The Great Women Artists

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

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview Sonal Khullar on one of the most acclaimed artists of the 20th century, AMRITA SHER-GIL! Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–41) was India’s foremost artist in the early twentieth century. Her paintings give prominence to real people at real moments, and exude pathos and strength. “I can only paint in India, Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse, Braque and the rest. But India belongs only to me.” Born in Budapest and raised in Shimla, northern India, between 1929 and 1932 Sher-Gil attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, as the first Indian student to do so, where she was able to study from nude models. Acclaimed for her Expressionistic figurative painting, she exhibited at the Paris Salon. Soon enough, she was drawn back to India: "I began to be haunted by an intense longing to return to India, feeling in some strange inexplicable way that there lay my destiny as a painter." Abandoning her European style, Sher-Gil’s figurative work transformed into studies of saturated colour with fluorescent fabrics and glittering textures. The subject of solo exhibitions, and a recipient of multiple prizes, Sher-Gil showed her work in Delhi and Bombay. But soon after set- tling in Lahore with her new husband, she was overcome with illness and died at the age of twenty-eight. Her acute sensibility is evident in her paintings, which capture not just the electricity of colour, and the merging of global styles, but also the world of her sitters, no matter what their status. Dr Sonal Khullar received her BA from Wellesley College, and her MA and PhD from the University of California Berkeley in art history, and has taught in the History of Art and Gender Studies departments of the University of Washington, and since 2020, at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research, specialising in work from the 18th century onwards, focuses on conflict, collaboration and globalisation in contemporary art from South Asia, and has looked at postcolonial art worlds, feminist geography, and the anthropology of art. LINKS: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/obituaries/amrita-shergil-dead.html?smid=tw-nytobits&smtyp=cur http://amrita-sher-gil.com https://artsandculture.google.com/story/amrita-sher-gil-artworks-from-the-collection-of-national-gallery-of-modern-art-national-gallery-of-modern-art-ngma-new-delhi/twWRBeSmWwQA8A?hl=en https://web.archive.org/web/20210121160223/https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/amrita-sher-gil/amrita-sher-gil-room-1-early-years-paris 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 Dr Dorothy Price on one of the most acclaimed artists ever to live, the great German Expressionist, KATHE KOLLWITZ! Dorothy Price is an indefatigable pioneer. Not only has she been instrumental as a specialist in German Expressionism, Weimar Culture and Black British Art, with a specific focus on women artists, but she has authored numerous books and articles in both areas. But today we are meeting because her latest exhibition, Making Modernism, opens at the Royal Academy of Arts, London this month, focussing on a group of women artists all of whom were active in Germany in the first few decades of the twentieth century. The exhibition seeks to look again at histories of modernism through the eyes of its female practitioners and is the first group exhibition of women artists at the Royal Academy for over 20 years: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/making-modernism So today we are going to be discussing one of these artists: Kathe Kollwitz, the pioneering German Expressionist who documented, through a socially conscious lens, the working classes and unemployed, and was a master at capturing the emotive intensity of her subjects, their vulnerabilities and hardship. Primarily a printmaker, Kollwitz took psychological intensity to new heights with her often stark portrayals of the grief-stricken and oppressed. Depicting mothers and children wrenched apart by death; individuals filled with anguish and in mourning; poverty, love, hatred and war ‒ Kollwitz’s compassionate images reveal the grim rawness of reality observed through a deeply sensitive lens. Socially conscious and created with acute feeling (she once wrote, ‘I agree with my art serving a purpose’), her work still speaks truth to the world we live in today. Born in Eastern Prussia, Kollwitz, having witnessed the physical and emotional effects of industrialisation, used printmaking to record the bleakness and inequalities of life. Immediate, accessible and at times cheap, printmaking enables an artist to produce both intricately detailed images and bold graphic forms. 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/ -- Making Modernism:Paula Modersohn-Becker, Käthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin at the RA: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/making-modernism https://www.kollwitz.de/en/biography https://www.kaethe-kollwitz.berlin/en/kaethe-kollwitz/biography/ https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG34072 Print cycle: A Weaver's Revolt (1892-97): https://www.kollwitz.de/en/cycle-weavers-revolt-overview -- Head of a Child in its Mother's Hands (Study of the Down Trodden) (1900): https://www.germanexpressionismleicester.org/leicesters-collection/artists-and-artworks/kaethe-kollwitz/head-of-a-child-in-its-mothers-hands-(study-of-the-down-trodden)/ https://www.kollwitz.de/en/cycle-peasants-war-overview https://www.kollwitz.de/en/woman-with-dead-child-kn-81 https://www.kollwitz.de/en/pair-of-lovers-sculpture-en-bronze Print cycle: War (completed 1921-1922) https://www.kollwitz.de/en/series-war-overview -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY CHRISTIES: www.christies.com

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview one of the most exciting painters working today, Jenna Gribbon. Drawing on the traditions of oil paint by focussing on figuration, Jenna Gribbon is known for her sensual, washy and almost electrically-coloured canvases that predominantly portray her partner, Mackenzie, as well as her son. Working on a surface, which, when witnessed in real life, appears to be constantly moving, the bodies in Jenna’s paintings erupt like landscapes or waterfalls collapsing in on each other. Get up close, and revealed are three, four, five, SIX layers of unexpected colour: light blues, purples, oranges, yellows, hot pinks. Existing in both natural and synthetically-lit source – I am especially drawn to those with electric lights, almost appearing as a spiritualist glow – Jenna’s paintings transport you to places of both intimacy and isolation, such as that moment when you’re with one other person and it feels like you’re the only people in the world. Although we often see the same people crop up, by their very nature the paintings feel universal, like fleeting memories that you want to hold onto forever, and, most significantly, intimate – the latter being a key aspect of her work. Based in Brooklyn, NYC, where we are recording today, Jenna has exhibited across the globe at Fredericks and Freiser in New York, Massimo de Carlo in London, most recently at the Frick Madison which paired her work with Old Master Paintings in the Met Breuer’s former brutalist building. Current exhibitions include at the Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, and she is housed in museum collections across the globe. Jenna Gribbon in conversation at the Frick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt1ot3Cy2UY Cultured Magazine: https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2022/02/16/jenna-gribbon-and-her-musician-muse-mackenzie-scott-blend-love-and-paint Interview with Juxtapoz https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/magazine/features/jenna-gribbon-the-pleasure-of-looking/ Interview with Whitehot Magazine: https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/dialogue-with-painter-jenna-gribbon/3880 Frieze: https://www.frieze.com/article/five-up-coming-painters-follow 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 renowned photographers working in the world right now, Catherine Opie! A photographer of portraits of people, landscapes, the urban environment and American society, Opie uses the tool of the camera to explore sexual and cultural identity. First picking up a camera aged nine, it was in the 1990s that she began to gain recognition for her studio portraits of gay and transgender communities who appear painterly and defiant, powerful and regal. Travelling across the world, and in particular different areas of North America, Opie has documented masculinity through high school footballers; politics and culture through her images of the 2008 presidential election; the landscape through images of sparse urban environments; and memorial through images of house belongings once owned by Elizabeth Taylor. Linked by notions of complexity, community, visibility and empathy, Opie’s photographs tell a story about the society in which we live. Speaking about her work she has said, “From early on, I wanted to create a language that showed how complex the idea of community really is, how we categorize who we are as human beings in relation to places we live.” Born in Ohio, and now based in Los Angeles, where she is a professor of photography and the chair of the UCLA department of art, Opie has exhibited in the world’s most prestigious museums, from MOCA Los Angeles to the Guggenheim in New York, and at the Whitney Biennial and many more. But the reason why we are speaking with Opie today is because this summer she opened a solo show at Thomas Dane Gallery in London – To What We Think We Remember. Taking its title from a Joan Didion quote, this exhibition focuses on community, collective responsibility and how to move forward while faced with the potentially devastating challenges of climate change, and the erasure of personal and political freedoms. -- LINKS: Thomas Dane show: https://www.thomasdanegallery.com/exhibitions/268/ New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/catherine-opie-all-american-subversive New York Times 2021: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/arts/design/catherine-opie-photography-monograph.html Art review: https://artreview.com/catherine-opie/ Opie essay for CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/catherine-opie-beauty/index.html Hilton Als 2021: https://www.regenprojects.com/attachment/en/54522d19cfaf3430698b4568/Press/610b3b9460b7b53c1b733db9 i–D: https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/g5gvk7/catherine-opie-interview-2021-life-in-photos New York Times 2019: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/t-magazine/catherine-opie.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article -- 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 Bloum Cardenas, none other than the granddaughter of the trailblazing, French-American sculptor, painter, performance artist and more, NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE!! Born in 1930 in France and living throughout the 20th century between America and Europe – she passed in 2002 – Saint Phalle is one of the century’s greatest creative personalities. She pioneered not only the boundaries between painting, performance and conceptual art in Paris during the 1960s, but explored large scale immersive environments through her joyous, glittering sculptures. These include the Tarot Garden in Tuscany – this incredible paradisal sculpture park filled with these colossal Nana-style sculptures of these bulbous women, glittering in mosaics – or her 1966 work at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Hon - the Cathedral, where visitors would enter through the giant open legs of one of her Nana figures a world complete with a 12-seat cinema, a bar, a playground for kids, a fish pond and sandwich vending machine. In the early 1960s she worked on her Shooting Paintings – violently shooting at canvases with bags of coloured paint that exploded and dripped onto a plaster surface. She used her ‘shooting events’ to fight against political corruption and the patriarchy. Employing large-scale canvases and masochistic gestures to emulate (and poke fun at) her male contemporaries, it was also through chance encounters and group efforts that Saint Phalle pioneered early concepts of Performance Art. By the mid-1960s, Saint Phalle had taken a different direction, abandoning her Shooting Paintings for her Nana sculptures: voluptuous and bulbous figures that reclaim the female form and celebrate the ‘everywoman’. Speaking about them in 1972, she said: ‘Why the nanas? Well, first because I am one myself. Because my work is very personal and I try to express what I feel. It is the theme that touches me most closely. Since women are oppressed in today’s society I have tried, in my own personal way, to contribute to the Women’s Liberation Movement.’ Bloum Cardenas, from 1985–1990, Bloum worked in the archives of her grandmother and in 1997, moved to San Francisco to help organise Saint Phalle’s archived there. Since 2002, she has been a trustee for the for the Niki Charitable Art Foundation. She is also the president of the beloved Tarot Garden in Tuscany. ENJOY!!! -- Peter Schjendahl: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/05/the-pioneering-feminism-of-niki-de-saint-phalle New Yorker on The Tarot Garden 2016: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/18/niki-de-saint-phalles-tarot-garden New York Times 2021: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/arts/design/Niki-de-Saint-Phalle-MoMA-PS1-Salon-94.html Artforum: https://www.artforum.com/print/202105/johanna-fateman-on-the-art-of-niki-de-saint-phalle-85478 Niki de Saint Phalle Foundation website: http://nikidesaintphalle.org/niki-de-saint-phalle/biography/#1930-1949 Tate etc on living with Niki: https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-12-spring-2008/living-niki Tate shots on Niki de Saint Phalle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV7aJ7XHeB4 Nouveau Réalisme: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/n/nouveau-realisme Gutai: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/g/gutai Shooting Paintings / Tirs https://www.moma.org/collection/works/150143 Hon - A Cathedral http://nikidesaintphalle.org/50-years-since-hon/ // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNfQt2FsUD4&feature=emb_logo // https://womennart.com/2018/08/22/hon-by-niki-de-saint-phalle/ The Tarot Garden http://ilgiardinodeitarocchi.it/en/ -- 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