Robert Cronshaw
a select few*
*Ten iconic creative women picked to celebrate their work.
CONTENTS Introduction
7
K채the Kollwitz
11
Eileen Gray
14
Tamara de Lempicka Margaret Bourke-White Ray Eames Diane Arbus
16 19 23 25
Jenny Holzer
28
Zuzana Licko
30
Paula Scher
33
Mary Harron
35
tional ’s Day
IWD 100
Introduction
Internation Women’s Day is celebrating its one-hundredth anniversary this year and this publication has been created to commend ten creative women from those 100 years. Each has been assigned to a decade that they were most prominant, and throughout this book their work is displayed. All the women featured have earned their place by not only equalling men, but by going one further and becoming masters of their disciplines. When IWD was started in 1911 the difference in opportunities between the sexes was vast and through the help of our fabulous ten and many others like them, they have begun to close the gap. However this is just the start, in many countries all over the world, women are still seen as the second-class gender, but with the foundation that has been built, over the next century the gap can be bridged.
9
1911
1910s
Käthe KOLLWITZ K
äthe Kollwitz (July 1867 – April 1945), was a German painter, lithographer, printmaker and scultor. Kollwitz is perhaps best known for her graphic works – her etchings, lithographs and woodcuts – which continued the great tradition of social realism in these media. Kollwitz devoted her life’s work to the depiction of of the suffering of humanity – particularly those oppressed by conflict – and, most significantly the plight of women. Her own personal tradegy of the loss of her son in the First World War gave her a profound insight into her subject. The works she produced fully exploit the potential of the graphic media, and are extremely powerful in style and subject matter.
Käthe Kollwitz 1910s
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‘Everything could be so beautiful‌ Kathe Kollwitz may not fit the mould of other late nineteenth and early twentieth century artists but her art has the ability to connect with people which has kept her work alive as people continue to engage with the images and the subject matter. Her sense of class-consciousness and social commentary fitted well with her figurative style, easily understood and disseminated to wide audiences through graphic art. The struggle for a fairer situation for those who were born into poverty and the injustice experienced by those is a topic that pervaded her work throughout her life. The style, subject matter and the media acted to democratise her art and emphasise those issues about which she felt so passionately. The work has relevance for historical interest (as historical documents but also in the context of art history as a style that resisted the dominant trends of the era) and the subject matter of poverty and class-struggle has an engaging quality that continues to fascinate.
Self Portrait, 1912 Etching 14.1 x 10 cm
12
Death and Woman Struggling for the Child, 1912 Etching 28.5 x 22.5 cm
Käthe Kollwitz 1910s
1910s
| …if it wasn’t for this insanity of war’ Shown above is Memorial Sheet to Karl Liebknecht. Karl Liebknecht was a cofounder of the Spartacus League, which in 1918 became the German Communist Party. Arrested after an unsuccessful uprising against the provisional government, he was murdered by police in 1919 while allegedly trying to escape. At the request of Liebknecht’s family, Kollwitz sketched him in the morgue, later responding to critics by declaring, “I have as an artist the right to extract the emotional content out of everything, to let things work on me and then give them outward form.” Sold in a large edition for the benefit of the Workers’ Art Exhibition, her woodcut captures the resignation and anger of the mourning workers.
Memorial Sheet to Karl Liebknecht, 1919
Käthe Kollwitz 1910s
13
Eileen Gray Eileen Gray (August 1878 – October 1976) was an Irish furniture designer and architect. This Irish artist was one of the pioneers who created what we now call modern design during the 1920s and 1930s.The lone woman in this pioneering Valhalla, her name is pronounced in the same breath as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer. Her tubular steel furniture was revolutionary in its day, and is now accepted as classic. In the second stage of her creative career, Eileen Gray switched to architecture and continued producing masterpieces. She was an artist of epoch-making significance.
Eileen Gray’s innovative Bibendum Chair was one of the 20th century’s most recognizable furniture designs. The chair is very much for lounging in and socializing. Its back/arm rest consists of two semi-circular, padded tubes encased in soft leather. The name that Gray chose for the chair, Bibendum, originates from the character created by Michelin to sell tyres.
Screen, 1922 Lacquered wood and metal rods, 189.2 x 135.9 x 1.9 cm. Manufactured by Eileen Gray Workshop, Paris, France.
14
Eileen Gray 1920s
Bibendum Chair, 1920s Stainless steel frame with aniline leather upholstery. W 90 x D 83 x H 73 cm. (Above and right).
1910s
1930s
Tamara de LEMPICKA T amara de Lempicka (May 1898–March 1980) was a Polish Art Deco painter and ‘the first woman artist to be a glamour star.’ De Lempicka is best known for her stunning paintings that capture the elegance and decadence of 1920s cosmopolitan nobility. Art Deco embraced the machine and progress. The clean lines and neat stylised fashion suited de Lempicka very well who hated the hazy and untidy images of the Impressionist movement.
Portrait of Madame M., 1930 Oil on canvas, 99 x 65 cm.
La Dormeuse, 1932 Although Lempicka herself never said so, it is generally accepted to be a self-portrait.
Tamara de Lempicka 1930s
17
‘I wanted to paint the old man. It was an overwhelming desoire. He came with me into my studio… Then, one day… he took from his pocket a yellowed newspaper cutting. It had already been folded and unfolded a hundred times. He gave it to me, saying: “I was not always as you know me now.” the cutting concerned Rodin’s Lovers. The names of the models were given. “I am this man,” he said.’
During the 30s, de Lempicka was already a well established artist and continued to enjoy a very frenetic social life. The Great Depression had little effect on her; in the early 1930s she was painting King Alfonso XIII of Spain and Queen Elizabeth of Greece. Museums began to collect her works. In 1933 she traveled to Chicago where she worked with Georgia O’Keeffe, Santiago Martinez Delgado and Willem de Kooning. Her social position was cemented when she married her lover, Baron Kuffner, in 1933 (his wife had died the year before). The Baron took her out of her quasi-bohemian life and finally secured her place in high society again, with a title to boot. She repaid him by convincing him to sell many of his estates in Eastern Europe and move his money to Switzerland. She saw the coming of World War II from a long way off, much sooner than most of her contemporaries. She did make a few concessions to the changing times as the decade passed; her art featured a few refugees and common people, and even a Christian saint or two, as well as the usual aristocrats and cold nudes.
Old Man with Guitar, 1935 Oil on canvas, 66 x 50 cm.
18
Portrait of Miss Poum Rachou, 1933 Oil on canvas, 92 x 46.5 cm.
Tamara de Lempicka 1930s
1940s
Margaret
BOURKE-WHITE M
argaret Bourke-White (June 1904 – August 1971) was an American photographer and documentary photographer. She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet Industry, the first female war correspondent (and the first female permitted to work in combat zones) and the first female photographer for Henry Luce’s Life magazine, where her photograph appeared on the first cover. Bourke-White was a very ambitious woman as this extract from her 1927 diary clearly illustrates:
‘I want to become famous and I want to become wealthy.’
Margaret Bourke-White 1940s
19
Bourke-White was the first female war correspondent and the first woman to be allowed to work in combat zones during World War II. In 1941, she traveled to the Soviet Union just as Germany broke its pact of non-aggression. She was the only foreign photographer in Moscow when German forces invaded. Taking refuge in the U.S. Embassy, she then captured the ensuing firestorms on camera. As the war progressed, she was attached to the U.S. Army Air Force in North Africa, then the U.S. Army in Italy and Germany. She repeatedly came under fire in Italy in areas of fierce fighting. In the spring of 1945, she traveled through a collapsing Germany with General George S. Patton (pictured above). She
arrived at Buchenwald, the notorious concentration camp, and later said, ‘Using a camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me.’ After the war, she produced a book titled Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly, a project that helped her come to grips with the brutality she had witnessed during and after the war. She had a knack for being at the right place at the right time: She interviewed and photographed Mohandas K. Gandhi just a few hours before his assassination. Alfred Eisenstaedt, her friend and colleague, said one of her strengths was that there was no assignment and no picture that was unimportant to her.
(previous page) Ghandi, 1946
Joseph Stalin, Moscow, 1941
22
General George S. Patton, 1945
Margaret Bourke-White 1940s
Ray Eames
E
ames (December 1912 – August 1988) was an American artist, designer, and filmmaker, and was born Ray -Bernice Alexandra Kaiser Eames. Together with her husband Charles, is responsible for many classic, iconic designs of the 20th century. In the 1950s, the Eameses’ continued their work in architecture and modern furniture design. Like in the earlier molded plywood work, the Eames’ pioneered innovative technologies, such as the fiberglass, plastic resin chairs and the wire mesh chairs designed for Herman Miller.
1950s
The Eames Lounge Chair and ottoman, correctly titled Eames Lounge (670) and Ottoman (671), were released in 1956 after years of development for the Herman Miller furniture company. It was the first chair the Eames designed for a high-end market and is the furnishings are made of molded plywood and leather. In part the appeal of the chair comes from its comfort, the Eameses’ focused first on usability in their designs. The classic design has appeared in several television programmes and films, including; Fraiser, House, Friends, Mad Men, Scrubs, Gossip Girl, Iron Man (film) and Tron (film).
Lounge chair and ottoman, 1956
Ray Eames 1950s
23
The Eameses’ fiberglass-reinforced plastic chair solved the problem of how to make a seat out of a single shell. In 1948 the Eames office decided to collaborate with a research team of engineers UCLA and enter The Museum of Modern Art’s ‘International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design.’ Striving for a chair that was cheap, lightweight, versatile, and suitable for young families, the office produced a single-shell design that was eventually molded out of fiberglass. Bases are attached to the shells with rubber shock mounts and the standard version of the chair has only recently gone out of production.
Stack of fiberglass plastic chairs, 1954 and Dining armchair, 1950
24
Ray Eames 1950s
1960s
Diane ARBUS
Diane Arbus (March 1923 – July 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of ‘deviant and marginal people (dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, circus performers) or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal.’
‘Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.It’s what I’ve never seen before that I recognise.’
Photograph of Diane Arbus, 1970 Taken by Stephen Frank during a class at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Diane Arbus 1960s
25
‘I do feel I have some slight corner on something about the quality of things. I mean it’s very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.’
Wearing long coats and ‘worldlywise expressions,’ two adolescents appear older than their ages.
A close-up shows the man’s pock-marked face with plucked eyebrows, and his hand with long fingernails holds a cigarette. Early reactions to the photograph were strong; for example, someone spit on it in 1967 at the Museum of Modern Art. A print was sold for $198,400 at a 2004 auction.
Teenage couple on Hudson Street, N.Y.C. 1963
A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C. 1966
26
Diane Arbus 1960s
1960s
Richard and Marylin Dauria, who actually lived in the Bronx. Marylin holds their baby daughter, and Richard holds the hand of their young son, who is mentally-retarded.
With an American flag at his side, he wears a bow tie, a pin in the shape of a bow tie with an American flag motif, and two round button badges: ‘Bomb Hanoi’ and ‘God Bless America / Support Our Boys in Viet Nam.’ The image may cause the viewer to feel both different from the boy and sympathetic toward him. An art consulting firm purchased a print for $228,000 in 2005. In 1972, a year after she committed suicide, Arbus became the first American photographer to have photographs displayed at the Venice Biennale. Millions of people viewed traveling exhibitions of her work in 1972-1979. In 2003-2006, Arbus and her work were the subjects of another major traveling exhibition, Diane Arbus Revelations. [11] In 2006, the motion picture Fur, starring Nicole Kidman as Arbus, presented a fictional version of her life story
A young Brooklyn family going for a Sunday outing, N.Y.C. 1966
Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C. 1970
Diane Arbus 1960s
27
Jenny
HOLZER J
enny Holzer (1950, Gallipolis, Ohio) is an American conceptual artist. She attended Ohio University, Rhode Island School of Design, and the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Holzer was originally an abstract artist, focusing on painting and printmaking; after moving to New York City in 1977, she began working with text as art. She was also an active member of the artists group Colab. Shown below is an installation of Inflammatory Essays (1978– 79), in which Holzer brought texts influenced by Trotsky, Hitler, Mao, Lenin, and Emma Goldman onto the streets.
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Jenny Holzer 1970s
1960s
Truisms, started in 1977 and continued still, is probably her most well-known work. Holzer has compiled a series of statements and aphorisms (‘truisms’) and has publicised them in a variety of ways: listed on street posters, in telephone booths, and even, in 1982, on one of Times Square’s gigantic LED billboards.
From Inflammatory Essays, 1979 Offset posters 43 x 43 cm each.
From Truisms, 1977
The main focus of her work is the use of words and ideas in public space. Originally utilizing street posters, LED signs became her most visible medium, though her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection, the Internet, and a Le Mans race car.
From Truisms, 1993-94 Theartre marquee in the ‘42nd Street Art Project’ New York.
Jenny Holzer 1970s
29
Zuzana
LICKO TYPEFACE DESIGNER Bratislava 1961
In the mid-1980s ZUZANA LICKO
Emigre and Rudy Vanderlans founded
Emigre produced the magazine, Emigre, and designed and distributed original fonts. Vanderlans was editor of the magazine, while Licko was responsible for many successul Emigre fonts.
Emigre #1, 1984 The magazine that ignores boundaries.
30
Zuzana Licko 1980s
1980s
‘We met at the University of California at Berkeley where I was an undergraduate at the College of Environmental Design and Rudy was a graduate student in photography. This was in 1982-83. After college we both did all sorts of design-related odd jobs. There was no direction. Then, in 1984 the Macintosh was introduced, we bought one, and everything started to fall into place. We both, each in our own way, really enjoyed this machine. It forced us to question everything we had learnt about design. We both enjoyed that process of exploration, of how far you could push the limits. Rudy is more intuitive; I’m more methodical. Yin and yang. It seemed to click, and still does.’ ZUZANA LICKO Eye, Number 43 SPRING2002 Zuzana Licko 1980s
31
PEOPLE READ BEST WHAT THEY READ MOST. ZUZANA LICKO 1991 FROM Emigre #15
Zuzana Licko is of course best known for the typefaces she has designed for Emigre. Below is a list of some of them. Two of them are notable revivals: Mrs Eaves, based on Baskerville, and Filosofia, based on Bodoni. Both are Licko’s personal interpretations of their historical models and each features extensive ligatures. Mrs Eaves and Matrix are higlighted in yellow as they are the 2 faces that are used throughout this publication.
Mrs Eaves
Filosofia
Matrix 32
Zuzana Licko 1980s
Paula
SCHER
1990s
Paula Scher is an Americ graphic designer and artist. During the course of her career Scher has been the recipient of hundreds of industry honors and awards. Scher has been inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame (1998), received the Chrysler Design Award for Innovation in Design (2000), the AIGA Medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (2001), and the Type Directors Club Medal (2006). In 1996 Scher’s identity for The Public Theater won the Beacon Award for integrated corporate design strategy. Some of her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Her album designs have earned her four Grammy Award nominations.
Ambassador Arts Alphabet, 1993-4 Scher selected and Art Directed 12 designers to create an alphabet for silkscreen printing company Ambassor Arts. The ‘g’, ‘i’ and ‘p’ were designed by Scher herself.
Paula Scher 1990s
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Paula Scher began painting small opinionated maps in the early nineties. Over time they grew larger and more obsessive. In the late nineties and more recently Scher claims:
‘The map paintings serve as an antidote to laborious coporate design projects frustrated by indecisive committes.’ Scher’s maps also reflect the abundance of information that inundates us daily through newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet to reveal the fact that much of what we hear and read is strewn with inaccuracy, distorted facts, and subjectivity.
The World, 1998 Acrylic on canvas.
34
Paula Scher 1990s
India, 2007 Acrylic on canvas.
2000s
Mary HARRON
Mary Harron (born January 1953) is a Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter best known for her films I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page. The Notorious Bettie Page, released in 2005, is about the 1950s pinup model who became a cult icon of sexuality and who helped popularize pornography. Harron shows Page as the daughter of religious and conservative parents, as well as the fetish symbol who became a target of a Senate investigation of pornography. For this project, as well as for I Shot Andy Warhol, Harron had to do historical research and interviewed several friends of Page’s, as well as her first husband. Harron saw Page as an unwitting feminist figure who represented a movement for women’s sexual liberation, ironically similar, yet dissimilar to Solanas, whom I Shot Andy Warhol is about.
‘I feel that without feminism, I wouldn’t be doing this. So I feel very grateful. Without it, God knows what my life would be. I don’t make feminist films in the sense that I don’t make anything ideological. But I do find that women get my films better. Women and gay men. Maybe because they’re less threatened by it, or they see what I’m trying to say better.’
From The Notorious Bettie Page, 2005
From I Shot Andy Warhol, 1996
Mary Harron 2000s
35
Harron’s second movie, American Psycho, released in 2000, is based on the book of the same title by Bret Easton Ellis, notorious for its graphic descriptions of torture and murder. The protagonist, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), is a wealthy broker working at the fictional mergers and acquisitions firm Pierce & Pierce, a nod to the name of Sherman McCoy’s employer in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities.
Promotional picture from American Psycho, 2000
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Mary Harron 2000s