#feministfriday episode 499 | True Blue
Good morning everyone,
As you might remember, I had a thoroughly enjoyable trip to SFMOMA at the start of the year, here's some art that I'm still jamming on. All working with teal and blue tones for a beautiful and relaxing morning together 😊
Let's start with the abstraction of Tomie Ohtake. For this series of paintings, she started by making a collage from cut up bits of magazines, then painted what she had made:
Her career as an artist began at the age of 37, when she became a member of the Seibi group, which brought together artists of Japanese descent. In the late 1950s, when she left behind an initial phase of figurative studies in painting, she immersed herself in abstract explorations.
tomie ohtake | Nara Roesler
tomie ohtake Exhibitions: energy fields: fractal flows, nara roesler curatorial nucleus and luis pérez-oramas, 20.8 - 27.9.2022; visible persistence, tomie ohtake, 4.11 - 23.12.2021; cross-cuts, luis pérez-oramas, 12.1 - 13.2.2021; open air: large scale works at fazenda boa vista, 25.7.2020 - 28.2.2021; archaeologies of the selfie, luis pérez-oramas, 27.2 -...
I love it both for itself and as a companion piece to this Georgia O'Keeffe painting of Lake George. They weren't placed together but the connection immediately sang out:
Moving into more angular forms, how about this Lois Mailou Jones painting from her first trip to Haiti. I like that there is a sense of calm to this even though it's really busy:
Bringing us home to abstraction, here's Luchita Hurtado and (pictured) a howl at the moon:
Her story is really cool, she became recognised after decades upon decades of making art to please only herself:
“Life has dropped me in the lap of these things,” she insists with a smile. “I had nothing to do with it.” With her pictures, however, often painted late at night, she was more private and more determined. “It was like a diary,” she shrugs - which also explains why she hates labels. “What I’m doing is my life, and my life is not one thing. It’s unforeseen, and I like it that way.”
At 98 Years Old, Painter Luchita Hurtado Is Just Hitting Her Stride | British Vogue | British Vogue
As her critically-acclaimed exhibition I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn opens at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, Vogue meets the Venezuelan-born artist
Love,
Alex.