The Great Women Artists

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA podcast is the renowned psychologist Lisa Wenger, who is also – very excitingly – the niece of the artist we are going to be discussing today: Meret Oppeheim! Having collected and copied thousands of letters, notes, and documents from acquaintances of the German-Swiss artist – famed for her paintings, sculptures, collages, and more, who was commonly associated with the Surrealists – Wenger is something of a world expert on her aunt. The author and co-author of numerous books, including the award-winning “do not wrap words in poisonous letters” as well as “Meret Oppenheim - My Album” - Wenger is also responsible for updating the catalogue raisonne of her aunt, and co-running the estate, which has of late seen Oppenheim have major retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, Kunstmuseum Bern, and others that has put the trailblazing artist firmly in the spotlight. Born in 1913 in Berlin, at the inception of the first world war, Oppenheim was raised with her maternal grandmother in Switzerland. An interest in Jung as a teenager led to her life-long fascination with dreams, informing her art practice and involvement with the surrealists, who she met in Paris after venturing there aged 18 in the 1930s. Here, she created some of her most iconic artworks, such as the fur-lined teacup and saucer which she called Object (1936), that attracts as it does repulses and still divides opinion today, and ‘my nurse', a pair of white high-heeled shoes turned upside-down to evoke a chicken on a tray, which plays with gender stereotypes, femininity and the domestic sphere. But, with the outbreak of the second world war, it was back to Switzerland, which proved to be a very different environment to Paris… But, never not creating, Oppenheim made dream-like paintings, sculptures, and collages that reflected her dreams, as well as a woman stifled by her lack of freedom. Over the decades, Oppenheim built up a output that would become some of the most pioneering in Europe, after all, she said: “nobody will give you freedom, you have to take it” Today, I meet Lisa in Casa Constanza, in Carona, surrounded by Meret's possessions and spirit - and ahead of the new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth (4 June – 19 July 2025). Let's find out more! https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/meret-oppenheim/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the esteemed American painter, Lois Dodd. At 98-years-old, Dodd is famed for her paintings of her immediate surroundings, from landscapes to house roofs, windows and stairs. She paints the Night, day; outside, inside; doors that are painted, chipped; new, worn; and loved. While there is a seemingly absence of people, Dodd's paintings capture whole worlds and narratives – whether it be hose fires, or laundry hanging from a washing line. It's as though the colour, weather, light, frames, stairs, or cracks retain years worth of stories and memories, or are even characters in themselves. Steeped in American art and cultural history, referencing the likes of Hopper or Hitchcock, Dodd's works emphasise a voyeuristic, but also familiar nature. Born in 1927, Dodd was born and raised in New Jersey, mostly by her three older sisters after her parents' untimely death when she was young. It was then to Cooper Union in the 1940s, where she was amongst the burgeoning New York art scene, opening the artist-run space, the Tanager Gallery in 1952, at a similar time to iconic exhibitions such as the Ninth Street Show. Venturing to Maine, living by her artist friends Alex Katz and Jean Cohen, she took to painting views of the landscape, and by the end of the 1960s, this was now framed through a window: a perspective and device she has constantly reworked and reinvented, whether it be pressed up against her window on the Bowery, looking out onto her New York view, or of the cracked windows set in the lush, verdant countryside. Dodd allows her viewer to see something we thought we knew so well. She is an observer of nature – her works are about seeing the things that pass others by. As the critic Roberta Smith wrote in 2013: “Ms. Dodd loves the observed world. [...] She always searches out the underlying geometry but also the underlying life, and the sheer strangeness of it all.” I would also add that she is acute at highlighting the things that others iss - take her window portraits of New York City, a favorite being one fro November 2016, of her view that although is taken p by windows, places emphasis on a golden tree or blue sky, as if to latch on to the nature that grows even in the city, and the hope and beauty that exists even in the most unexpected places… Today we are recording in Dodd's home/studio in New Jersey… ahead of her major exhibition at Kunstmuseum Den Haag that opens this August in The Netherlands… Being here, I feel set in a Lois Dodd painting, brought to life by the motifs that surround me – and I can't wait to find out more. https://www.kunstmuseum.nl/en/exhibitions/lois-dodd https://www.alexandregallery.com/artists-work/lois-dodd#tab:slideshow;tab-1:thumbnails -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael Technical support: Viva Ruggi Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the esteemed American artist, Lorna Simpson. Working across photography to painting, video to collage, Simpson is a multimedia artist who – since the 1980s – has gained widespread acclaim for her pioneering approach to conceptual photography. Whether it's fusing text with image, obscuring her subject's identity, using techniques such as repetition, collage or manipulation – Simpson has conjured a plethora of ways to reinvent the image, and, by doing so, raises questions about gender, race, memory, and history. Her work, mostly centred on the female body, is full of seemingly open-ended narratives – as she has said: “I think the idea of identity or persona is interesting to me in that it is malleable and fluid. And that has always been part of the work in terms of [thinking about] who gets to determine who we are. Do we get to determine that, and what are the parameters of that, given the society that we live in?” Engaging with found images and objects, whether that be cut-outs from Ebony or Jet Magazines, or photographs she finds on eBay, which she melds with inks or collages of jewels, Simpson has continuously reconfigured what painting and photography means. Born in 1960, and raised in Queens and Brooklyn in a childhood that put the arts first, Simpson received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and following that, an MFA from the University of California San Diego, where she began to focus on the portraits of Black women she found in magazines, adding suggestive phrases from elsewhere. By 1990, she had a major exhibition at MoMA, and throughout the decades has continued to push boundaries with her seemingly limitless approach to materials. But in 2015, she turned to painting, showing her first nine-feet-tall canvases at the Venice Biennale, and this month will present a major exhibition – that considers the entirety of her painting practice – at the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York – where we are recording today. Titled “Source Notes”, it will feature Simpson's monumental and spellbinding paintings, which, steeped in monochromatic blues, silvers, blacks and greys, appear in settings that evoke the cosmological or natural world. An extension of her photographic work, Simpson's paintings see the manipulated figure and body pressed into landscapes akin to waterfalls or meteorites, and I can't wait to find out more… https://lsimpsonstudio.com/ Lorna Simpson: Source Notes –  https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/lorna-simpson-source-notes?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=&utm_term=lorna%20simpson%20art&utm_content=39536&mkwid=s&pcrid=743882408399&pmt=b&pkw=lorna%20simpson%20art&pdv=c&slid=&product=&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22399716678&gbraid=0AAAAADmlGN7UtMbglt7UAR4dicGAOa9Vx&gclid=CjwKCAjw24vBBhABEiwANFG7ywIA72_JjPaxVUdfQSWW_h8NFYNWzddlSHz6KV38M9zgiG4rs_9UNxoCVFkQAvD_BwE https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/2860-lorna-simpson/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most exciting painters working in the world today, Michaela Yearwood-Dan. Hailed for her works that bloom, dance, and come alive when you are witness to them, with an abundance of textures, weathers, colours, mark-makings, and more, Yearwood-Dan intertwines the botanical with abstraction, and brings painting back to its natural-like essence. Never restricting herself to just one medium, Yearwood-Dan works across ceramics, sound, installation, performance, and all-encompassing paintings that can range from small to the colossal, with some measuring up to 8-metres-wide. See them in the flesh and it's like seeing an entire ecosystem unfold, embedded with hidden languages, whether it be the symbolism she uses or the small elements of text, poetry and song lyrics, that add another dimension to her rich, embellished worlds. Raised in London as the youngest of three girls, by parents and grandparents that taught her about craft, weaving, seamstressing, Yearwood-Dan completed her studies at Brighton from 2013–2016, where she graduated top of her class, before going onto experiment with an artistic language that has constantly been growing and reinventing, and pushing paint to its limits. While early work – at the time I met her in around 2019, when she invited me for a studio visit when we were both in our mid 20s – explored more interior images intertwined with house plants, it has been incredible to watch her work mould into spaces of abundance, possibility and exhilaration. And indeed, her work has been described by the renowned writer and curator Ekow Eshun as having “a sense of boundless possibility”, which feels apt for a time like today, when it feels more than ever for art to be our guide to expanding our imagination, and also joy in times of despair. This is exactly the topic of Yearwood-Dan's new exhibition, opening at Hauser & Wirth in London on 13 May, titled No Time for Despair, referencing a line from Toni Morrison's 2004 article for The Nation, which states, “in times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.” – and I can't wait to find out more… Exhibition page: https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/michaela-yearwood-dan-no-time-for-despair/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most anticipated and exciting painters working today – Danielle McKinney. Born in Alabama, and based in New Jersey, McKinney is hailed for her small, contemplative, introspective and intimate paintings of women. Caught in moments of rest, relaxation and repose, McKinney's works, to my mind, are a collective portrait of the joys of female solitude. Painted on a black-coloured canvas emphasising the twilight time in which they appear to be set, McKinney's seductive and alluring paintings situate the figure swept up in their own world. Although she uses only a few thick, washy strokes of paint, each has significance, whether it be to evoke a dress, a hint of a cigarette flame, or a glow of light under a low-lit lamp in their soft-focus interiors. Never fussy or over-painted, they show just how much something so simple like a woman in her private space can be so powerful. While we aren't told much about them, it's up to us as the viewers to imagine their lives. I like to read stories into them, trying to understand where they are, and on what day and which time, they can also be read as interior moods. Full of atmosphere, it's almost like you can hear a soundtrack of Sade blasting softly in the background – one of McKinney's great inspirations. But painting wasn't always something she had pursued. While she had a great love of the medium in childhood, McKinney's training is in photography, having graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2013. Fascinated by humanity and movement, and the framing of an image, McKinney had a career as a photographer before turning to painting during the Covid-19 pandemic. Shut inside her New Jersey home, she hid herself away, bought some cheap canvases and turned her focus to painting – and hasn't stopped, and come five years later today, she has exhibited across the world. Recent bodies of work include an Edward Hopper-inspired series – which gets me to think about the connection between the solitude of 1930s America with today. But unlike Hopper, McKinney paints exclusively women, always inside, and resting in still, private moments – as she has said: “That's what I really try to capture in this beautiful solitude … Some of the ladies are very tense in those moments with a cigarette, and then sometimes they're asleep and beautiful. But those moments are theirs. --- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the world renowned artist, Bharti Kher. Known for a seemingly limitless practice that spans painting, sculpture, installation, found objects, and more; that explores hybrid beings – fusing animals and humans, objects and nature – Kher's extraordinary art-making looks at and exists both in the real world and imaginary. She is astute at seeing the potential in something, whether it be the magical superpowers of the human body or extent to which she can push materials into something they're not, transforming them into something full of wonder. From using bindis like tiny paint strokes, melted down bangles to form a tower of bricks, animal heads and or plant-like forms that transform a human from something real to into something mythical – looking at a Kher work is to see alchemy play out in a solid object. Born in England to Indian parents in 1969, Kher studied at Newcastle Polytechnic, before venturing to India, where she has lived since 1993. Settling in New Delhi, where she works in an almost fantastical four-story laboratory-like studio (+roof) that I was lucky enough to visit earlier this year, Kher has become one of the most celebrated artists in Asia, and beyond, exhibiting at institutions all over the world. Often taking the female body as a framework for her ideas – a form that, although prevalent in historical sculpture, has rarely been depicted by the female itself – Kher focuses on its multitudinous aspects. She adds leaves, horns and mannequins to show the many universes it contains, and to push against the rigidity of around who we are – as she has said, “what we are, how we function, what we do, where we sit, where we don't sit.” Drawing on religion to mythology, womanhood and more, Kher's works feel ancient, present, and futuristic and, in a time like today when we are looking to alternative stories away from the ones dominating our world, forever enchanting and enriching, guiding us to seeing how extraordinary beings can be. Her current exhibition, aptly titled Alchemies, at Yorkshire Sculpture Park brings together work from the last few decades, both small and colossal, and gets us to think about how the ultimate job of the artist is as an alchemist: someone who can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, see the myriad possibilities in a single medium, and show us something we instantly recognise despite never having witnessed it before… Kher's exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park! https://ysp.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/bharti-kher?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADfc_iZaY34c9UpnqEXtFtVVvF0Pg&gclid=Cj0KCQjw2ZfABhDBARIsAHFTxGwcjlobrI69KMnQTB7ikxghVWdGF-6i2Ly8BM1VTYAYqjtAlSAsFnYaAo96EALw_wcB -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest, the esteemed art historian, Andrew Hottle, will be discussing SYLVIA SLEIGH! Currently the Professor of Art History at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, Hottle has dedicated his research and writing to focussing on women artists, with specialization in feminist art of the 1970s. He is the author of a definitive monograph on the American realist painter Shirley Gorelick, and his detailed book about The Sister Chapel reignited interest in a historic collaboration by thirteen women artists. But he is also a world expert on one of those artists featured in this chapel: Sylvia Sleigh, who was born in Wales and died in 2010, having been based in New York City for most of her life, and known for her unique realist painting style immortalising those in her community and the culturally significant. Identifiably recognisable by their meticulously rendered details, body hair and tan lines, Sleigh's paintings were always created from her acutely feminist viewpoint. Painting seductively effeminate male nudes in poses that evoke Titian's Venus of Urbino, or Ingres's Turkish Bath, the Welsh-born artist – famed for her contribution to the Women's Liberation Movement, as a prominent member of AIR Gallery – said of her work: “I liked to portray both man and woman as intelligent and thoughtful people with dignity and humanism that emphasised joy.” Although in my opinion far too overlooked for far too long, Sleigh is having somewhat of a renaissance. Earlier this year, Ortuzar Projects in NYC staged a solo exhibition of her work to acclaim – her first in 15 years, and this spring, she is showing alongside her contemporaries Alice Neel and Marcia Marcus, at Levy Gorvy Danyan in New York, that runs until 21 June: https://www.levygorvydayan.com/exhibitions/the-human-situation-marcia-marcus-alice-neel-sylvia-sleigh And it is very much thanks to Hottle, who is currently in the process of compiling her catalogue raisonne, as well as writing a book about the founder artist-members of SOHO 20, a historically significant feminist cooperative gallery, of which Sleigh was one, established in 1973, that she is finally coming back into the spotlight. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the brilliant New York based painter, Katherine Bradford. Hailed for her luminous paintings of swimming pools and cosmic skies, ballet dancers and bicycle riders, Bradford takes us to imaginary worlds full of freedom, togetherness and wonder. Not usually specifying the figures in her work, instead she offers us a universal depiction of humanity – that any of us can apply ourselves or relate to – playing with scale and perspective, and getting us to think hard about our place on this earth. Born in 1942, and raised in Connecticut, Bradford didn't always start off as an artist. A woman of stifling 1960s America, she was married with twins in her 20s, but aged 37, swapped this life, bringing her kids along, to become an artist in New York City, and never looked back. Making her way by teaching from the 1980s to the 2010s, becoming the senior critic on the faculty of Yale School of Art and being awarded Pollock Krasner grants and Guggenheim Fellowships, Bradford – although painting for decades – has received major recognition in the past decade, such as her recent survey show at the Portland Museum of Art. And thank goodness she carried on painting, because especially at a time like this, of despair and uncertainty, we can look to Bradford's paintings for hope, visualisations of freedom that prioritise inclusiveness and community – as she has said: “It's important to me to make upbeat paintings. If anything, I'm making paintings about enchantment.” Looking at Bradford's painting is like being transported into another world, whether it be outer space or in cosmic waters, it's like they are lit with a glow akin to a blanket of stars. There is nothing artificial about them: they are spellbinding, and her canvases become a springboard for the most magical scenes, an “intentional place for imagination” as she says “as they convey a personal universe of my own making, populated with characters who explore who we are, how we fit together visually, and how we all stand next to each other.” -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the acclaimed painter, Rose Wylie! Born in 1934, as the youngest of seven children to Victorian parents, Wylie spent her early childhood in India before coming to England aged 5. This was in 1939, in the midst of a bomb-filled Second World War and increasingly fractured world. She went on to study figurative painting, at Folkestone and Dover College of Art in Kent from 1952–56, at a time when tutors would say to her ‘It's no good bothering with you, you're a girl, you'll get married, have children and that'll be that.' … It was then to a teacher training programme at Goldsmiths before putting art aside to raise three children. This was, until 1979 when Wylie returned to the studio enrolling at the Royal College of Art, in her early 40s. Her first solo exhibition came a few years later in 1985, but despite Wylie working in her cottage-slash-studio in Kent for the last 50+ years – where we are very excitingly recording today – it was not until the last 10–15 years that her work has been given the attention and acclaim it has always deserved. Playful and fractured, featuring text overlaid with image, witnessing a Rose Wylie painting in person is to see the world in a different way. Wylie takes recognisable elements from pop culture, history, mythology, sport, even the Bible – from flowers, battenberg cakes, sportstars, queens, to the likes of Nicole Kidman and Emily Maitlis – and shows us them anew, in her paintings that are void of perspective to the point that there is no indication of where the work starts or ends. Her paintings are sometimes full of movement – like a football being kicked, almost balletically, with players, clad in yellow, darting across the dotty canvas that surrounds its viewer. At other times they remind me of a film playing out – like the blood-clad figure lying on the floor in Kill Bill – or even a script with stage directions featuring phrases like “getting dark” or “yellow” … Wylie's paintings are full of decisions, ideas, and the more I look at them, the more her world opens up… Now 90 years old, after a celebrity-filled birthday bash, Wylie is back better than ever for her exhibition at David Zwirner London “When Found becomes Given”, opening on April 3rd, and I couldn't be more delighted to be speaking to her at her Kent-based studio today. Exhibition: https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2025/rose-wylie-when-found-becomes-given -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most renowned painters working in the world right now: Jenny Saville. Hailed for her at times colossal paintings of the human form – from close ups of the face, to examinations of exposed flesh – Saville is fascinated with the complex vessels that we all live inside. Theatrical and grotesque, beautiful and painful, her presentations of the body can feel almost like a landscape, pressed up against the surface of the canvas, in her masterful handling of paint that ranges from wet, to dry, oily to thin, thick and with shards and smears of colour. At once uneasy, raw, tense, and animal-like, Saville's portrayals of the body show how it transforms, grows, decays, and breathes… While full of contradictions, there is always a beauty, from the colours Saville uses to the golden light and textures that accentuate a knee, or finger. Born in Cambridge in 1970, as one of four siblings, Saville studied at the Glasgow School of Art in the 80s and 90s, and spent her final year in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she was exposed to a new set of American artists and feminist thought. In the 1990s, Saville quickly became one of the most anticipated painters challenging not just the medium of paint, or the depiction of the body, but reinventing the female nude or semi-nude body as a subject that has been entrenched in a male-gazed art history. Tackling Biblical and mythological narratives, referencing ancient Venus-like figures, as well as her own experience as a mother, Saville has constantly configured new ways of presenting the body, and in more recent years, has turned to stark, saturated colouring This year, she will open exhibitions at the Albertina, Vienna, her first major solo show in Austria; Anatomy of Painting at the National Portrait Gallery, London – that will bring together 50 works – and will travel to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, for us to see the incredible trajectory of an artist who keeps reinventing flesh with paint – and I can't wait to find out more… LINKS! Albertina: https://www.albertina.at/en/exhibitions/jenny-saville/ NPG: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2025/jenny-saville/?_gl=1*136gpph*_up*MQ..*_gs*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwv_m-BhC4ARIsAIqNeBt-ZzQivw0289iG5mzsW59uEmn-IUiod6qXx6jVk9rOLTLV9trgo20aAiw7EALw_wcB -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

Welcome to the FINALE of Season 12! I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the acclaimed writer, Sheila Heti. Born in 1976 in Toronto, where she lives today, Heti is the author of eleven books, from novels to novellas, short stories and children's books. Most recently, her acclaimed books have included Alphabetical Diaries, that ordered a decade worth of diaries in alphabetical order; Pure Colour (2022), a novel that explores grief, art and time; Motherhood (2018), a meditation on whether or not to become a mother in a society that judges you whatever the outcome. Heti's writing is some of the most honest, thoughtful I've ever read, and throughout weaves in the broad subject of art, whether it be paintings or her protagonists' professions… Heti also wrote for the literary journal the Believer, and has conducted many long-form print interviews with writers and artists, including conversations with Joan Didion, Elena Ferrante, Agnes Varda, Sophie Calle, who are among some of the artists we are going to be, very excitingly, discussing today. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast today is the renowned British artist, Barbara Walker. Born in Birmingham, where she lives and works today, Walker is hailed for her intimate paintings of everyday life, and intricate drawings that not only show power dynamics in Old Master Paintings, but give voice to histories that are all too often erased. From works on paper to paintings on canvas, and large-scale charcoal wall drawings, Walker's work, no matter their scale, is full of empathy, depth, and emotion. Some tell us stories about the state of affairs in Britain, whereas others are much more personal – in the early 2000s, she made her son the subject of her work – which get to the heart of the brokenness in our society, and look at situations from both an artistic and motherly gaze. Research is at the heart of Walker's work, and she frequently goes into public archives, such as for her incredible series, Shock and Awe, which highlighted the contribution of Caribbean servicemen and women serving in the British Army from 1914 to the present day. As well as “Vanishing Point”, which so movingly – and powerfully – explores the visibility and invisibility of Black subjects in Western European collections in our museum collections. Drawing in the Black figures while obscuring the dominant white subjects, Walker encourages the viewer to consider other perspectives beyond the ones that have become the so-called ‘default' in these institutions. But she is also interested in the unknown – as she says: As she says, “I'll go into archives looking for the backstories behind events, individuals or paintings, but I never know what I'm going to find. Making art is about curiosity and it's the same in the archive – I love playing in the unknown.” Very excitingly, a major survey of her work is currently on view at the Whitworth Museum in Manchester, in including her Turner Prize nominated group of portraits, Burden of Proof, a poignant response to the Windrush Scandal – and a newly commissioned printed wallpaper inspired by the Whitworth's collection, that continues her representation of the Windrush generation. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the world's most renowned artists, Shahzia Sikander. Working across painting, sculpture, drawing, and animation, the Lahore-born, New York-based Sikander is widely celebrated for her work that subverts tradition and reclaims narratives – such as her subverting of Central and South-Asian manuscript painting and launching the form known today as neo-miniature. A holder of a B.F.A. in 1991 from the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore, it was Sikander's breakthrough work, The Scroll, 1989–90, that received national critical acclaim in Pakistan and brought international recognition to the medium in contemporary art practices in the 1990s. Life then took her to the US, where she received, in 1995, her M.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design. Over the subsequent twenty plus years, Sikander's practice – which has expanded into multiple mediums – has been pivotal in showcasing art of the South Asian diaspora as a contemporary American tradition. Solo exhibitions include at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in Texas; the Morgan Library and Museum in New York; accolades include the Pollock Prize for Creativity, a medal of Art by the U.S. Department of State, and a MacArthur Fellowship; she is in the collections of all major national and international museums, and she is currently an adjunct professor for Fall of 2024 at Columbia University, Sikander's major outdoor project, NOW, an 8-foot bronze female sculpture, is permanently installed on the roof of the Appellate Courthouse in Manhattan. An accompanying 18-foot female sculpture, Witness, was exhibited in Madison Square Park in 2023, which then travelled to Houston – something we will get into later on in this episode. Her interdisciplinary practice, that has focussed on hybridised female figures that references goddesses from all different global perspectives, offers a perspective that breaks down all borders, disrupts assumptions around art historical boundaries. It is groundbreaking, trailblazing – and I can't wait to find out more. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the renowned German painter, Katharina Grosse. Hailed for her site-specific paintings which she spray-paints onto rocks, walls, landscapes and architecture, Grosse's works explode with luminous colour. Working both indoor and outdoor, she upends all traditions when it comes to painting: dissolving framing devices, vantage points, or a clear indication of where a work begins and ends. Witness one of her all-engulfing work in person, and your perspective constantly shifts: from afar they feel like giant swathes of colour, but up close, details of the paint reveal themselves. Grosse is architect, sculptor and painter all at once. In her words, she aims to ‘reset' what painting is and can be. But while she employs the artforms in the most imaginative and inventive ways, she also gets us to think about their histories and traditions – for example, how we could compare her work to an all-encompassing painted renaissance chapel in Florence, something that became apparent to her on a year abroad to Italy in her youth. Fascinated by colour and light since childhood, Grosse was raised at a pivotal moment in German history. Born in 1961 in Freiberg, West Germany, but often visited family in East Germany, she grew p in a post-Second World War society – when artists were grappling with the identity of German art. As a teen she studied in Cambridge in the UK, before completing her studies at the University of Fine Arts Müster and Fine Arts Dusseldorf. She then went to live in Marseille and Florence, where she was an artist in residence at the Villa Romana… Today, she lives and works in Berlin, and has gone onto have some of the most important, mind-expanding exhibitions of the 21st century – from a installation at the Venice Biennale in 2015, to transforming the Historic Hall of Hamburger Bahnhof; her Colossal takeover at Sydney's Carriageworks and, for MoMA PS1, spray painting reds and whites on a former military site in the Rockaways. Today we meet her at her current exhibition at Gagosian in New York – titled Pie Sell, Lee Slip, Eel Lips – where she is exhibiting an extraordinary collection of works that she calls Studio Paintings – and I can't wait to find out more. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most trailblazing artists and poets in the world right now, Cecilia Vicuna. Born in 1948 in Chile, and based between Santiago and New York, Vicuna is hailed for her works that are as ephemeral as they are permanent, colossal as they are minute, fragile as they are strong, that bring together sound, weaving, language, and community. Educated in Santiago in the 1960s, life took Vicuna to London to study at the Slade School of Art on a scholarship in the 1970s, but because of the Pinochet regime that began in 1973, she was forced to live in exile. Soon she went to Bogota, Colombia, before moving to New York City, where she has remained ever since, in the same loft and tending to the same community garden. Since Vicuna was a teen, she has focussed on a political orientation for her art, as she has said, because she “understood that the life of this planet was endangered”. Through artforms she calls “arte precario” – precious art – because it disappears and is vulnerable, Vicuna has held up a poignant mirror to our world through her installations that meld twigs, bamboo, stones, and shredded textiles. While they show us its beauty, they also convey its vulnerability: warning us about what will happen if we don't wake up in time to protect our ecosystems… At the heart of her art is language – specifically the quipu, which means knots in Quecha, a system of encoding information from the Andes – that conveys as much information as the alphabet – which was used for 5000 years, before being wiped out during colonisation… As well as the importance of togetherness. Because, in a world as destructive as ours we need more than ever to unite, to rebuild the planet for our future descendents, as she says, “not only for the survival of our species, but because it is joyful, fun, beautiful and delightful.” This November, I am excited to say that a new exhibition of Vicuna's work will open at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in NYC, featuring paintings that she has re-rendered from the 1970s, while on a trip to Bogota and Rio. Dazzling in hues of pinks and yellows, they explore the Yoruba Mythology that represents human or divine characteristics and concepts of nature, and I can't wait to find out more. https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/exhibitions –– THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Lauren Armstrong Carter Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is Maria Balshaw. Currently serving as Director of Tate, a position she has held since 2017, Balshaw began her career as an academic and lecturer in cultural studies. At the dawn of the 2000s, she swapped this to become Director of Creative Partnerships, a government programme that aimed to develop creativity in young people by bringing schools and artists together, which was sadly cut after the Labour Government was replaced by the coalition. In 2006, she became the director of the Whitworth Art Gallery, and in 2011, took on the additional role of director of Manchester City Galleries, and, to cement her reign in Manchester, she was made Director of culture, while also earning herself a CBE. But it's been under her premiership at Tate – as the historic institution's first ever female director – where we've seen some of the most groundbreaking shows take place in recent years. From Women in Revolt, that explored the trailblazing work of feminist communities in Britain; Now You See Us: Women Artists 1520–1920, that essentially rewrote art history from a female perspective – and even introduced me to hundreds of names I hadn't heard of; or Life Between Islands: Caribbean British Art from the 1950s to today. There's been solo shows of Yoko Ono, Paula Rego, Zanele Muholi, Sarah Lucas, Cornelia Parker, and so much more – and… I'm sure more to come. Tate today is fizzing with great shows, an institution no doubt unrecognisable to when Balshaw first visited aged 16 when she came down to London on the train from her hometown, Northampton in search of modern art. Though she found the dizzying world of Bridget Riley, it was mainly the Picassos on the wall. And while that's still good art, representation of different communities, cultures, genders and classes, is important. And there is no denying that having people in charge who are invested in the importance of this, has a huge impact on how art history has been and is being written – which Balshaw is at the centre of shaping. And, I am excited to say, she has just published a book, Gathering of Strangers, about museums: their origins, roles, and complexities, and the future of what they mean today. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

Remembering the great Audrey Flack (1931–2024). Earlier this year, I interviewed Flack over a series of interviews before she passed away on 28 June 2024. Audrey was a force, and I hope you enjoy listening to her powerful and moving words. If you want to learn more, I highly recommend her memoir: With Darkness Came Stars: A Memoir (https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09674-2.html) -- I couldn't be more excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the esteemed American artist, sculptor, photo-realist painter, and native New Yorker, Audrey Flack. Hailed for her sculptures of divine goddesses and Biblical characters; her paintings evocative of Old Masters that explore the historic subjects but with pop imagery; and abstract canvases, made in the 1940s and 50s, filled with swathes of movement, colour, and vigour – Audrey Flack, has been at the forefront of the art world. Brought up in New York City, Flack studied at Cooper Union and then Yale, where she was one of the only women and was taught under Josef Albers – in the early 1950s Flack found herself amongst the burgeoning downtown art scene, where she frequented the Abstract Expressionist haunt, the Cedar Bar, and hung out with her friends who included Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan. Audrey Flack knew them all. At the onset of Pop, she turned to photorealist painting, capturing in it distinctively feminist subjects, such as traditional objects associated with femininity and beauty, and then it was to sculpting female archetypes, taking back ancient-old stories steeped in misogynism, and reworking them for a 20th and 21st century audience. Whilst she paints and sculpts – and is in the collections of museums such as the Met and MoMA, – Audrey also takes the role of lead vocals and banjo with her band “Audrey Flack and the History of Art Band”, where she centres her songs around female injustice, the most recent being about the French sculptor, Camille Claudel. At 93 years old, you can often find her wearing t-shirts emblazoned with slogans such as Feminist AF, posing in front of her large-scale works, and wearing sunglasses inside. Flack has written it all down in a memoir – With Darkness Came Stars, one of the most moving, extraordinary books I've ever read. Not just for her artistic insights and incredible first-hand analogies of those who she knew in the 20th Century New York artworld, but, for writing, in such genuine words, the truth of what it's like being a mother, a mother and an artist, and a mother to an autistic child. I was moved to tears a number of times. It made me realise, so acutely, how women and mothers have been treated with such injustice, yet had so much resilience to fight for their voice, their art, their children, and their path. I couldn't recommend it highly enough. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

This is a (Halloween special!) bonus episode that explores the image of Witches in Art, as told by Professor Lyndal Roper! What is a witch? Where does it stem from? Why is she so often an old woman, who is harmful and evil? How did this perpetuate the way women were treated in history? What is a witch today? Roper, a regius professor of History at the University Oxford, is one of the global experts on the history of witchcraft. She is the author of: Witch Craze, that examines in-depth the trials of women accused of witchcraft, and argued that the craze sprang from a collective fantasy, of which many were older, infertile women who were accused of harming infants and destroying fertility in the natural and human world: https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300119831/ The Witch in the Western Imagination, which looks at the many different visualisations of witches, which in Germany found its “fullest exploration” thanks to the invention in the late 15th century, which in a way, changed the distribution of art forever: https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/4260/ And many more! -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the writer, critic, and author, Merve Emre. Currently the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University – and the Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism – Emre is also the acclaimed and award-winning author of numerous books. These include Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America; The Personality Brokers (selected as one of the best books of 2018 by the New York Times, and others); The Ferrante Letters (winner of the 2021 PROSE award for literature). A holder of prizes in Literary Criticism, Emre is also a contributing writer to The New Yorker, where she has written extensively on art and literature, from Leonora Carrington to Susan Sontag. But! The reason why we are speaking to Emre today is because she is also an ardent expert on Virginia Woolf and the wider Bloomsbury Group, having authored the stunningly beautiful – and informative – The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway, a book that brings alive Woolf's life and words, and contextualises the radical and pioneering lives of those in the Bloomsbury Group in the most effervescent ways. So today on the podcast, we are going to be discussing the sisters at the centre of this movement: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, women who were born into a Victorian society in London but who broke free of all traditions, who formed languages, both artistic and literary, that paved the way of modernism and modernist thinking in the UK and beyond. We are going to be delving into their life and work: looking at how they informed each other and visualised or put into words the world from their distinct and radical perspectives. Merve's book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-annotated-mrs-dalloway/merve-emre/virginia-woolf/9781631496769 Charleston Trust: https://www.charleston.org.uk/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw99e4BhDiARIsAISE7P857bJ_t36EZCN2JGBsJDUlVSxga42Bmq66SzIuCslkje6DXQsi94AaAmYZEALw_wcB Mrs Dalloway's Party: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/05/discovered-a-lost-possible-inspiration-for-virginia-woolfs-mrs-dalloway -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on today's podcast is the esteemed curator and writer, Emerson Bowyer. Currently the Searle Curator, Painting and Sculpture of Europe, at the Art Institute of Chicago, Emerson is a specialist in 18th- and 19th-century French and British art. He has worked at New York's Frick Collection, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where his highly-acclaimed curated exhibitions have spanned the spectrum of sculpture, such as 19th century artist Canova to, more recently, the artist we are very excitingly discussing today, the trailblazing, Camille Claudel. …which was staged at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Getty in LA, as the first major exhibition dedicated to the artist in the US for 35 years. https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/claudel/index.html https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9714/camille-claudel Born in France in 1864, Claudel has been hailed for her meticulously rendered and intensely passionate works of mythological and real figures. Hand-carving marble, she defied not just her gender, but the possibilities of sculpture itself – with her intimate and skillful portrayals of human bodies and reworkings of classical tales from a distinctly female perspective. Yet, despite having one of the most extraordinary careers in art history, it took until four decades until after her death, in the 1980s for her work to be properly appreciated, and until now – thanks to people like Emerson – who put her work on the world's stage for all to see. And I cannot wait to find out more! For extra reading, please check out Rachel Corbett's fantastic book, You Must Change Your Life: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/you-must-change-your-life-rachel-corbett/1123447512?ean=9780393354928 -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most groundbreaking and era-defining artists around today, Nadya Tolokonnikova. A founding member of Pussy Riot, the feminist art-collective and performance group, active since 2011, Nadya is an artist, activist, and musician, who has dedicated her life to fighting for freedom, confronting the dangers of the far-right and Putin with his distorted power. Born in 1989 in the industrial city of Norilsk, Russia, Nadya moved to Moscow aged 17, where she studied philosophy. “Since childhood” as she has said, “I've loved finding myself in extreme situations. I've always lacked unusual things in my life”. In Moscow, she immediately got involved with the radical activist-art collective, Voina – which translates to ‘war' in Russian – who hit back at far-right Russian politicians with their mocking commentary performances. And from 2011, she joined Pussy Riot, with whom she performs highly outspoken and daring guerrilla gigs in public in opposition to President Putin. Global fame for Pussy Riot came in 2012, after their protest-performance in a Moscow church entitled “Punk Prayer: Mother of God Drive Putin Away”, which calls for the Virgin Mary to help them get rid of Putin. Following this, Nadya was imprisoned, where she was separated from her daughter and experienced horrific conditions. But since her release, she has continued to fight through art, in and outside of Russia, such as her attacks on President Trump and the controlling of women's bodies. Her recent film, Putin's Ashes saw her and 11 members of Pussy Riot burn – in a ritual – a picture of Putin, which she then transformed into artworks. I am in awe of Nadya, her spirit, her ability to fight on a global scale, and her constant openness to sharing her courage – after all, she has stated that any one of us can join the Pussy Riot movement, through her belief that the power of collective action can overcome all. -- -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is Sophia Jansson – niece of Tove Jansson, the legendary Swedish-speaking Finnish writer, artist, novelist, illustrator, and children's book author, best known for creating the Moomins. Born in Helsinki in 1914, Tove grew up immersed in art from a young age. It was thanks to her artist parents, who raised her and her brothers in a home filled with plaster dust, clay, paintings, and floor-to-ceiling books – known to be (quote) “a box with endless secret compartments…” It was even thought she slept on the shelf at one point! But, growing up in the 1910s and 30s, it was also a time wracked by war. Turning to art, Tove made paintings – in a style influenced by the post-Impressionists – and conceived of imaginary worlds, steeped in nature – from forests to the sea – perhaps to escape the imploding world around her. Jansson's books for children and her novels for adults are just as much great stories as they are philosophies on life as she wrote: “before the war I used to think the purpose of life was to act as justly as possible; after the war I thought the purpose of life was to be as happy as possible.” And there is no shadow of a doubt that Jansson and the Moomins, the large-snouted trolls, can show us the true meanings of life. ENJOY! -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

To celebrate the paperback release of The Story of Art Without Men, Katy Hessel reads an excerpt of her chapter on ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM. Out this Thursday! Get your copy now: BOOK: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9781529156096 AUDIO BOOK: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Story-of-Art-Without-Men-Audiobook/B09P1RK3GV

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the author, poet, scholar, and scientific researcher Cat Bohannon. Now, while this episode is not going to be centred totally on art, it is going to be looking closely at women's bodies – and what might have contributed to the lack of knowledge about women in wider history. Because Cat Bohannon is renowned for her acclaimed book “Eve” that revolutionises our understanding of the female human body, and how a focus on male subjects in science has left women “under-studied and under-cared for”. Spanning from the Jurassic period to the present day, Eve hones in on the impact of what females' exclusion from scientific research has done for our bodies (and world). Through chapters headed under womb, foot, brain, or milk, it recasts the traditional story of evolutionary biology, by placing women at the centre. Because, as she argues, it's not just a case of sexism – that we don't know enough about the female body – it's because the data actually isn't there. For example, general anaesthetics weren't tested on women until 1999. I'm interested in getting to the root of these issues, as well as speaking about how art might correspond to this. Because as well as being a holder of a PhD from Columbia University in the evolution of narrative and cognition, Bohannon has published widely, including essays and poems for Science Magazine and the Georgia Review. And I can't wait to find out more. -- Cat's book: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/446844/eve-by-bohannon-cat/9781529156171 https://www.waterstones.com/book/eve/cat-bohannon/9781529151237 -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the world expert in myths, folklore, and occultism in art, Dr. Amy Hale speaking on the great surrealist Ithell Colquhoun! An Atlanta based writer, curator and critic, Hale's interests range from contemporary magical practice to the history of art, culture, women and Cornwall. She has helped crack open this side of art history, and that is why I am so excited to be speaking with her today – and focussing on the artistic polymath, Ithell Colquhoun, who, as well as being the most brilliant painter – creating scapes of dreamlike worlds, with organic, bodily-like shapes – was a novelist, poet, essayist, and more. Her output was always concerned spiritual transcendence. Born in 1906 in India, before studying at the Slade, Colquhoun became involved with the Surrealists in the 1930s – making dazzling paintings of sea monsters – and it was at this moment that her interest in the occult soared. In the 1940s, she relocated from London to Cornwall, and invented a way of working that connected her to the earth, and ancient times. Colquhoun, according to Hale, had a “magical mind that never stopped” – and Hale has dedicated her career to writing her noted biography Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor) and, more recently, the collection Sex Magic: Diagrams of Love, and is editing a selection of her esoteric essays. So I couldn't be more delighted to find out more! -- LINKS: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/ithell-colquhoun-931 Amy's books: https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/ithell-colquhoun-genius-of-the-fern-loved-gulley-amy-hale https://shop.tate.org.uk/sex-magic-ithell-colquhouns-diagrams-of-love/28593.html Ithell's paintings: https://artuk.org/discover/artists/colquhoun-ithell-19061988 -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the esteemed photographer, filmmaker and director, Sam Taylor-Johnson. Born in Croydon and educated at Goldsmiths, where she was among the stars of the 1990s British art scene Taylor Johnson made her name with her non-narrative films, such as Method in Madness, where a young man appears to be having a nervous breakdown on camera; Hysteria of a young woman miming in hysterical laughter; or Breach of a girl who cries in silence – art that seems to be about our shared internal pain, and the performance we all put on in our everyday lives. In 1997, she won Most Promising Artist at the Venice Biennale, and in 1998 was up for the Turner Prize. Sadly, cancer took over at aged 30, an experience that no doubt shifted the output of work in the early 2000s. Still Life was a film that showed decaying fruit, and others explored the threshold between life and death, fantasy and reality, and what it meant to confront our own mortality. She has especially looked at the real lives of celebrities, from an almost mythic lens, such as her film David, of David Beckham sleeping at the National Portrait Gallery – that I remember seeing aged 10 – and her incredibly moving series of famous male actors crying, from Philip Seymour Hoffman to Robin Williams – that is currently on view at the V&A's Fragile Beauty exhibition, a phrase that so perfectly sums up so much of Taylor Johnson's work, the complexity of performance and artifice, and the glamour and beauty of pop often masked by darkness. Since 2009, she has become one of Britain's foremost movie directors, making her feature debut with Nowhere Boy, a portrait of the early life of John Lennon, and most recently, Back to Black, that zooms in on Amy Winehouse fragile but enormously celebrated life, showing her as the human she was, who loved most in the world people and music… I can't help but see the correlation between Taylor Johnson's fine art work and her movie work: that deep interest in intense stories that appear on the outer side as one, and on the inner as another. She gets to the core of the human condition through her work, and leaves us contemplating our own existence, how we view those whose music, voice and lyrics we know like they're in the DNA of our fingertips, and I really couldn't be more excited to find out more. -- LINKS: Back to Black: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21261712/ Nowhere Boy: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1266029/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_nowhere%2520boy A Million Little Pieces: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427543/ Fragile Beauty at V&A: https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/fragile-beauty-photographs-from-the-sir-elton-john-and-david-furnish-collection Crying Men series: https://hickeyguy.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/crying-men/ JFK photograph by Gary Winogrand: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/113229 David @ NPG: https://www.npg.org.uk/beyond/exhibitions/partnership/2019/coming-home-david-beckham -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the esteemed writer and novelist, Chloe Aridjis, speaking on her friend, LEONORA CARRINGTON! Born in New York City, raised in the Netherlands and then Mexico City, Aridjis is a writer of numerous award-winning books, including three novels: Book of Clouds, Asunder, and Sea Monsters. Aridjis is also the author of numerous books and essays, including an A–Z profile on the artist we are very excitingly discussing today: Leonora Carrington, the great late British-born painter, who ran away to Paris in her teens before escaping Europe at the outbreak of the Second World War, and settling in Mexico City in the 40s, where she lived until her death in 2011. And it was in Mexico City that Aridjis got to know the surrealist, who she had tea with on Sundays and noted their extroardnary conversations that she published in, among others, Tea and Creatures with Leonora Carrington: A Photo Essay… a beautiful piece that looks at their friendship. In 2015, Aridjis went on to co-curate a major exhibition of Carrington's work at Tate Liverpool, affirming her as one of the greatest and most relevant artists to today's world. This episode is going to be slightly different to usual, as back in 2019 – for one of our first ever podcast episodes – we discussed the life of Leonora Carrington with her biographer cousin, Joanna Moorhead. We also discussed Carrington briefly with writer Deborah Levy – so do check those out. But! Today I couldn't be more excited to be delving into Arjidis's memories with the artist, uncovering the mystical symbolism that populates her work – from vegetables to cats, eggs to giants, cauldrons to kitchens, underworlds to hybridised figures – her friendships, character, and of course her paintings and writings, too. LINKS: PAINTINGS DISCUSSED –– Giantess, c.1947: https://www.artbook.com/blog-featured-image-leonora-carrington.html Green Tea, 1942: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/297568 And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur, 1953: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/393384?artist_id=993&page=1&sov_referrer=artist The Magical World of the Maya, 1963: https://maria-cristina.medium.com/great-art-the-magical-world-of-the-maya-by-leonora-carrington-interpretation-and-analysis-b642f8d04cf0 Self Portrait, 1937: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/492697 Chloe's exhibition: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/leonora-carrington -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the esteemed classicist, mythologist, comedian, writer and broadcaster, Natalie Haynes! The author of eight books, three non-fiction and five fiction, Haynes is hailed for her retellings of ancient myths, and the story of the Trojan War from a female point of view in her highly acclaimed A Thousand Ships, which was shortlisted for the women's prize. Her first book, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life, showed us what the ancient world has to offer us now, and other books, such as Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths, is an important book that centres the women at the heart of these ancient stories. Haynes regulars writers for the Guardian, contributes to BBC Radio 4, and is the host of the BBC podcast series, Natalie Haynes Stands Up For The Classics, a witty and incredibly informative series that charts the stories of poets like Sappho, as well as goddesses, mortals, monsters and more, for the ancient world, while also making them extremely accessible and enjoyable for classicists and non-classicists. But, the reason why we are talking with Haynes today is because she is also the author of a fantastic book, Stone Blind, which retells the story of the gorgon Medusa, who, originally in mythology, was cursed by Athena who turned her hair into snakes and gave her the power to turn everything she looked into to stone, and who was then decapitated and killed by the hero Perseus. But Haynes looks at this story again, from a different and more sympathetic point of view, exposing the way stories have been passed down to us and for me, the importance of questioning traditions. And that is why I couldn't be more excited to be zooming in on this mythical creature today, thinking about how she has been represented and reinterpreted, in addition to the myths behind monsters…! Natalie's books: https://www.waterstones.com/author/natalie-haynes/450500 Natalie's podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b077x8pc More info: https://nataliehaynes.com/ MEDUSA IMAGES: Cellini in Florence square: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseus_with_the_Head_of_Medusa Giordano in National Gallery: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/luca-giordano-perseus-turning-phineas-and-his-followers-to-stone Canova in The Met: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/204758 Jar in The Met: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/254523 -- -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most pioneering and revelatory artists alive, Judy Chicago. Born Judith Sylvia Cohen, then Judy Gerowitz, but changed it to Judy Chicago to renounce the name of her first husband to instead adopt the name of her birth city instead, Chicago has been at the forefront of art since the 1960s. Following her studies at UCLA in the 1950s, Chicago attended auto body school, as the only woman out of 250 men. It was here that she learnt to use spray guns, but instead of actually painting cars, she used these skills to formulate vaginal forms onto carhoods, as if to poke fun at her male contemporaries. In the 1960s, she turned to Minimalism, creating block-like sculptures which she executed in exuberant colours. While her work was acclaimed, she was one of only three women (out of 51 artists) included in the landmark Jewish Museum exhibition, Primary Structures, in 1966. During this decade, she became increasingly aware of the lack of women artists available to her – as an undergraduate at UCLA in the late 1950s and 60s, she had taken a class titled the Intellectual History of Europe, where her professor declared that women had made zero contributions to European History – so she set herself the task of looking for it herself. As she has said “there was actually a huge amount of information if one looked for it, especially dating back to the 19th century…” Out of this – and turning to the importance of education – she began the first ever feminist art programme, at Fresno State College, with artist Miriam Schapiro in 1970, which, as feminist art historian, Linda Nochlin has declared, was a time when there were no women's studies, no feminist theory, no African American studies, no queer theory, no postcolonial studies. What there was ... was a seamless web of great art, often called “The Pyramids to Picasso”... extolling great (male, of course) artistic achievement since the very dawn of history'... In the 1970s, Chicago created the famous Dinner Party, worked on between 1974 and 1978: a giant minimalist-like table that awards 39 women from history and mythology a ‘seat at the table' – with the further names of 999 women in the porcelain in the middle. She has created images of birth, death, animals, plants, that deal with an attitude entrenched in feminism towards caring for our planet, and so much more. But! The reason why we are speaking to her today is because this summer in London, Chicago will take over the Serpentine Gallery with an exhibition that corresponds to her major new book: Revelations, a project that has been unrealised for over 30 years, but is finally being published, that includes rewriting the story of creation, spotlighting the Great Mother Goddess, and a plethora of other women, and challenging the patriarchal paradigms that have always dictated how stories have been read, written, and accepted. -- LINKS: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/judy-chicago-revelations/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwo6GyBhBwEiwAzQTmc3bNjJ0zjNj2RgMuZomrRmjd8Bhuvx6YlLjhkJ8sk0ZYIgxU_IQVmRoCEWoQAvD_BwE https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/judy-chicago-revelations-hardcover https://judychicago.com/ https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/judy-chicago-herstory -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so thrilled to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most esteemed curators in the world, Naomi Beckwith. Currently the Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY, where she plays an instrumental role in shaping the museum's vision, Beckwith's career has seen her curate some of the groundbreaking shows in recent years. At the MCA Chicago, she curated Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen – the first survey of the 20th and 21st century pioneer, as well as The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music that looked at the legacy of 1960s African American avant-garde and its impact on art and culture today. Among many others, she also staged the first ever US solo exhibition by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Beckwith was part of the team that realised Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, conceived by Okwui Enwezor for the New Museum, as well as shows featuring Arthur Jafa and Laurie Simmons. She has dedicated her career to the impact of identity and multidisciplinary practices within contemporary art, and has just been granted the David Driskell Prize 2024. But the reason why we are speaking with Beckwith today is because she has just unveiled a new group exhibition at the Guggenheim – By Way of Working – that brings together artists across mediums, and generations – from Mona Hatoum, Joseph Beuys, Robert Rauschenberg, and Senga Nengudi: the artist we are very excitingly discussing today. Chicago-born Nengudi is hailed for her works across sculpture to performance, that explore the human form in all its many iterations through her early training in dance, and I can't wait to find out more. -- LINKS: Naomi's exhibition: https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/by-way-of-material-and-motion-in-the-guggenheim-collection https://www.guggenheim.org/about-us/staff/naomi-beckwith https://www.sengasenga.com/ https://www.artnews.com/feature/senga-nengudi-who-is-she-why-is-she-important-1234591161/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DutixbTscWM https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5078 -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA podcast is one of the most exciting artists working in the world right now, Rose B Simpson. An artist working across mediums that span from sculpture to performance, painting and ceramics, Simpson is hailed for her life size clay figures which she adorns with a plethora of symbols, extended antennas and materials – from steel, beads, leather, and wood... She challenges the nature of sculpture in ways, as she has said, that “can transform my own reality”, and her figures appear to be imbued with spirituality. They have titles like Genesis, Guides, Heights and Vital Organ – accentuating the importance of the body and rituals. Simpson was born, and lives and works, in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, and grew up in a multigenerational, matrilineal lineage of artists working in clay, including her mother, whose work is grounded in Pueblo traditions. Her practice is informed by Indigenous tradition, as she has said: “The work represents my own journey, whether it is a psychological investigation or a new spiritual awareness, or practical…” A recipient of a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, an MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2011, and another MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2018, storytelling, history and making seems to be at the centre of her practice – something she has expanded on further with her artwork Maria – a black-on-black Lowrider 985 Chevrolet El Camino and artwork and named in honour of Native American artist Maria Martinez, which sits at the heart of her community in Espanola Valley – and I can't wait to find out more! LINKS: https://www.rosebsimpson.com/works https://jackshainman.com/artists/rose-b-simpson https://art21.org/artist/rose-b-simpson/ https://jessicasilvermangallery.com/rose-b-simpson/selected-works/ https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/rose-b-simpson-legacies/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews Catherine Morris of the Brooklyn Museum, on the great artist JUDITH SCOTT – launching on what would have been Scott's 81st birthday!! Scott (1943–2005) was an American artist hailed for her fibre-based sculptures that merge wheels, trolleys, locks and chairs with bundles of threads, and whose brilliantly inventive methods and obsessively spun sculptures cocoon found objects. They also served as a form of communication – which is particularly extraordinary for someone who couldn't hear or speak verbally. A twin – her sister Joyce was born without disabilities – Scott was deaf and had Down syndrome, and through her art, which she discovered later in life, was able to communicate to the outside world. From the age of seven, she was placed in a series of institutions, enduring horrific conditions for more than 35 years. Sadly, she was born before the kind of legal protections that were implemented after scandals such as Willowbrook, a New York facility in which disabled children were brutalised, while the disability rights campaign, which took place in tandem with other social justice movements of the 60s and 70s, was some way off. It wasn't until 1985, when Joyce became her legal guardian and enrolled her at Creative Growth, that Scott turned to art. While she made nothing for her first two years at the centre, after taking part in a fibre art workshop she became obsessed by threads, spending every day until her death fastidiously wrapping and spinning fibres around objects, transforming them into her extraordinary creations. I'm thrilled to be able to speak to Catherine Morris, who curated a great exhibition of Scott's work at the Brooklyn Museum. Morris holds the post of a feminist art specialist at the Brooklyn Museum, and has co-curated and curated numerous groundbreaking exhibitions – such as Lorraine O'Grady, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-1985; Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art… Worked on projects with Marilyn Minter, Zanele Muholi, Lorna Simpson, Kiki Smith, and Cecilia Vicuna, as well as the major head-lining-grabbing show, It's Pablomatic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby at the Brooklyn Museum last year. ENJOY! -- LINKS: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/judith_scott/ https://creativegrowth.org/ https://art21.org/artist/judith-scott/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_n-8P_4IeE&t=66s&ab_channel=BetsyBayha https://americanart.si.edu/artist/judith-scott-31169 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/apr/29/how-judith-scott-escaped-a-life-in-institutional-isolation-to-become-a-great-sculptor -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, @katy.hessel interviews is one of the world's most influential artists: Barbara Kruger. Hailed for her distinctive poster-style language, Kruger merges text and image to bring attention to urgent political concerns. Bold, loud and readily available, her tabloid-esque works confront everyday issues. And, evocative of advertising, have the ability to bring meaning to often meaningless signage.  Born in Newark, NJ, and educated at Syracuse then Parsons, where she was taught by the late great Diane Arbus, Kruger began as an art director for Condé Nast, where she shaped her visual language. As she has said, “I had the luxury of working with the best technology ... I became attached to sans serif type, especially Futura and Helvetica, which I chose because they could really cut through the grease.” Fast forward to the 1970s and 80s – a highly political moment in America: especially for the control over one's body – and Kruger is culminating text/images that speak to Laura Mulvey's landmark 1975 essay on the male gaze, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", and that protest anti abortion laws. Her work defined a new type of art that directly addressed power and control, championing the rights we should have over our bodies, life and world.  Today, she is still at the forefront with her work – immersive and on the wall – that feels familiar due to its evocation of the machine we know as capitalism, that both drives us and that we drive. For those lucky enough to be in London, Kruger is very excitingly having her first institutional show in London in over 20 years, at Serpentine Galleries: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. Opening TODAY, until 17 March 2024. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most groundbreaking artists working today, Karon Davis. Hailed for her life-size sculptures, that she covers in white plaster dust and bases on her own or friend's bodies, Davis's works often take the form of installations, that very powerfully explore vital narratives of current and historical political events, as well as speak to the history of dance and performance. While they speak on a universal level, Davis especially looks to issues of history, race and violence in the US, memorialising key injustices witnessed by innocent victims from the 20th century, and beyond. By executing her figures in a stark shade of white, she also speaks to Western beauty ideals and standards that have been entrenched in our society since classical times. Brought up by a family of performers, Davis was exposed to the arts at a young age, the excitement of entertainment but also the reality of what people with these careers go through. And it's this insight that she gives us in her work – showing us both the pain and ecstasy to make something deemed beautiful, as her mother said, which was the title for her recent Salon 94 show: Beauty Must Suffer. Although a trained ballerina in her youth, Davis turned to filmmaking, studying at Spellman College, but her love of performance has stayed with her in her work. Entering an exhibition by Davis is like stepping into another world akin to watching a film or ballet playing out in front of you: there's narrative, costume, drama, a beginning and an end, but also beauty and pain. In 2012 Davis, along with her late husband Noah, founded the Underground Museum in Los Angeles, a groundbreaking space that featured the work of Black artists. And, most recently, Davis' work has been featured at the Hammer Museum, Jeffrey Deitch, Salon 94, and is in the collection of MOCA Los Angeles, LACMA, The Hammer Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum, among others. For those in New York, she has just installed a major sculpture on the High Line, of a ballerina taking her final bow, in conjunction with her exhibition that looked at the process of ballet, as well as the passion and resilience integral to life as a dancer, and artist. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the great women artists podcast is the renowned curator, scholar, and expert in 15th- and 16th-century Italian drawings, Furio Rinaldi to discuss TAMARA DE LEMPICKA! Dubbed “the Baroness with the Brush'', Lempicka at the height of the 1920s found herself at the centre of Parisian life, and constructed some of the most radical, liberal and avant-garde images. From reworking traditional subjects to melding the meticulous techniques of Renaissance painting with cold and shiny art-deco aesthetics to evoke the fast-industrialising world. Born in Poland at the end of the 19th century, Lempicka was raised in Russia, but escaped at the outbreak of the revolution. From there, she settled in Paris: the centre of the avant-garde, and thrived. She painted celebrated characters in the highest fashions of the day, and embraced sexual liberations. Epitomising the modern woman, she was apparently known to break only for “baths and champagne”, this was, of course in her modernist apartment-slash-studio, designed by her equally successful sister, Adrienne Górska. Currently holding the post of Curator of drawings and prints at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the largest collection of works on paper in Western United States – where he has just staged the most extraordinary Botticelli exhibition – Furio is acclaimed for his work on Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo. A writer – he has published extensively in The Burlington Magazine, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Journal and more, but perhaps he is best known for his curatorial eye, having organised the fantastic Legion of Honor exhibition Color into Line: Pastel from the Renaissance to the Present, and next year, will curate a groundbreaking exhibition – and the first major show on the West Coast – on the Polish-born painter Tamara de Lempicka – who is very excitingly the artists we will be discussing today. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most renowned artists alive today, Doris Salcedo. Born in Colombia, where she is based today, Salcedo, is hailed for her mid to colossal-scale sculptures and public installations that push the boundary of the artform, while simultaneously addressing vital political narratives of Colombian history of conflict that also have the power to transcend both time and geographies. Salcedo challenges scale and perspective; materials and everyday objects, and although the physical breadth of her work might be extensive, humanity remains the centre of it – as she has said: “I address the experiences of those who dwell on the borders, on the periphery of life and in the depths of catastrophe.” By incorporating materials that speak to the presence of a human being – whether it be chairs, desks, shoes and more, or working with people and the names of the innocent people who have lost their lives – Salcedo's work points to absence, loss, memory. Works have ranged from slotting and stacking 1,500 chairs between two buildings on a street in Istanbul to filling domestic items with cement – creating an atmosphere of silence, of mourning. She has exhibited all over the world, in the most acclaimed institutions worldwide, and in 2007, she showed at Tate Modern with a work called Shibboleth, which saw her excavate a crack into the concrete ground, which is a work that could be viewed from multiple perspectives but which also – when not looking properly – could easily be missed. And it's this idea of looking in Salcedo's work that I find so interesting – because by getting us to look further, she gets us to question beyond our everyday experiences, what we witness in the media, the futile lines that divide this world, to ensure for a fairer and more equal society. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the renowned art historian, Kirsten Pai Buick to discuss EDMONIA LEWIS! Edmonia Lewis (1844–1907) is hailed for her stunningly chiselled marble busts and figurative sculptures – with their elegantly coiled hair, elastic-like folds of drapery, idealised nudes with strong, robust builds. She was the first sculptor of African American heritage (of any gender) to achieve such fame and recognition. Buick is the author of a highly distinguished book Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History's Black and Indian Subject – about the sculptor acclaimed for her marble busts and figures that portray local people to mythical subjects, as well as deal with vital political narratives of the late 1800s. In this episode we go into depth about Lewis's life and work – focussing on how Lewis reworked classical narratives from a distinctly female perspective. We also look at how she interpreted vital political narratives of the time in artworks such as Forever Free, 1867, referencing the Emancipation Proclamation of four years previously. Originally titled The Morning of Liberty, this smaller-than-life-size, yet weighty and mighty statuette immortalises an empowered, freed African American couple. Muscular and heroic, on the right we see a Herculean male figure breaking from his chains and raising a clenched fist. Buick's vital scholarship explores the material and visual culture of the first British Empire, the art of the US, African American art, landscape representation, women as patrons and collectors of art. She also focuses on pro- and anti-abolitionist images in the Atlantic world. In 2022, Buick was named Distinguished Scholar by the College Art Association, and is currently working on a book – In Authenticity: Kara Walker and the Eidetics of Racism, about the artist renowned for her work that dismantles racist imagery through cut outs, and colossal sculptures, challenging the imperialist language that surrounds us. ENJOY!! -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most brilliant writers around today, Lauren Elkin! On today's episode we speak about feminist pioneers, Carolee Schneemann and Hannah Wilke!! Elkin is an American in London who has lived and spent extensive time in Paris, Liverpool, Tokyo, Venice and New York – as outlined in one of my favourite of her books, Flaneuse, which sees her trace cities through the eyes and steps of female writers and artists as the feminine “flaneur”, one who walks aimlessly. She is excellent at making her own a term or a trait previously steeped in patriarchal meaning. The author of four books, and the translator of others – including of Simone de Beauvoir's unpublished novel, The Inseparables – Elkin has received numerous awards for her writing. She has been a cultural critic for the likes of the New York Times, Harpers, London Review of Books, TLS, Frieze, and more; holds a PhD in English; an M.Phil in French; and is currently working on biographies on the likes of avant-garde tastemaker Getrude Stein and artist Louise Bourgeois. But! One of the reasons why we are speaking with Elkin today is because she has recently published a fantastic book, Art Monsters, which looks at a variety of female artists – from Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun to Laura Knight; Betye Saar to Carolee Schneemann; Eva Hesse and Hannah Wilke; Kara Walker and Maria Lassnig – who have centred their practice around the body. Exploring those who reacted against patriarchal portrayals and ideas of the body, Art Monsters is a fascinating insight into how women have broken from the historically-weighted past and configured a language using a voice unique to them. LAUREN'S BOOKS: https://www.waterstones.com/book/art-monsters/lauren-elkin/9781784742935 https://www.waterstones.com/book/flaneuse/lauren-elkin/9780099593379 https://www.waterstones.com/book/no-91-92-notes-on-a-parisian-commute/lauren-elkin/9781838014186 -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the world-renowned Classics scholar and professor at the University of Cambridge, Caroline Vout! Today we are discussing all sorts of figures in Classics, from Venus to Hermaphroditus. Born in Durham, Vout studied for a BA at Newnham College Cambridge, completed her MA at the Courtauld, and PhD back in Cambridge, where she spent a very formative year as a Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome. Since 2006, she has been based in Cambridge where she is a Fellow at Christ's College. The author of seven formative books that have expanded my mind on the Ancient world, our thinking around gendered bodies, imperfect bodies, and the perception of women through these vessels, from Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present to the more recently published “Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body”, Vout has been instrumental in pushing forwarding Classical research. Next year, she will curate a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum But the reason why we are speaking with Carrie Vout today is because of how her research challenges the ideal forms of the Greek and Roman body. Whereas a body cast in marble or bronze sitting atop a pedestal might be the template that we have – and one that European painters have so often perpetuated through idealised portrayals of men and women – Vout argues this is a lie, and that ancient bodies were in fact anxious, ailing, imperfect, diverse, and in turn, much more like us than we might at first glean. CARRIE'S BOOKS: https://www.waterstones.com/book/exposed/caroline-vout/9781788162906 https://www.waterstones.com/book/classical-art/caroline-vout/9780691177038 https://www.waterstones.com/book/sex-on-show/caroline-vout/9780714122786 -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

I couldn't be more excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most renowned writers, curators, critics, and cultural commentators in the world right now… Hilton Als! A Pulitzer prize winner, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the theatre critic at the New Yorker, where he has been writing since 1994, Als is also the author of numerous books – from White Girls (a collection of 13 literary essays, exploring race, gender, interpersonal relationships) to more recently, My Pinup, an intimate study on his friendship with Prince. He is a teaching professor at Berkeley, and has held previous posts at Columbia, Yale, and more. Als has been one of my favourite writers, and curators, on art since I can remember. He writes in a manner that is intimate, with emotion and rigour, infusing it with stories from his upbringing in Crown Heights in Brooklyn to ones with more complex family dynamics. And there is a humanity at the centre of it: whether it's his ability to make us see artists as people – with their struggles, desires, needs and complexities – or his belief that we can all be artists too. Often tracing the city of New York through images and words, he unearths stories that were often cast out from mainstream institutions but feel so pertinent for the world today. From Alice Neel to Diane Arbus, whose work and subject he treats with such empathy, not only can he transport us to the exact street where Arbus took that picture, or to Neel's 108th street apartment, but writes so acutely on the mediums they used. On photography vs painting he has said: The former takes life as it comes, in an instant, but can be described as a series of selective moments. Painting, on the other hand, has time on its side, the better to know, delve, and express what it's like for two people to sit in a room, observing one another while talking or not talking about the world. And it is the latter that I still remember experiencing, being a gallery assistant in my early 20s at Victoria Miro, at the time of one of his many brilliant curated exhibitions – Alice Neel, Uptown – when I saw the whole world walk in, recognise themselves and feel seen and celebrated – which, I think, is the best outcome an exhibition can have… In this episode we discuss the power of language and the importance of sharing it; Hilton's introductions to art; his early days as a photo-editor that informed him as a curator; and his takes on Diane Arbus and Alice Neel. HILTON'S WRITING + CURATING: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308056/white-girls-by-als-hilton/9780141987293 https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2022/joan-didion-what-she-means https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2019/god-made-my-face-collective-portrait-james-baldwin https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/26/alice-neels-portraits-of-difference https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2017/alice-neel-uptown-curated-hilton-als https://www.davidzwirnerbooks.com/product/alice-neel-uptown -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

I am so excited to say that my guest on the great women artists podcast is one of the most pioneering – and my favourite – writers alive today, Elif Shafak! In this episode, we talk about the power of storytelling, the importance of writing women's lives into history and fighting for their rights. Shafak has said: "...as a young Turkish student, it occurred to me that the history that was taught to me top down could be seen in different ways depending on who is telling the stories..." We speak about Artemisia Gentileschi to Frida Kahlo, Ana Mendieta to Georgia O'Keeffe; Shafak's upbringing and the importance of multitudinous narratives, and the power of images when it comes to writing novels. We explore the similarities between a painting and a novel; how storytelling can be transmitted through so many different artforms, from word of mouth or the written word. As a novelist, Shafak spends so much time dreaming up worlds, and, in a way, this is not that dissimilar from an artist. But we also talk about the importance of emotion, and how stories can give us that, as Shafak has said: “Why is it that we underestimate feelings and perceptions? I think it's going to be one of our biggest intellectual challenges, because our political systems are replete with emotions … and yet within the academic and among the intelligentsia, we are yet to take emotions seriously…” Shafak is the author of 19 books, which have been translated into 57 languages. A shortlister for the Booker Prize and Women's Prize for Fiction, she holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at universities in Turkey, the US and the UK. A Fellow and a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature, Shafak is also instrumental in her work as an advocate for women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression. A twice TED Global speaker, Shafak contributes to publications around the world, such as the Guardian with her poignant articles on women's rights in Turkey. Books by Elif: https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-to-stay-sane-in-an-age-of-division/elif-shafak/9781788165723 https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-bastard-of-istanbul/elif-shafak/9780241972908 https://www.waterstones.com/book/three-daughters-of-eve/elif-shafak/9780241978887 https://www.waterstones.com/book/10-minutes-38-seconds-in-this-strange-world/elif-shafak/9780241979464 https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-island-of-missing-trees/elif-shafak/9780241988725 -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview world-renowned scholar, Julia Bryan-Wilson – the Professor of Art History and LGBTQ+ Studies at Columbia University – on the trailblazing artist, Louise Nevelson! “It's not the medium that counts. It is what you see in it and what you do with it, " said Nevelson, the sculptor working in the mid-20th century New York City, hailed for her monochromatic, architectural wall sculptures amassed from found, recycled and discarded objects. Nevelson's monochromatic and architectural wall sculptures are amassed from found, recycled and discarded objects sourced from her surrounding environment (from bedposts to bannisters), which she coated in opaque paint and stacked tall to form all-engulfing units. Nevelson, like Krasner, studied with Hans Hofmann (you can almost feel the fragmented lines that form through her innovations), and was also influenced by the ancient ruins of Mexico and Guate- mala. This inspiration is evident in her work Sky Cathedral, 1958, which questioned new types of religious experiences and spaces. Bryan-Wilson is the expert in Louise Nevelson, having authored the monumental new book Louise Nevelson's Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face (2023), as well as curated one-person shows: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300236705/louise-nevelsons-sculpture/ A great documentary on Nevelson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnfEmNRzoCs&t=1332s&ab_channel=TheMet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnYBR9VAPsI&ab_channel=Tate Additional information: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/19/obituaries/louise-nevelson-sculptor-is-dead-at-88.html https://louisenevelsonfoundation.org/biography https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/arts/design/09neve.html -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast – for the second time! – is Dame Professor Marina Warner, one of the leading historians on this planet! A writer, lecturer, author of almost 40 books, and former president of the Royal Society of Literature, Marina Warner, according to the New Yorker, is an authority on things that don't actually exist – from magic spells, monstrous beasts, to pregnant virgins. A world specialist on myths, fairy tales and stories from ancient times, Warner has written indefatigably for the last five decades on how these tales – some thousands of years old – still speak to our culture today and allow us to appreciate how they are shaped by the societies that tell them. I have poured over her books, from Alone of All Her Sex, her study of the cult of the Virgin Mary, to my favourite, Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form, that so pertinently looks at how women are represented as allegories, bringing about ideas of actual power vs perceived power – for example, while Lady Liberty might be ubiquitous, how much power does she, a woman, actually have? Warner's list of accolades is extensive: a distinguished fellow at All Souls College, Oxford; an honorary fellow at many more; the giver of the BBC's Reith Lectures in 1994; and awarded doctorates of eleven universities in Britain, such as King's, the Royal College of Art, Oxford University, and more. But it's stories and the power of imagination that fascinate her, and has what led me to be so captivated by her work. She has written – inside stories was the place I wanted to be, especially stories that went beyond any experience I could live myself at first hand. The very first stories I heard were saints' lives: the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries of the Virgin Mary, the terrible gory violence of the martyrs' ends … When I first encountered myths and fairy tales, the wonder I felt was pure wonder. But as I have grown older, wonder has taken on its double aspect, and become questioning too. And that is why I couldn't be more excited to be, instead of looking at a woman artist, investigate the representation of female figures that we so often see across history and art history – Eve and Lilith from the Bible, and Medusa and Athena from mythology. MARINA'S BOOKS: https://www.marinawarner.com/ https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520227330/monuments-and-maidens https://www.waterstones.com/book/forms-of-enchantment/marina-warner/9780500021460 https://www.waterstones.com/book/joan-of-arc/marina-warner/9780198718796 https://www.waterstones.com/book/alone-of-all-her-sex/marina-warner/9780198718789 THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most pioneering artists alive today, Rachel Whiteread. Working across sculpture and drawing, in mediums ranging from concrete to resin, and in scales that go from miniscule to colossal – from casting domestic hot water bottles to entire immersive libraries – Whiteread is hailed for her poetic, stoic works that draw so intimately on our human experiences. Discussing how her work gives, in her words “authority to forgotten things” Whiteread's sculptures of the past three decades have not only made me rethink sculpture as a form and medium, but they have provided incredible commentary on the changes that have occurred – from the rapidly gentrifying London, the state of political change in 1990s and 2000s Britain, as well as imparting on us a reflection of impermanence and loss. As someone born in the 90s, I grew up with Whiteread's work. Her sculptures were some of the first I ever saw and knew of as a kid and no matter what age we are, one can't help but be utterly stunned and fascinated by them. Famous for casting familiar objects and settings, from houses to the underneath of a chair, baths to doors, Whiteread takes elements we use in our everyday life, transforms them into ghostly replicas, and ultimately makes us rethink their purpose, practical use, and the memory that these objects once held. Raised in London to an artist mother and geography teacher father, who encouraged her to scavenge found objects and “look up” wherever she went, Whiteread studied at Brighton Polytechnic and sculpture, with the late and great Phyllida Barlow, at the Slade School of Fine Art in the 1980s. Her first solo exhibition in 1988, included her first series of cast objects, and in the early 1990s she made headlines with her sculpture House, a monumental, to-scale concrete cast of the inside of a three-storey townhouse. She has since taken over the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, London's Fourth Plinth, created an extraordinary Holocaust Memorial in Vienna that resembles the shelves of a library with the pages turned outwards, has had major exhibitions and retrospectives all over the world and is still continuing to push forth all boundaries of sculpture in the most exciting and impactful ways. THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.instagram.com/famm.mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

I am so excited to say that my guest is one of the most renowned painters working in the world right now, Christina Quarles. A painter of bodies that stretch, condense, tangle, and meld into shapes that range from fleshy to stringy, Quarles is globally hailed for transposing this warm-blooded vessel onto a flat surface with ambiguity and effervescence. Her paintings make us feel, viscerally react both physically and emotionally with their fluorescent colouring, limbs that dismantle from the body, faces devoid of detail that exist between reality and surreality, all while echoing the constantly in flux body that we all live within. Born in 1985 in Chicago, and based in Los Angeles, Quarles emphasises through paint her and our multitudinous positions in the world. Working with acrylic paint and programmes such as adobe illustrator for the background and structures that surround the figures, her process, like her chosen subject, is full of dichotomies, between the historic and contemporary, absence and presence, night and day, in locations that exist in water and on land, in bodies that are both shadow and the full figure. A graduate of Hampshire College, for which she completed dual BA degrees in Philosophy and Studio Art, an MFA graduate of Yale School of Art and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Quarles in the past few years has exhibited across the globe in some of the most prestigious institutions and group exhibitions, from the landmark Radical Figures at Whitechapel Gallery to last year's Venice Biennale, and has had solo exhibitions at the Hepworth Wakefield and Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, but today we meet her in Menorca, at Hauser & Wirth, for her newly opened exhibition Come In From An Endless Place, which I can't wait to find out more about. THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/ ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

In this episode, of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel reads 30 MINS of her chapter on SURREALISM from her book – and audiobook! – The Story of Art Without Men. The Story of Art Without Men is published by Penguin (UK), WW Norton (US). AUDIO BOOK: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Story-of-Art-Without-Men-Audiobook/B09P1RK3GV?utm_source=Authorpost BOOK: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9781529151145 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-story-of-art-without-men-katy-hessel/1141471389 Taking its name from Gombrich's Story of Art (now in its sixteenth edition, which includes just one woman!), this book aims to retell art history with PIONEERING non-male artists who spearheaded movements and redefined the canon. Beginning in the 1500s and ending with those defining the 2020s, this ~FULLY illustrated 500+ page~ book is divided into five parts pinpointing major shifts in art history. It goes across the globe to explore and introduce you to myriad styles and movements, interweaving women, their work and stories, within! To avoid artists ever being seen as the wife of, the muse of, the model of, or the acquaintance of, I have situated the artists (over 350!!) within their social and political context. I hope this book will be your GUIDE and BIBLE to art history, providing introductions and overviews of major movements from the last 500 years, because, what was the Baroque anyway? Who were the Spiritualist artists in the 19th century? Explore the Impressionists, the quilt-makers paving the way, the Harlem Renaissance trailblazers, the postwar artists of Latin America, the St Ives group, GUTAI, Abstract Expressionists, those reinventing the perception of the body in art, the feminist movement of the 1970s, art since the millennium and SO MUCH MORE! PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. By: Katy Hessel Narrated by: Katy Hessel Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins Unabridged Audiobook THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/ ENJOY!!! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview one of the most important, pioneering and impactful writers and novelists working today, Ruth Ozeki.  In this episode, we deep dive into looking, writing, observation and perception in a fascinating discussion that traverses objects, the written form, imagination and memoir. She is the author of four novels, My Year of Meats (1998); All Over Creation (2003); A Tale for the Time Being (which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2013 and won the LA Times Book Prize); and more recently, The Book of Form and Emptiness (for which she won the Women's Prize for Fiction) – an extraordinary novel centred on 14 year old Benny who, after his father dies, begins to hear voices, with other objects in a magical realist sense taking on roles to speak. Ozeki's work is powerful, it breaks boundaries and reinvents storytelling and often melds ancient ideas with contemporary ones – looking at how they relate to our technology, religion, politics or pop culture.  In addition to her writing work, Ozeki is a Zen Buddhist priest, ordained in 2010 and a role that has influenced her two most recent novels; and a filmmaker, hailed for her 1995 work Halving the Bones, that looks at three generations of Ruth's maternal family history from Japan, to Hawaii and to a suburb in Connecticut.  But, aside from this, it is also Ozeki's non-fiction work that I highly admire, in particular her 2016 book “Timecode of a Face” – a part-memoir, part-experiment – influenced by a Harvard art historian that saw her sit in front of a mirror for three hours and examine her face as she traces each line, mark, crease and feature back to story from her past – which I cannot wait to get into in this episode! 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 one of the most exciting artists working in the world right now, Anna Weyant. From girls on the cusp of adolescence swept up in an eerie atmosphere to dollshouses with doors only slightly ajar, the subjects of Weyant's paintings are nothing short of haunting, humorous, witty, and tense. Rooted in a style that feels like a cross between Old Master Painting and the unnerving perfection of Disney animations, Weyant's works feel at once familiar, but starkly detached, leaving us to question if they are scenes from the real world, the past, or the ones in our head?  Often centred on a young girl – often waiting, thinking, watching or screaming who appears to be around the pre-teen and teenage years described as the “most frivolous and the most intense periods of human experience – Weyant's paintings are full of contradictions. Unrooted in place and time, they sit on a threshold between good/evil, absent/present, strength/vulnerability, being watched/ watching, historic and the contemporary. And, by grounding her work in the traditional genre of still lifes and portraits – genres only afforded to women who were restricted to large-scale history painting before the 19th century – she allows us to question what we already know and don't know from these historic paintings, or,  what we know and don't know about our female protagonist and her own experiences.  Based in New York, and educated at RISD, Weyant, despite being 27, has already held shows to acclaim in the city. Last November, she took over Gagosian's spaces with 7 new works – one as large as 9 feet tall, alongside many of her drawings – 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, I interview one of the most renowned artists working in the world right now, Mickalene Thomas. Working across painting, photography, installation, film, collage and more, Thomas, for the past two decades has been instrumental in forging an identity for figuration in the 21st century. Positioning her subjects – bold, beautiful women – in often large-scale work that commands the same power as that of Old Master Painting, Thomas lionises her subjects, whether they be friends, family members or lovers, by imbuing them with glittering rhinestone crystals and rich, colourful patterning, in atmospheres that are full of freedom, full of liberation. Drawing from pop culture and history – think Grace Jones to the 19th century French painters – and striving to encapsulate the beauty and glamour she witnessed in Jet magazine when growing up, Thomas also re-stages, reclaims, art-historical compositions by reworking paintings from the lens of a Black queer woman. In 2013, she said: ‘Portraits are very powerful. They have a great representation and dominance in the world... of trying to capture the essence of someone' and just to prove how powerful this was on her own career, it was after seeing legendary photographer Carrie Mae Weems's Kitchen Table Series, 1990 that Thomas was inspired to pursue art. Switching from law and enrolling in art school at the Pratt Institute, Thomas then went on to earn her MFA from Yale, and has since worked indefatigably to elevate the presence of Black women in art. Thomas has exhibited at the world's most prestigious institutions, from the Brooklyn Museum to MOCA Los Angeles, Spellman College to the ICA in Boston, but she has also been a force at uplifting the careers of others – such as, in recent shows, curating exhibitions alongside her own featuring younger names, making for a more exciting and inclusive art history, that others have followed her in doing. 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 one of the most pioneering artists alive today, Kiki Smith! Born in 1954, in Germany, raised in New Jersey, and now based in the Catskills and New York City, where we are recording today, Kiki Smith is an artist who works across a whole range of mediums ranging from sculpture to printmaking, tapestry to collage. She focuses on subjects of mortality and decay, the body and the earth, what it means to be human and our relationship to nature. She has said: "Our bodies are basically stolen from us, and my work is about trying to reclaim one's own turf, or one's own vehicle of being here, to own it and to use it to look at how we are here.” But it is this notion of collage that seems to be at the heart of her oeuvre – as she works with multiple forms, hybridised figures, and looks at both ancient mythology and contemporary politics, such as tragic events such as the AIDS crisis or the cruel laws around abortion. As a result, she has used materials such as bodily fluids to investigate subjects around death, reproduction and birth. Working indefatigably since the 1970s, Smith, although having briefly studied at Hartford Art School in Connecticut, is for the most part self taught. She has described herself as a “thing-maker” and it is this desire and hunger for experimentation that makes her work so captivating and engaging. Studying the world by living and surrounding herself with nature, she has also since gone on to train as an emergency medical technician. A professor at NYU and Columbia University, Smith has exhibited across the globe – from the Whitney museum to MoMA, The Whitechapel to, most recently, the Seoul Museum of Art in South Korea – and is in collections of some of the most renowned museums in the world. I couldn't be more excited to be interviewing her 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, 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/