{"id":4407,"date":"2015-05-06T13:25:13","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T17:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/?p=4407"},"modified":"2015-05-06T13:31:45","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T17:31:45","slug":"currently-showing-joan-semmel-nyc-an-artistic-history-of-death-nashville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/06\/currently-showing-joan-semmel-nyc-an-artistic-history-of-death-nashville\/","title":{"rendered":"Currently Showing – Joan Semmel (NYC) An Artistic History of Death (Nashville)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joan Semmel in NYC<\/strong>
\nJoan Semmel has a show at Alexander Gray Associates (NYC) – sadly I will only be in town the week after, but for those of you fortunate enough to be able to go, it’s a great retrospective by an artist who really deserves a lot more recognition.<\/p>\n

\"Joan<\/a>

Joan Semmel, \u201cPurple Diagonal\u201d (1980) (courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York, \u00a9 2015 Joan Semmel \/ Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)<\/p><\/div>“Joan Semmel: You have to realize that was written back in the early \u201970s, and things were very different then. Sexuality now is an open book. The conditions today are quite different. That\u2019s why I say that younger women have to get on board, because I can\u2019t project myself into where they are and I can\u2019t speak for them. If you are talking about whether it is still that way, it is in more subtle ways. For instance, Alice Neel and Louise Bourgeois were both being shown early on. They were there, but they didn\u2019t get much attention until they got a lot older. I used to say, at that time, that you had to be at an age when you were no longer threatening sexually to get any kind of validation from the culture. I think that is still valid, but at this point the fact that women have desire is obvious to everybody, not just to feminists. Shame about the body is not the same kind of thing as it was back then. A lot of those aspects of sexuality are very different now. But the underlying fear is still there. The problems so many men have, in terms of being potent, are enormous. Now that women are competing with men economically and are more aggressive sexually, men are that much more fearful. Rape is prevalent in the military and colleges. Repression takes many forms.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Read the full interview on Hyperallergic<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0 Some images in the attached interview are NSFW.<\/p>\n

Memento Mori in Nashville<\/strong>
\nThis sounds like a pretty interesting show – should you be in Nashville, it’s definitely worth checking out! My mother had a reproduction of the Kollwitz print below on her study wall when I was growing up. Boy, could Kollwitz\u00a0ever draw… Litho pencils, sigh.<\/p>\n

\"Ka\u0308the<\/a>

Ka\u0308the Kollwitz, \u201cTod packt eine Frau (Death Seizes a Woman)\u201d (1934), lithograph, the Peabody College Collection, Vanderbilt University<\/p><\/div>\n

“Memento Mori \u2014 Looking at Death in Art and Illustration at the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery considers death\u2019s role in society over the past 500 years. The oldest object in the exhibition is Vesalius\u2019s anatomical treatise De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (1555), which shows \u2014 as co-curator Holly Tucker wrote in her book Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine\u00a0and Murder in the Scientific Revolution \u2014 how \u201cmedical exploration took place most frequently in the domain of death.\u201d Other pieces on display include a second-stage silk mourning dress from 1909, memorial jewelry woven from the hair of the dead, and a tombstone carved by sculptor William Edmondson. \u201cMany of these traditions are no longer a part of Western culture,\u201d Gallery Director Joseph S. Mella told Hyperallergic. He explained that these are set alongside the show\u2019s contemporary works, like Enrique Chagoya\u2019s 2003 lithograph \u201cLa Portentosa Vida de la Muerte,\u201d which \u201cdeal more with the idea of death and issues of death in society rather than the death of individuals.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Maker<\/a>

Maker unknown, \u201cMourning Brooch in Memory of Stephen Gore with a Lock of his Hair and the Inscription on the Verso, \u2018Stephen Gore\/Born\/Apl 29th 1790\/Obt\/Sept 16 1845\u2032\u201d (c. 1845), gold, steel clasp, glass and hair, Collection of Janet Hasson<\/p><\/div>\n

Check out the full article on Hyperallergic<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joan Semmel in NYC Joan Semmel has a show at Alexander Gray Associates (NYC) – sadly I will only be in town the week after, but for those of you fortunate enough to be able to go, it’s a great…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[130,169,348],"tags":[942,294,227,175,133,128,943,941,940,944],"class_list":["post-4407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-history","category-art-news","category-contemporary-art-2","tag-alexander-gray-associates","tag-american-artist","tag-american-artists","tag-art","tag-art-history-2","tag-contemporary-art","tag-joan-semmel","tag-nashville","tag-new-york","tag-vanderbilt-university-fine-arts-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2JDlZ-195","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greynotgrey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}