At Large  August 20, 2024  Katy Diamond Hamer

A Book in Celebration of Women in the Arts: "Great (Women) Sculptors"

Courtesy and © the artist / Croy Nielsen, Vienna and Standard (Oslo), Oslo; and the High Line. Photo: Timothy Schenck (page 40)

Nina Beier, Women & Children, 2022. Found bronze sculptures, dimensions variable, installation view, The High Line, New York, 2022–3

Great (Women) Sculptors is part of a series of books published by Phaidon celebrating the accomplishments of women artists over the years. This catalogue is in good company with others, including Great (Women) Artists (2019) and Great (Women) Painters (2022). Each reveals the importance of female artists throughout time, but with a focus on their role as artists, not equating importance with gender identity.

The editor has selected formal examples of the art form, as illustrated by Harriet Hosmer’s marble figure in repose of Beatrice Cenci from 1857, but also the contemporary exploration of sculpture in relation to space rather than volume. The latter is illustrated by Ann Veronica Janssens, Untitled (Blue Glitter), Open Sculpture #3, 2015— which is an unconventional and undefined shape with variable dimensions of blue glitter. 

Published by Phaidon

Great Women Sculptors 2D cover image, 2024

The book looks at all types of sculpture and does not discriminate nor define what sculpture is based on medium or scale. There are human figures, flora and fauna, conglomerates of smaller shapes to form a larger shape, and artists from Yayoi Kusama—the highest paid living artist— to the conceptual mastermind that is Alicja Kwade, who makes sculptures that play with scale, weight, stone, and reflective surfaces. 

While women still make up roughly 3-5% of major permanent collections in the U.S. and Europe, this book not only shines a light, but drastically illuminates 300 female sculptors spanning 500 years. Why this is so exciting is because it is 2024 and not many names of these artists fall on the tongues of the public, nor even art world luminaries. Lest we forget that 500 years ago is 1524! 

An artist whose name is perhaps the most well-known globally is Artemisa Gentileschi who lived from 1593-1653 and was not a sculptor but a painter during the Baroque period. 

Picture credit: © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy the artist, Ota Fine Arts and Victoria Miro. (page 172)

Yayoi Kusama, Flowers That Bloom Tomorrow, 2010. Fiberglass reinforced plastic, metal, and urethane paint, 78 3/4 × 133 7/8 × 78 3/4 in. (200 × 340 × 200 cm)

Here, we will have the opportunity to familiarize ourselves with Properzia de’ Rossi who, in early 16th century Italy, was making sculpture and illustrated by what is described as an "elegantly carved cherry pit."

That’s right… a cherry pit, a small object only revealed once the ruby red fruit is removed. A cherry pit symbolizes new life or rebirth, which seems all too perfect in this context, as women are bearers of life and channels for birth. 

In my opinion, one of today's most important young sculptors included in Great (Women) Sculptors is Delcy Morelos. Coming off a 10 month survey at the Dia in Chelsea, New York, Morelos makes work that is weighted physically by materiality, while also carrying an emotional weight. 

Picture credit: © Sokari Douglas Camp. Courtesy the artist and October Gallery, London. Photo: © Jonathan Greet (page 84)

Sokari Douglas Camp, Jesus Loves Me 2/2, 2012. Steel and acrylic paint, 61 1/4 × 33 1/8 × 24 1/8 in. (155 × 84 × 61 cm)

In the exhibition “El abrazo,” she uses materials such as soil, cinnamon, clove, felt, wood, fired ceramics, and fragrance, amongst others, to create immersive installations that fill the space structurally, as well as invisibly, only experienced through the olfactory sense. 

The artist was born in Colombia in 1967 and makes work that is as global as it is specific to her experience and relationship to the interpretation of Amazon Indigenous origin stories. 

In her introductory essay, writer and editor Lisa Le Feuvre states, “Sculpture is both a material object and an invitation to perceive. [...] Sculpture is wonderfully in and of the world. [It] demands an encounter, insisting that it takes place in time and space.” 

Another artist whose work fills a void in the canon of sculpture is Jessica Stockholder. Stockholder makes work using readymade objects and creates assemblages with a focus on texture, color, and form. In her work, a sea foam green rubber glove might sit next to a yellow bucket attached to a red cork board, and it all makes perfect sense. 

Picture credit: Courtesy and © the artist and P·P·O·W, New York. Photo: JSP Art Photography. (page 224)

Portia Munson, Today Will Be Awesome, 2022. Found pink objects, pink synthetic fabric and cloths, mannequin, salvaged round bar table, and deconstructed secretary desk/cabinet, 72 × 60 × 70 in. (182.9 × 152.4 × 177.8 cm)

Her practice is one where the objects themselves are stripped or void of their original intention in favor of a new compositional purpose. 

However, while Stockholder shies away from figurative or narrative references, Sarah Lucas, a YBA, does not. Lucas also tends to utilize readymade materials, but in a completely different way, communicating with the personal narrative and conceptual storytelling in her installations.

Such is the case with Suffolk Bunny (1997-2004), consisting of: tan tights, blue stockings, chair, clamp, kapok, and wire. The work is a seated figure of sorts, only identifiable through gangly legs, a partial torso, and elongated arms, or bunny ears. 

Lucas uses this form throughout her career and it is the perfect way for the editors to find a resting place between highly-conceptual sculptures and formal figuration, such as in the works of Sarah Bernhardt, Nina Beier, and Dora Gordine, whose figures elegantly engage with their surroundings.

Picture credit: © Nicole Eisenman. Courtesy the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Photo: Thomas Barratt (page 87)

Nicole Eisenman, Maker’s Muck, 2022. Plaster, clay, seashell, etc., 103 1/4 × 120 × 155 1/4 in. (262.3 × 304.8 × 394.3 cm)

Great (Women) Sculptors fills a void that many, prior to reading, may not have even known needed to be resolved. It aggregates a large selection of sculptors who have left their marks on art history and continue to challenge and push against societal perceptions of what sculpture is. It will be published in October 2024. 

About the Author

Katy Diamond Hamer

Katy Diamond Hamer is an art writer with a focus on contemporary art and culture. Writing reviews, profiles, interviews and previews, she started the online platform Eyes Towards the Dove in 2007 and was first published in print in 2011 with Flash Art International. Interview highlights include Robert Storr, Helmut Lang, Courtney Love, and Takashi Murakami. Taking a cue from art writers such as Jerry Saltz and movements such as Arte Povera (Italy, 1962-1972), Hamer believes that the language used to describe contemporary art should be both accessible to a large audience as well as informed regarding art historical references. Clients include Almine Rech, Hauser & Wirth, Grand Life, The Creative Independent, Art & Object, Artnet, Cool Hunting, BOMB, Cultured Magazine, Galerie Magazine, Flash Art International, W Magazine, New York Magazine (Vulture), The Brooklyn Rail and others.  Hamer is an Adjunct Faculty member at New York University, Steinhardt School of Education, and Sotheby's Institute of Art. Previously she taught Continuing Education at the New York School of Interior Design.

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