THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview one of the most renowned artists living today, Adriana Varejão Best known for her sculptural, almost architectural, paintings that extend far beyond the frame, Varejão has tackled themes of Brazilian cultural identity, challenged ideas of modern monuments, and in her art exposes colonial truths through traditional processes. Drawing upon the visual language of the European Baroque, Chinese Song ceramics as well as Brazilian and other South American traditions – just as she once said: interest lies in the interactions between different latitudes of the world. At once gory and theatrical, Varejão's work is all about what lies under the surface – literally – under the layers of canvas or plaster but also metaphorically, asking whose stories are being hidden, what violence is being covered up. She has exhibited all over the world with major exhibitions in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, at the ICA in Boston, and in 2016 designed the Brazilian Olympic Aquatics Stadium. Today, Varejão's practice continues to break ground in how we interpret cross-global intersections and ideas. Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview the renowned painter, photographer and filmmaker, Marylin Minter!  A legend on the New York art scene for over 50 years, Marylin Minter is a pioneer of electrically graphic, photorealist paintings which take the form of some of the most criticised elements of culture – from high fashion to female desire – and explore how advertising and the the media have set the stereotypes of beauty, behaviour and sexuality… Cropping her images, and zooming in on highly charged – at time erotic – images, Minter’s brightly saturated paintings of a tongue or high-heel are highly ambiguous in both subject and aesthetic value. From the contradictory questions around, is it beautiful? Is it abject, is it pretty or is it dirty? The work almost forms into an abstraction – with acidic tones and hazy finishes – making it unclear as to whether we are looking at a photograph or painting… Minter doesn’t stop at traditional art: she has taken to the mainstream and made works to appear on Times Square billboards or the backdrop of a Madonna concert. She is invested in all forms of culture, assessing wherever art has become disregarded and interpreted as low culture, opening up the question even wider…  Born in Louisiana, Minter Grew up in and attended university in Florida, and it was when studying when she embarked on her first well known photographic series of her mother – swept up in the impossible fantasy of glamour – that she was praised by the late Diane Arbus, who at the time was a visiting tutor.  In the 70s, Minter moved to NYC. Settling in the East Village scene, she challenged how both popular media and pop art treated women as unrealistic – as subjects of comparison rather than real people, in subjects often considered “debased”. She has since exhibited across the globe, and this Spring will open a new exhibition at LGDR featuring portraits of the likes of Lizzo to Lady Gaga, Gloria Steinem to Monica Lewinsky. And I can’t wait to find out more.  Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview the acclaimed novelist, essayist and author of 18 books, SIRI HUSTVEDT! From memoir to poetry, non-fiction to fiction, Hustvedt’s writing has touched on the topics of psychoanalysis, philosophy, neuroscience, literature, and art. Long-listed for the Booker Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, Hustvedt’s The Blazing World is a provocative novel about an artist, Harriet Burden, who after years of being ignored attempts to reveal the misogyny in art by asking three male friends to exhibit her work under their name. It is of course a triumph, and other bestsellers include What I Loved and The Summer Without Men. Born in Northfield, Minnesota to a Norwegian mother and an American father, and based in NYC since 1978, it wasn’t until 1995 that Hustvedt began writing about art. Since then, her art writing oeuvre has expanded enormously with numerous books and essays published to acclaim – which often focus on the fate of female artists in history, the biases of history making, and discuss the likes of Louise Bourgeois, Alice Neel, Adrian Piper, Lee Krasner, Betye Saar, Joan Mitchell, Dora Maar, among others – which I can’t wait to get into later on in this episode… Hustvedt’s writing is both eye-opening and groundbreaking. She has questioned how we measure greatness, if art has a gender, the effect of art and literature existing in our memory and the future of fiction. She has looked at the masculine traits of the mind and the female traits of emotion, the domestic vs the intellectual, and analysed how historians have not just told the narrative of art, but the narrative of the world. She has asked why absence is so prevalent and explored how women have reconfigured the body after years of what she calls ‘fictive’ spaces… I love her writing and it’s allowed me to unlock elements (and see things differently) in books, art, and more that exist in my memory. Favourite books include A Woman Looking at Men Looking At Women: Essays on Art, Sex and the Mind and, more recently, Mothers, Fathers and Others – which is part memoir, part psychological study. So I couldn’t be more delighted to have her on the podcast today. Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview one of the most renowned artists working today, SARAH SZE! Working across sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, video, and installation – and the culmination of them – Sze’s creations often take the form of a planetarium, a colosseum, a work-in-progress laboratory. Often held up by precarious stick-like structures and formed around everyday objects (and, more recently, moving images), her works behave – for me – as the greatest visual microcosm for the information and images inundating today’s fast moving, internet-filled world. In dialogue with art historical predecessors who worked with the readymade at the start of the 20th century – as well as challenging traditions in genres, such as the still life – Sze borrows from everyday materials. These include wire, congealed paint, tape measures, scissors, newspapers – as well as images and films taken on her iPhone as if to give prominence to mundane, mass-produced objects. Born in Boston, Sze earned a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Already when she was just in graduate school, an exhibition at MoMA PS1 saw her transform both the museum and sculpture itself. This quickly progressed to Sze working with projections and objects – from plastic water bottles to razor blades, q-tips and ladders – and work on an immersive scale that activated the viewer to be part of the time-based work, as well as challenging the notions that everything in her artworks is actually what is used to require to make the piece itself. In 2003, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship; in 2012 she took over New York’s High Line; in 2013 she represented the US at the Venice Biennale; in 2017, her permanent mural “Blueprint for a Landscape” opened at the 96th Street station of the Second Avenue subway in Manhattan. Last month she opened a monumental exhibition titled “Timelapse” at the Guggenheim, and next month will transform a disused Victorian waiting room at Peckham Rye station in London into an installation commissioned by Artangel. FURTHER LINKS! https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/sarah-sze-timelapse https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/33-sarah-sze/ https://gagosian.com/artists/sarah-sze/ https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/sarah-sze/ https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_sze_how_we_experience_time_and_memory_through_art#t-542032 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview author, artist, writer, and academic, Pamela L Bannos on the very private yet supremely inquisitive street photographer who spent her days working as a nanny, VIVIAN MAIER!! Maier (1926–2009) was street photographer who has been compared to the likes of Helen Levitt or Diane Arbus. But here’s the thing: despite taking pictures incessantly and amassing more than 100,000 negatives, she never published or exhibited her work in her lifetime. This is one of the most fascinating stories in art history. Maier’s photographs reveal a woman who had empathy for her subjects – from children to the elderly – and who were often unaware of her presence. She famously worked with a Rolliflex camera which she would use for several decades, allowing for her signature square format, but which didn’t need to be brought up to one’s eye – enhancing even further how she could catch her subjects off guard. When asked about her occupation by a man she once knew, she’d say “I’m sort of a spy… I’m the mystery woman.” Tracing the people, politics, and landscape of mid to late 20th century North America, Maier’s extensive oeuvre recorded life as it passed her by. And here’s the thing, because she never exhibited or published her work during her lifetime, she was predominantly known for her primary role as a nanny to children in the Chicago area. So much remains to be missing, which is why I can’t wait to speak to Pamela, who has looked at tens of thousands of these images; traced Maier’s footsteps from the US to France, and delved into the archive in search of everything we might know about the photographer. Pamela Bannos is a professor at Northwestern University, and the author of Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife, 2017: http://vivianmaierproject.com/. Here is the TV interview of her discussing the book 10 min: https://news.wttw.com/2017/10/19/new-book-focuses-life-work-mysterious-photographer-vivian-maier FURTHER LINKS! Finding Vivian Maier: https://vimeo.com/452963941 Her official website by Maloof - including portfolio of pictures: https://www.vivianmaier.com/about-vivian-maier/ NYT review of the book by Pamela Bannos: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/books/review-vivian-maier-biography-pamela-bannos.html Roberta Smith on Vivian Maier: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/arts/design/vivian-maier.html?_r=0 The New Yorker on Maloof film: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/vivian-maier-and-the-problem-of-difficult-women WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204879004577110884090494826 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

WELCOME BACK TO SEASON 9 of The GWA PODCAST! This week, we interview one of the most influential and groundbreaking artists alive, SONIA BOYCE! Born and raised in London, where she still lives today, Boyce has been taking the art world by storm since the 1980s when she and other trailblazing artists – such as Lubaina Himid and Claudette Johnston – emerged collectively onto the art scene as the Black Arts Movement. Putting images of women and their stories centre stage, they exhibited in shows such as Five Black Women in 1983 at the Africa Centre, Thin Black Line at the ICA in 1985, and The Other Story at the Hayward in 1989.  Since then, Boyce's indefatigable practice – spanning drawing, printmaking, photography, installation, video and sound – has constantly evolved, focusing on collaboration, often with an emphasis on improvisation as she works with other artists to create immersive installation environments. Taking on a broader ethos of "collage" and what it means today – both literally and metaphorically – Boyce's practice has brought together a multitude of people, places and perspectives to provoke invaluable conversations about the world we live in today. Often involving sound pieces, when I find myself amongst one of Boyce’s works, it becomes easy to lose oneself inside this very special, unusual but gripping world.  Since 2014 Boyce has been a professor of Black Art and Design, at the University of Arts London. In 2016, she was made a Royal Academician, in 2019 received an OBE for her services to art, and of course in 2022 became the winner of the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale, which she won for Feeling her Way – an immersive exhibition filled with bejewelled wallpaper and improvisatory song by women musicians – which is currently on view at Turner Contemporary in Margate before travelling to Leeds and later the Yale Centre for British Art.  https://turnercontemporary.org/bio/sonia-boyce/ https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sonia-boyce-obe-794  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/mar/19/hylas-nymphs-manchester-art-gallery-sonia-boyce-interview  https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/sonia-boyce-ra-magazine-venice-biennale  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/arts/design/sonia-boyce-venice-biennale.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001f0q7/imagine-2022-sonia-boyce-finding-her-voice  Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael  Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, to end this season, we interview Nellie Scott, Director of the Corita Art Center in California, on SISTER MARY CORITA! Sister Mary Corita Kent is the legendary Los Angeles icon, pop artist, activist, nun, and educator, known for her prints and posters filled with luminous block colours and text that reflected her concerns about poverty, racism, and war, and which are filled with messages of peace and social justice. Born in 1918 to a working class Catholic family in Iowa, when the Corita was five she moved with her family to Hollywood. In 1936, aged 18, Corita graduated from the Los Angeles Catholic Girls’ High School and entered the religious order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary where she took the name Sister Mary Corita (where she went on to head up the art dept!)  Corita's work ranges from figurative and religious to incorporating advertising images and slogans, popular song lyrics and passages from the Bible. In the ‘60s, her work became increasingly political, urging viewers to consider poverty, racism, and injustice. She was a groundbreaker and considered by many to be at the front of the Pop Art movement ~ whilst also teaching (and being a nun!) full time.  Reappropriating symbols for a spiritual message, such as Aeroplanes for guardian angels; Wonder Bread as the eucharist; Corita's art gained attention for its ability to find joy in the everyday. She infused pop elements into her work, and throughout the ‘60s, her work became increasingly political, urging viewers to consider the social injustices of the time. -- LINKS: Ten Rules Audio Project with Dublab Radio here: https://www.corita.org/tenrules Ten Rules Chronicle Book (April 2023) here: https://www.chroniclebooks.com/products/new-rules-next-week Baylis Glascock film here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hRjih1uLmampB8DI2s2n4Nup7i3Pmacc/view Thomas Conrad film here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vBcaCDRMLRAINXBYVDP3TyJmt2IL5fOD/view Rebel hearts doc on IHC here: https://www.rebelheartsfilm.com/ ENJOY! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY CHRISTIES: www.christies.com

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, for the very special 100th EPISODE, we interview art historian and leading curator of Surrealist and feminist art in Mexico and beyond, Tere Arcq on REMEDIOS VARO! Born in Spain, and raised in a strict Catholic schooling – from which she rebelled – Varo, in 1937, moved to Paris to join the Surrealists. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and unable to return to her home country, Varo, by 1941, escaped to Mexico. It was here where she found refuge, befriending the likes of Leonora Carrington and Kati Horna, and made the most extraordinary and meticulous paintings. Often exploring alchemy and magic, her paintings tend to focus on a single, isolated figure in an otherworldly realm. With striking features – allegedly based on her own looks – her protagonists, often female, appear like hybridised creatures. One of my favorites is (image 1) – The Call, from 1961, presents a woman, holding a pestle and mortar, walking through a corridor of tree-like figures who meditavely loom by the side, emphasising the sounds of silence, an aura of mystery, and the idea of practising something in secret! Whenever I see a painting by Remedios Varo, I feel transfixed by their mystical and metaphysical atmosphere. They are meticulously rendered - almost renaissance-like - works of these women who seem to be trapped in towers, on a quest to reach a higher state of consciousness or living in another surrealist world. They are at once haunting, mesmeric, glowing and magical. A professor in art history based in Mexico City, Tere Arcq has been the Chief Curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico and has curated exhibitions on women surrealists around the world. In 2012 she curated In Wonderland: The Adventures of Women Surrealists LACMA in addition to exhibitions at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec and here in the UK where she was a co-curator of the 2010 exhibition Surreal Friends: Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna at Pallant House gallery. With more curatorial projects in the pipeline, very excitingly, Tere is a co-curator of the upcoming retrospective at the Chicago Art Institute for summer 2023 on the artist we are very excitingly talking about today, the Surrealist Remedios Varo.  -- 2021 New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/obituaries/remedios-varo-overlooked.html  NMWA biography: https://nmwa.org/art/artists/remedios-varo/  2000 New York Times on her scientific interest: https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/11/science/scientific-epiphanies-celebrated-on-canvas.html  Artnews: https://www.artnews.com/feature/who-is-remedios-varo-and-why-is-she-important-1234574762/  Website with all her works: https://totallyhistory.com/remedios-varo-paintings/ Guardian review of Pallant House exhibitions Surreal Friends with Leonora Carrington and Kati Horna https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/18/surrealist-muses-who-roared-mexico Eyes on the table (1938) https://totallyhistory.com/remedios-varo-paintings/ Harmony (1956)https://usaartnews.com/auctions/the-mystical-scene-by-spanish-surrealist-remedios-varo-set-a-world-record The Juggler (The Magician), (1956)https://www.moma.org/collection/works/291307 Audio guide: https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/296/3792 Celestial Pablum (1958) https://brooklynrail.org/2017/10/criticspage/Hidden-Figures  Triptych: Towards the Tower (1961) Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle (1961) The Escape (1962)https://www.gallerywendinorris.com/artists-collection/remedios-varo https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/obituaries/remedios-varo-overlooked.html -- ENJOY! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY CHRISTIES: www.christies.com

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, for the very special 100th EPISODE, we interview one of the world’s leading cultural commentators and most important voices in Classics, Professor Dame MARY BEARD!! A specialist in Roman history and art, Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Newnham College, where she has been since 1984. She is also Professor of Ancient Literature at the Royal Academy, Classics editor of the TLS and a Fellow of the British Academy and International Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. One of the most important writers of our age, Mary Beard has written groundbreaking scholarship, books, documentaries and articles on the subject such as The Parthenon, Pompeii: Life in a Roman Town, Laughter in Ancient Rome, and SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, And more recently, Women and Power: A Manifesto and Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern about Roman Emperors in Renaissance and later art, two books which shifted my understanding of the perception and role of women in society today and the nature of power in our Western word … and I couldn’t be more honoured to have her on for this very special episode of the Great Women Artists Podcast. In this episode we discuss the women artists in the ancient world, the perception of women from ancient times to the present day – looking at Livia, Melassina, Agrippina, and Cleopatra – and the effect of the depictions of women from the ancient world – Venus, Medusa, Athena, Lilith – and how they filter into society today. -- Twelve Caesars (2021): https://www.waterstones.com/book/twelve-caesars/mary-beard/9780691222363 Women & Power (2017): https://www.waterstones.com/book/women-and-power/professor-mary-beard/9781788160612 Lecture by Mary Beard on women of the 12 Caesars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB7W0UzVP24 Edmonia Lewis The Death of Cleopatra (completed 1876) https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/death-cleopatra-33878 Detail from The House of the Surgeon, a panelled painting in Pompeii (c.50-79 AD) - shows a woman in front of a painted canvas holding a paintbrush and mixing her paints: https://www.theancientartblog.com/post/women-painters-in-antiquity Women artists in antiquity: https://www.theancientartblog.com/post/women-painters-in-antiquity -- ENJOY! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY CHRISTIES: www.christies.com

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview one of the most well-known and prominent art critics of the 21st century, JERRY SALTZ on various artists including Gillian Wearing, Tracey Emin, and Kara Walker! Since the 1990s, Saltz has been an indispensable cultural voice and has attracted an enormous following of contemporary readers.  Only beginning to write at around 40 when he was still a long-haul truck driver, Saltz is now the senior art critic for New York magazine and its entertainment site Vulture. In 2018 he won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and had twice been nominated when he was the art critic for The Village Voice between 1998 and 2007.  He has spoken at the likes of MoMA, the Guggenheim, as well as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the RISD +  is the bestselling author of How to be an Artist published in 2020 which provides invaluable insight into what is really important for up and coming artists from originality to persistence, and self-belief.  But, the reason we are talking with Jerry today is because on the first of November, Jerry published his next book, Art is Life: Icons & Iconoclasts, Visionaries & Vigilantes, & Flashes of Hope in the Night which is collection of his writings from 1999 to 2021 and surveys the ups and downs of the time between 9/11 and the Pandemic through the lens of visionary artists shaping how we see art today.  ENJOY!! LINKS: Jerry's Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jerrysaltz/?hl=en  Jerry's Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jerrysaltz?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor  Jerry's writing for New York magazine:  https://nymag.com/author/jerry-saltz/  How to Be an Artist (2020):  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612484/how-to-be-an-artist-by-jerry-saltz/#:~:text=From%20the%20first%20sparks%20of,of%20qualities%2C%20self%2Dbelief.  Art is Life (2022):  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612485/art-is-life-by-jerry-saltz/9780593086490/  Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY CHRISTIES: www.christies.com