Maria Lassnig, New York Films: 1970 – 1980 (Installation View), via Art Observed

Following the passing of renowned Austrian artist Maria Lassnig, a body of new films was unearthed from the artist’s estate, pieces that marked a continuation and elaboration of her unique and exploratory approach to the human form and its movements. This body of films has traveled to New York this month, following a close collaboration between the Maria Lassnig Foundation and the Austrian Film Musuem to execute an attentive and exacting restoration, resulting in their presentation as Maria Lassnig: New York Films 1970–1980 at MoMA PS1. (more…)

Maria Lassnig, Woman Power (1979), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Already a celebrated artist during the late ‘60s in her native Austria, Maria Lassnig left Paris and moved to New York, an unfamiliar city she considered vastly different from Europe, where the power dynamics of the art world were sharply drawn and where patriarchal discourses prevailed.  In addition to ‘body awareness,’ the term she coined to define her painting style in which she exclusively depicted body parts she felt during her painting process, Lassnig had already earned recognition for her surreal and experimental method of employing color to convey corporeality.  Not preoccupied by aesthetic standards defining the human form, Lassnig’s exploration of subliminal complexities as regards the body ultimately offered her compositions a vivid figurative potency.

Maria Lassing, Selbstporträt als Indianergirl (1973),

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Exhibition view, “The Female Gaze: Woman Look at Women,” at Cheim & Read. Pictured works include Victoria Civera’s Searcher (far left) and Vanessa Beecroft’s Blonde Figure Lying (floor).

Through September 19, 2009, Cheim & Read will show “The Female Gaze: Women Look At Women.”  Featured are works by women of women, with aim to reorient the typically-male framing of women in art.  Works range in medium from the paintings of Alice Neel and Lisa Yuskavage to the sculptures of Kara Walker, the text poems of Jenny Holzer and the photographs by Diane Arbus, the installations by Louise Bourgeois and even collage work by Ellen Gallagher.

Related links:
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Cheim & Read – Exhibition – The Female Gaze [Cheim and Read]
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Now Hanging: Girlie Show [The Moment Blog, New York Times]
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The Female Gaze, The Cheim and Read Gallery, New York [Financial Times]
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The Female Gaze: Women look at Women [Artforum]
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“The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women” at Cheim & Reid [Contemporary Art Daily]

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Cindy Sherman, Untitled, at Cheim & Read.

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