The Great Women Artists

In this very special BONUS EPISODE of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews one of the most renowned artists alive today, Marina Abramović. *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9781529151145 **This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.com – use the code "The Artist is Present" at checkout for 15% off!** The “grandmother” of Performance Art, Marina Abramovic has been instrumental in pioneering the genre as a visual art form for the last five decades – a genre defined by risk taking; being present; a state of mind; emptying yourself; and connecting the energies with the surrounding public. Born in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia in 1946, to communist hero parents, Marina Abramović experienced a strict upbringing. Until the age of 29, she was under a curfew of 10 o’clock – resulting in the artist running away a few months later. Since the beginning of her career in the 1970s, Marina Abramović has stretched the limits of the body and mind as both object and subject. Early works include Rhythm 0 (1974), where she became an object of experimentation for the audience – laying out 72 objects, including a pistol, and stating they could be used on her as desired; or Rhythm 5 (1974), where she lay in the centre of a burning five-point star. She has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in her quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. Never slowing down, in 1997 she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for a work that commented on war in Yugoslavia, and in 2010, she took over MoMA for The Artist is Present, where she sat motionless in a chair for eight hours a day – the show broke records, attracting 850,000 visitors. In 2012, she founded the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), a non-profit foundation for performance art, and has since exhibited at the world’s most prestigious institutions, earning her a global following. And in 2023, she will be the first woman to have a solo exhibition in the main galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. TODAY Marina Abramović launches The Hero 25FPS – @artistispresent / NFT.CIRCA.ART For her first performance launching today on the blockchain, Marina Abramović revisits one of her most personal and autobiographical works ‘The Hero (2001)’ to present in collaboration with The Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Art (CIRCA) this digital exploration of time, immateriality and audience participation. Filmed at 25 frames per second, never before seen footage has been separated into 6,500 unique frames to create The Hero 25FPS, a genesis NFT collection by the warrior of performance art. A call for today’s new heroes! Upon completion of THE HERO 25FPS, Marina Abramović, @nadyariot (Pussy Riot) and CIRCA will award a series of Hero Grants to people working within Web3 who demonstrate a desire to make the world a better place. ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 88, and the SEASON FINALE of Season 7 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed curator, Caroline Bourgeois on MARLENE DUMAS! *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9781529151145 **This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.com | use the code TGWA20 at checkout for 20% off!•• A painter of the face, the figure and the human psyche and form, Marlene Dumas is one of the most influential painters alive today. Collecting raw emotion and translating it visually onto the canvas through paint, Dumas derives her work from second hand images. In turn, she creates internal portraits that trigger every sense in your body. Contradictory and complex, verging on the sublime and full of seduction, they are also enveloped in pain. Made without any prior studies, she holds a feeling, an emotion, movement and life in the second of the moment. Although her figures are still, it is like they are moving, and although they are immortalised, it is like they are breathing. I couldn't be more excited to say that she is the artist who we will be discussing today with Caroline Bourgeois, the curator of "Marlene Dumas: Open––End” at Palazzo Grassi in VENICE!! https://www.palazzograssi.it/en/exhibitions/current/open-end-marlene-dumas/ I was astonished going round this exhibition at Palazzo Grassi. I have seen a few works in the flesh by Dumas, but walking around, it was electrifying. Not only do these paintings pulsate with colour and exude sensuality, but they appear full of motion. Dumas captures this raw, internal human emotion that is at once full of strength but vulnerability. Not existing in any physical space, her works teeter on the threshold between life and death, internal and the external… It is like they are memories that are familiar, protective, but also ghoulish and haunting. LIST OF PAINTINGS DISCUSSED HERE: https://www.palazzograssi.it/site/assets/files/9808/guide_marlene-dumas_eng.pdf ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 87 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the very brilliant young painter, ANTONIA SHOWERING!!! *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9781529151145 Acclaimed for her richly layered paintings of family, friends, lovers and more that occupy spaces between reality and surreality, memory and imagination, Antonia Showering paints her subjects full of conviction and full of emotion. Layered with narratives of, in her words, ‘stacked recollections’, her paintings can appear at once haunting and ethereal, ghoulish yet protective, and although they are personal to her, they can speak for us all. Infused with both an acidic and muted colour palette, with thick impasto and washy strokes, Antonia’s paintings deal with universal subjects on a personal level. Speaking about the canvas, she has said: “I see the canvas as a physical space where feelings of belonging or displacement, love or loneliness, intergenerational memory, superstitions and regrets can be turned into something visual and shared with the viewer.” Born in London, and raised in Somerset, to an English father and Swiss-Chinese mother, Antonia’s upbringing, family and heritage play central roles in her work. Having completed her foundation year at Chelsea, her BA at City and Guilds, and then her MFA at the Slade School of Art, Antonia, in just a few years, has become one of the most exciting young painters of her generation. Featured in exhibitions at Stephen Friedman Gallery and TJ Boulting, New Contemporaries and of course The Great Women Artists Residency at Palazzo Monti, Antonia recently had her first solo exhibition at Timothy Taylor which was met with acclaim. ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 86 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed scholar Susan Weininger on the surrealist sensation, GERTRUDE ABERCROMBIE!!! Gertrude Abercrombie (1909–1977) was a formative contributor to mid-century American painting. Based in Chicago, Abercrombie was a surrealist painter and self-dubbed ‘queen of bohemia'. Working independently from the Surrealist group in Europe, Abercrombie spent most of her life immersed in the Chicago jazz scene. With a penchant for cats, crescent and full moons, sinister desert-like landscapes that feature as paintings in bleak, cold interiors, stairs that lead to nowhere or a series of rhythmically coloured doors, Abercrombie forged a unique style, and presented her sometimes postage-stamp-sized paintings in flamboyant frames. Painting some of the most innovative, surrealist, haunting, eerie, bizarre and brilliant, paintings I’ve ever seen – whether they be slightly larger landscapes with moons, cats, doors, or stairs to nowhere, or miniscule paintings of portraits, domestic scenes or still-lifes, or levitating bodies with limbs floating in the air – Abercrombie's works are utterly fascinating. ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 85 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed writer Patricia Albers on TINA MODOTTI! Tina Modotti (1896–1942) was a trailblazer. Born in Italy, she found herself at the centre of Hollywood in the 1920s, the post-Revolution era of Mexico, in the midst of Communism with the Muralists, the latter of which she captured through raw images, using her camera - her tool - to engage with political and social issues. Nothing short of a revolutionary, Modotti documented the spirit of era. Her own life was never far from drama. Raised in Italy, in1913 she migrated to the US to join her father. Adored for her striking looks, she soon began work as a model, then an actor, starring ina string of Hollywood silent films.  Taking up photography, in 1923she moved to Mexico City to join the cultural avant-garde and experimented with intimate, hazy studies of close-up wilted flowers and light-filled architectural environments – some of the earliest examples of abstraction in photography.  As the 1920s progressed, and her involvement in the Communist movement deepened (officially joining the party in 1927), Modotti turned her lens towards social documentary, photographing empathetic, yet I think triumphant, portraits of locals and labourers, and took her camera to anti-fascist, leftist rallies (with friends Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera).  However, following the assassination of her then-lover, the Cubist revolutionary Julio Antonio Mella, she was forced to leave Mexico and abandon photography entirely. Fleeing Mexico for WeimarBerlin, Soviet Russia and then Spain, in 1939 she returned to MexicoCity, but died three years later in the back of a taxi... Some still question the cause of her death, viewing it with suspicion due to her ardently leftist politics!!!!  ONE OF THE GREATEST STORIES IN ART HISTORY! ENJOY! Patricia is the author of Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti and curator of the formerly travelling exhibition, Tina Modotti and the Mexican Renaissance, a show and a book focussing on one of the greatest photographers of the early twentieth century: Tina Modotti. F ollow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 84 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the historian, mythographer, critic and novelist MARINA WARNER on Kiki Smith and Helen Chadwick!!! A writer of fiction and cultural history, with a special focus on myths and fairy tales and the role of women, Marina Warner is one of the leading art writers, and in the past few years published an extensive collection of essays in Forms of Enchantment: Writings on Art and Artists. This incredible book, exploring discussions on myths, transformation, and alchemy, includes texts on the two artists we will discuss today: Kiki Smith and the late, great British artist, Helen Chadwick. Kiki Smith (b.1954) is an American artist who works across tapestry, sculpture and more, exploring ideas of mythology and regeneration. Inspired by the changes in the seasons and her own perception of animals as they change throughout the year, in her work, Smith addresses the social and spiritual aspects of human nature. Fusing images of medieval folklore with mysticism, Smith’s work blends the earthly and the fantastic, and deals with the fragility of life as well as drawing us to the details of our own ecosystem.  Helen Chadwick (c.1953–1996) was a feminist pioneer. One of the first women artists to be nominated for the Turner Prize, Chadwick was known for challenging stereotypical perceptions of the body in unconventional forms. Reinventing what a female nude could be in her work, her famous works include Ego Geometria Sum (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/chadwick-ego-geometria-sum-the-labours-i-x-74215) and The Oval Court, part of the installation 'Of Mutability'. Chadwick had used the a range of dead animals in the installation and used the scanner of the photocopier to position the animals in animated poses as if in life. She used a blue pigment toner in this work to suggest other physical spaces such as the sea (https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1032036/the-oval-court-sphere-chadwick-helen/) ENJOY! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 83 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed scholar, Barbara Bloemink, on the Jazz Age visionary, FLORINE STETTHEIMER!! *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9781529151145 A feminist, multi-media artist, Jazz-Age saloniste, poet and designer who captured the vibrancy and momentum of New York City’s growth between the World Wars, Stettheimer worked across words, painting, furniture and even costume design. To me was a revelation – and just as Georgia O'Keeffe so aptly observed in her friend: "Fantasy and reality all mixed up. She was perfectly consistent with any of her inconsistencies." Although painting the glittering world of Europe and New York at the start of the twentieth century, Stettheimer was so much more than that. Above all, she was a visionary, who pioneered every field she found herself in, whether it be making costumes for Getrude Stein’s opera or boldly presenting herself in a fully-nude self portrait aged 46, reclaiming Manet’s Olympia. Inventing a new language for modernism which was so brilliantly, charmingly and uniquely her own, with its whimsical figures who burst among the skyscrapers of NYC, Stettheimer drenched her paintings in bright shimmering colours and rich thick, textures. ENJOY! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 82 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews one of the most renowned living artists working in ceramics, Magdalene Odundo. *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Art-without-Men/dp/1529151147/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647348710&sr=8-1 [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Born in Kenya, and now living and working in the UK, where we are recording today, Odundo produces ceramic objects filled with beauty and gracefulness with their voluptuous forms and glittering surfaces. Created using a hand-coiled technique, Odundo’s laboriously produced clay-based sculptures, that range from red-orange to black, are executed in an exquisite manner. Akin or reminiscent to the shape of the female body, she has said of her medium, I’ve always equated clay with the humanity that’s within us, fragile like our bodies. It can tip over. You have it on its toes, but if you push just slightly on the wrong pivot, it will break your heart. Born in 1950, Odundo received her initial training as a graphic artist in Kenya before moving to the United Kingdom in 1971 where she enrolled on the foundation course at the Cambridge School of Art. In 1976 Odundo graduated in Ceramics, Photography and Printmaking from the University for the Creative Arts, and later completed her Postgraduate studies at the RCA. In museum collections that range from the British Museum to the the Brooklyn Museum, the V&A and the Met, Magdalene has exhibited across the globe, a recent favourite exhibitions was her spectacular display at the Hepworth Wakefield, where she put her work in dialogue with myriad artworks and artefacts from across time and from across the globe. In 2019, she was appointed Chancellor of the University for Creative Arts (UCA) and was made a Dame in the Queen’s New Year Honours list 2020. But the reason why we are speaking with Magdalene today is because not only is she currently the subject of a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge, but because she will also feature in this year’s Venice Biennale, a show that will feature a staggering 180 women artists, and that I can’t wait to find out more about. ENJOY! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 81 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews Jeffreen M. Hayes on the Harlem Renaissance pioneer, Augusta Savage!! *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Art-without-Men/dp/1529151147/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647348710&sr=8-1 [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Overcoming poverty, racism, and sexual discrimination, Savage is one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century and is famed for her emotionally tender and stoic life-size figures and plaster portrait busts. Raised in a strict family in Florida with a father who opposed her artistic pursuits, she arrived in New York with just $4.60, and in 1922 enrolled at The Cooper Union School of Art. Coming to the fore in the 1920s, Savage mastered emotionally tender and stoic life-size figures and plaster portrait busts (painted with shoe polish for a bronzed effect), and her subjects ranged from dignified everyday Black figures to influential Harlemites, including W. E. B. Du Bois. Working with images to elevate Black culture into mainstream America, Savage was also a key community organiser, exhibitor and teacher to so many. Not only did she become the first African American woman in the US to open her own private art gallery, she was also appointed the first director of the Harlem Community Art Center. As confirmed by Jeffreen, who has previously said: “I don’t think about Augusta Savage as someone who only made objects … [but rather as someone who] has really left behind a blueprint of what it means to be an artist that centres humanity.” ENJOY! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In episode 80 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the legendary SHEILA HICKS! *BOOK NEWS!* I have written a book! Order The Story of Art without Men here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Art-without-Men/dp/1529151147/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647348710&sr=8-1 [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] Working across textiles, fibre, colour and form, Sheila Hicks’s six-decade-and-counting-career has seen her work across multiple mediums, processes and disciplines. From her cascades of colour that pour out of museum ceilings to her smaller woven drawings – she likes to call ‘minimes’ – Hicks pushes all boundaries of fibre in all different environments. Born in 1934, Hicks was educated at Yale in the 50s, where she was taught by Josef Albers and George Kubler, whose teaching inspired her to venture to Chile to witness the weaving culture in the Andes. Moving to Mexico, then Paris, Hicks has designed film sets to a 1000 thread-based medallion sculpture for the Ford Foundation, NY. Recent international exhibitions include the 2020 exhibition at MAK Vienna, the 2017 Venice Biennale, the 2014 Whitney Biennial, plus a major solo presentation at the Pompidou in Paris! But! One of the reasons why we are speaking with Hicks today is because this spring she will unveil a major exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield, a show featuring over seventy of her vibrant works which collapse all boundaries between art, architecture and design, breaking down all tensions, which in turn create environments where we can be at one with the work. Info about the Hepworth Wakefield show!!! https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/sheila-hicks/ Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Research assistant: Viva Ruggi Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/