WOMEN IN AMERICAN ART
Women as Artists
Women have a presence at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Beyond the women who serve on the Museum's staff, hundreds more are portrayed in works of the collection, and others have created art. Consider a work by a female artist who allows imagination to control her creative process and our own interpretation of her work.
What are we looking at? What does the artist want this work to mean? Elizabeth Murray wants these questions to be difficult to answer. There are even times in her creative process when she herself cannot answer those questions.
Elizabeth Murray began with freely drawn sketches of a basic shape influenced by Salvador Dali's famous limp clocks. Next, she modeled this clocklike form in clay. Once she settled on a form, she reconstructed it using laminated wood. She glued canvas to the wood to create her painting surface. Once the canvas was built, she allowed the shape to inform how she filled it. Looking at her construction, Murray recognized aspects of a female form, doubled-over at the middle. After some additional reconfiguring, Pigeon still contains remnants of the silhouette of a head, the hint of a blue dress and two large footprints. Cords or clockhands squiggle across this ambiguous form.
What does the work tell us about the artist? For centuries, painters and sculptors have reworked an idea in sketches and clay models as well as in revisions on the final canvas. The difference with Elizabeth Murray is that she wants to foreground the evolution of her idea, rather than present a work that appears like it was born in a finished state. Her improvisational style highlights the fact that creativity is a work in progress and that it can surprise both the artist and the viewer. Elizabeth Murray says that "starting to make a painting is like starting to tell a story." What story do you think she is telling?
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The Garden Parasol, 1910
Frederick Carl Frieseke (American, 1874 - 1939)
Women as Subjects
Careful examination of the choices the artist Frederick Frieseke made when depicting women as subjects reveals information about the artist, these women and attitudes toward women during the early 20th century. Consider the women in Frieseke's painting as both subjects and
symbols.
Why do you think Frederick Frieseke chose this setting for his painting? The work depicts his wife, Sarah O'Bryan, and a companion enjoying a bit of leisure time in the Frieseke's garden. Frieseke often painted his wife set within the confines of her
lush garden or intimate bedroom. In these feminine spaces, Frieseke was able to concentrate on the decorative qualities of nature, as well as the human figure.
How did the artist convey a feminine feeling, beyond setting his female figures in a garden? Frieseke's repetition of rounded forms, such as the chair backs and umbrella, echoes the soft forms of the female figures. Additionally, the repeated use of patterns in the Asian designs on the umbrella and the
background flowers, the female subject and the natural setting suggest Frieseke was aware of
19th-century Japanese prints, which bear many of the same characteristics and were very popular among French and American art collectors at the time.
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