Woman Power: Louise Nevelson

According to the National Endowment for the Arts, a study completed between 1990 and 2005 showed that the art world remains largely male-dominated. Disheartening news for a young female professional. 

Some interesting numbers:

1990: 50.7% of all visual artists were female, and women held 53.1% of art degrees. Okay.... But 80% of art faculty were males, and male artists received 73% of all art grants or fellowships.

2004:  Of the 415 works on New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s 4th and 5th floors, less than 5% - were by women. Is this a reflection of the past or the present?

2006: Of 297 solo art shows in New York in 2006, only 23% were by women.

Today: Only 4% of museum acquisitions are by women artists. In curated exhibits, museums average about 15% work by women, and .003% minority women. 

As I've been researching works in my museum's collection, I've found only a handful of works produced by female artists. But of the handful, I found some incredibly powerful, and inspiring women.

"I am a woman's liberation." -Louise Nevelson

Louise Nevelson rocked my world.

First Personage (1956)
Brooklyn Museum

Nevelson had some serious attitude about life, undoubtedly influenced by major trials and tribulations she faced throughout her life. Moving from Russia to Maine as a child, I can only imagine how bizarre a transition that must of been. The family experienced hardship upon their arrival (umm, I can only picture Maine in the early 20th century as akin to the Yukon...). Nevelson's father, eventually built his career as a lumbaryard realtor and owner.

Sky Cathedral (1958)
Museum of Modern Art

What strikes me about Nevelson is the way she admired her mother, a seemingly eccentric primadonna who paraded around their hometown, Rockland, Maine, dressed in bright colors, heavy makeup, and laden with jewelry. Looking at pictures of Nevelson in her later years, one can see the effects of her mother's influence. I admire Nevelson for moving out of her small hometown, and her motivation to pursue a career in art, a profession that was embedded in taboo and stigmas. Even more, she not only was she living in a land far far away from the dynamic art world, but she was already ostracized in her town as a Jewish Russian immigrant.

Dream Houses XXXIII (1972)
Currier Museum of Art

Her work is mysterious, sensual, and alluring (as I can imagine Nevelson might have been herself). She was working during a period dominated by powerful male artists, and yet her work departed from the work of the other abstract expressionists, like Alexander Calder, David Smith, or Theodore Roszak, all of whom were weilding metal and steel. Nevelson found her medium in wood--a material so embedded in her personal life and which was in part attractive for an artist trying to make ends meet.

Untitled (c. 1985)

Limiting her palette to mostly black (she also worked with white and gold at times), the color was to her the totality--it contained all colors, yet was poised and aristocratic. Black meant the potential for greatness. A NYT review of a show featuring Nevelson's work back in 2007 at the Jewish Museum,  the geometry of Cubism and the epic scale of Abstract Expressionism with the logic of dreams." 

Categories: Alexander Calder, Art, David Smith, Feminist, Louise, Minority, Museum, Nevelson, Theodore Roszak