moma.org/collection/works/65050?sov_referrer=artist&artist_id=1037&page=1 This episode is sponsored by Alighieri https://alighieri.co.uk/ @alighieri_jewellery Use the code: TGWA for 10% off! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Amber Miller (@amber_m.iller) Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/