A Woman Artist Even My Mother Could Love/Strong Women in Art

Louise Nevelson 

I taught art in public schools for many years.  I always tried to find interesting ways to teach children about art history. I had to make art history come alive for them.  I brought home videos to review for class, one of those was of Louise Nevelson as an older artists. 

My Mother, who was also aging and worried about her wrinkles, was captivated by Nevelson's life and looks.  She told me when she got older she could at least look as interesting as Louise Nevelson! 

Louise Nevelson/google image

Louise was born in 1889 in Russia not long before my Mothers birth in 1913.  Women born in a generation of war, depression and strife.  Louise went to the art student league and studied art.  She later married and was expected to be a good wife who moved in her husbands world of socialites.  It was not a world she could thrive in, she left her husband with her young son Myron and went back to New York City.  It was there something interesting happened....one of those odd things in life that lead to amazing things later...she and her son wandered the streets of New York collecting wood for heat.  The wood was not a log, or wood from a forest, but wood from old buildings and wood that had been worked or crafted for use.  That very wood would give Louise the idea for her wood collages later in her career and big her signature work of her life!  

Wood Collage Sculpture by Louise Nevelson     google image

I think it is difficult for us to think of the tenacity and strength it took for this woman, in an era when women were not allowed to do much, still succeeded and made her way. She challenged the idea of what women were allowed to paint and what society dictated women could do.  The following excerpt is from Wikapedia about her role in the women's movement. As you read through this you will see the sexism she dealt with in her life and the art world.  


"Louise Nevelson has been a fundamental key in the feminist art movement. 

Credited with triggering the examination of femininity in art, Nevelson challenged the vision of what type of art women would be creating with her dark, masculine and totem-like artworks.^[1] Nevelson believed that art reflected the individual, not "masculine-feminine labels", and chose to take on her role as an artist, not specifically a female artist.^[25] Reviews of Nevelson's works in the 1940s wrote her off as just a woman artist. A reviewer of her 1941 exhibition at Nierendorf Gallery stated: "We learned the ar

tist is a woman, in time to check our enthusiasm. Had it been otherwise, we might have hailed these sculptural expressions as by surely a great figure among moderns." Another review was similar in its sexism: "Nevelson is a sculptor; she comes from Portland, Maine. You'll deny both these facts and you might even insist Nevelson is a man, when you see her Portraits in Paint, showing this month at the Nierendorf Gallery."^[26]

Even with her influence upon future generations of feminist artists, Nevelson's opinion of discrimination within the art world bordered on the belief that artists who were not gaining success based on gender suffered from a lack of confidence. When asked by Feminist Art Journal if she suffered from sexism within the art world, Nevelson replied "I am a woman's liberation."^[22]"

An Artist of Prickly Pears!!! Real Cati Sculpture...Ouch! A Artist of New Thought

RABBIT'S MOON STUDIO NEW ARTIST SERIES INTRODUCES JONATHAN TAUBE

During our on site visit to New Orleans we were not only introduced to wonderful foods, cultural events, and galleries, but new artist as well.  Our last two post on artist in New Orleans, we talked of George Rodrigue and the Blue Dog and introduced Frank Relle photographer extradonaire.  

But as in all travel wonderful things happen that are just happenstance.  When touring the New Orleans Glass and Print Studio I met a charming energetic young artist by the name of Jonathan Taube.   He is primarily a sculpture.  He talked in a way that I have begun to understand, among the new generations, who are born out of technology and a different social vision for our world, that is just mind blowing creative!  He, and many others of his generation, sees the world and our structures differently and is out to change the world.  I almost heard an audible click as if someone opened up a door to a new world I had not conceived.  He talked about art studio's being virtual, not set in one country or place, he talked of pop up art shows, he talked of collaboration with artists in other countries and areas in new ways, that is did not have to be permanent, and he talked of art as not having ownership not needing to claim it as one person and individualize it.  We stood and talked while the glass blowers tuned molten glass, and the print makers walked around us trying to roll their presses...we talked while my partner patiently waited, then left after it was too long....it was exciting and enlightening!  I know you have had conversations like these at times....when they happen it is like a huge gift the universe has given you...Christmas presents under the tree, fireworks bursting in the air....so now lets talk about Prickly Pear Cacti Sculptures!!

Why Cactus you say....why sharp needles, live, and temporary sculptures? Jonathan has a great passion for prickly pear cactus, just ask him.  He knows everything about prickly pears, their origin, how they grow, where they grow, and everything else prickly pear.  He has studied them up front and close.  I am not sure how he would term himself as an artists, I might call him a conceptual artist, but he may have a different take.  In the photo below you can tell he its not only interested in presenting it as a live sculpture, but as something live that is deconstructing as well.  It opens up to other thought....living and dying, how and what happens when something dies, how the sculpture changes in color and shape, and that it is temporary......Art can be so many things, we can express so much that we feel and think, if we allow our minds to be open and not close them to the concept that art can only be one thing...a realistic painting, something beautiful that matches our sofa, or an expression that fits the rules of the art schools and critics of the day.  Most all of the artists we consider accepted and that hang in our museums, were at one time not. Every movement pushes the limited of its time and moves our thinking and challenges our perceptions.  I think Jonathan is in that fine tradition of pushing our thinking and pulling us out of staid rules of art and image.  Go Jonathan, Go!!!!

Jonathan Taub, Prickly Pear Sculpture/google image