Lightness and freedom were not what I expected to experience when first walking into Making Space: American Women Artists and the Century of Change at Lincoln Glenn Gallery, given the exhibition’s focus on how women artists were fighting to make space for themselves in the artworld. I realized that this sense of lightness and freedom came from the space within the artworks themselves. Throughout the exhibition, areas of exposed canvas, negative space, and pockets of light and openness in nearly every work presented create a feeling of freedom and optimism. The works seem to be inviting the viewer in, literally making space for them.
This freedom is evident in Elaine Lustig Cohen’s painting, Untitled, circa 1979, which is composed of hard-edged, interlocking lines of varying width in black, red, blue, and orange to form what seems like a frame around a white center. In the context of this exhibition, this work appears as a window onto what is to come and what can be possible.
I spoke with Doug Gold while visiting the gallery, and he explained how the marginal position many of these artists occupied in the postwar market may have allowed for greater experimentation and freer expression that, at times, included aspects that could be considered traditionally “feminine.” For instance, Ida Kohlmeyer’s painting Semiotic 91-C from 1991 is a large-scale composition abounding with colorful freeform shapes against a white background, including what appears to be red and pink hearts, purple, orange, and yellow organic shapes and swirls. Alice Neel’s lithograph Light depicts a vase of flowers atop a wooden table against sunlight and shadow. While still life and domestic interiors were once considered appropriate subject matter for women artists, Neel’s contemplative scene conveys the same observational rigor as her portraiture. Gold explained to me that Neel only began pursuing printmaking after she achieved fame, as the medium was prohibitively expensive earlier in her career. In this context, Light is also a reminder that certain forms of artistic freedom were not always economically available and arrived, for some, only after years of dedication and perseverance.
For many of the artists, making space went beyond artistic freedom and into navigating social dynamics and expectations of the broader art world.
Interestingly, and absent from the press release, is the fact that many of the artists in the exhibition were married to some of the most prominent male artists of their time. In the exhibition’s catalogue essay “Beyond “Wimp Feminine”: Women artists and the Fight for Recognition,” author Clanci Jo Conover explains that Dorothy Dehner had to “[suppress] her own talent for many years to appease her aggressive sculptor-husband David Smith.” Untitled (Black and Red), circa 1960, which Dehner created a decade after she left Smith, is a work on paper depicting forms evocative of architecture rendered with exuberant lines that convey a striking sense of movement. This work on view in the exhibition exemplifies the geometric abstraction in sculpture and painting that she became known for once she was able to make space for her own creativity.
As the struggle for equity across the art world continues, this exhibition reminds us of the trailblazers that helped pave the way. It is particularly refreshing that Making Space: American Women Artists and the Century of Change avoids didacticism and, rather, lets the artwork speak for itself and grants the viewer the space to come to their own conclusions.
