Joan Semmel’s most recent body of work, shown in A Necessary Elaboration at Alexander Gray Associates, demonstrates the artist’s steadfast dedication to exploring the female nude. Over the last forty years, Semmel has zig zagged between abstraction and figuration, dabbled in appropriation, gleaned social circles for subject matter, only to then fully immerse herself in her own physical being. What is particularly arresting about Semmel’s work is that you are seduced by more than just the obvious eroticism. You become captivated by the sheer brilliance of the painter’s hand and her capacity to adapt. Each body of work has been a response to political and social influences, though not entirely, as Semmel’s visceral reaction to her own art practice creates a duality of intention. Each separate body of work – “sex pictures”, “locker room works”, and “overlays” to name a few – have a distinct quality, representative of an artist’s, but also a woman’s, unique journey towards cementing the self. In order to comprehend the ways Semmel has utilized her nudes as a vehicle of personal reflection, female expression and painterly exploration, it is important to trace the progression of her work back to the moment she got in front of the camera.

AUTHENTIC SELF

In A Necessary Elaboration, Semmel’s attention to aging and the progression of the body necessitates a consideration of the female form, the transitions of womanhood, the life span of female sexuality and the body as something other than a political symbol. This notion is incredibly timely, as contemporary culture surrounding the female body is becoming much more nuanced, and the visibility of women in power is higher than ever. Semmel is acutely aware of society’s consumption and condemnatory treatment of women in the public sphere, and she welcomes the range of emotions associated with a nude 86-year-old woman in her latest series of paintings. Simultaneously Semmel tempts us to further explore paint as what she calls “an instrument of joy and revelation”[1].  Moving past the conversation of a woman’s right to be in charge of her body and her sexual autonomy, she moves towards a contemplative body of work about the seduction of color and paint. The bold palette coupled with the deliberate mark making in Seated in Red (Fig.1 and 2.), draws your eyes directly to the folds and crevices of Semmel’s fleshy torso, imperfections some people – but more importantly women – feel compelled to hide. What entices you about this and the other works in the show is not only the voluptuousness of her midsection, or the carriage of her bosom, but the artist’s hand and intentionality of color in the most vulnerable of bodily locations. The manner in which she uses paint to sculpt bodies transcends the two-dimensional range of the canvas while penetrating society’s drifting attention to perfection.

PUBLIC SELF

Semmel’s previous series of paintings, shown in 2016, began to address this idea of authenticity over perfection. In the exhibition essay she commented on society’s transition into a “more detached and less authentic human experience in contemporary culture.”[2] The artist speaks to the loss of the authentic self, as we “succumb to a life of innumerable images of places visited, and moments experienced, residing in our cell phones rather than in our minds.”[3] Simply put, the emergence of selfie culture and the rise of social media platforms has altered the notion of “self” for many who indulge in them. In a 2016 article in Aperture entitled “Our Bodies, Online,” Carmen Winant dissects the way a new generation of female artists – engaging in topics of feminisms, but not always identifying as feminist – were beginning to address images of female eroticism and the internet.[4] According to Winant, these artists belong to a very different “wave” than the feminist artists of the 1970’s, and their work is reflective of that shift. Though not mentioned in name Semmel is a part of that older movement, but her work seems to be keeping pace with her younger counterparts. In the 2016 exhibition catalogue essay she comments that “the constant exploitation of the image of the female body of a certain age and predetermined shape as that most coveted object of desire leaves us divided from our own selves.” Semmel, while never fitting into the essentialist cohort of 1970’s feminists, has still had to adapt her process past the notions of the feminism of her generation, addressing the complexities of female eroticism and self-esteem in the digital age. The 2016 show also illustrates the overlap of figuration and abstraction in Semmel’s career, quite literally, with three dimensional forms superimposed with the artist’s sketches, as seen in Flesh Ground (Fig.3), creating a sense of motion or passage of time across each individual piece. She explains that the repetitiveness of the self-image in each painting is meant to visualize internal dialogues, enticing us to engage in them ourselves. Semmel, in these canvases that become the “tender skin of fragile thoughts,” challenges us to look beyond our public image to find our authentic selves.[5]

UNVEILING THE SELF

 The work in the 2016 exhibition was undoubtedly a response to the earlier series “transparencies” and “shifting image” that Semmel created between 2006 and 2014. These works were heavily reliant on both Semmel’s photography practice and her persisting preoccupation with the voyeuristic culture of depicting women. In this body of work, she is more rebellious in her reclaiming of the gaze, and redefining the passive female nude in art history. Her process was altered significantly, incorporating the collaging of overlaid images to create the time-lapse effect seen in Transitions (Fig.4). Of this change in imagery from early bodies of work the exhibiting gallery Alexander Gray comments:

A common theme of veiling resonates in these works; Semmel holds multiple positions, each thinly overlaid by the next. Semmel’s training in abstraction is apparent in the diluted transitions from one hue to the next; her subtle use of color adds depth and enhances the sense of emotional as well as formal dynamism.

 Semmel’s reclamation of her own image, and in turn the female image, seems it’s most disconcerted in this series. While still toeing the line of figurative and abstract, the transient nature of the paintings is telling of an artist in flux. Semmel had for the two decades prior all but abandoned her self-image, focusing primarily on the bodies of others, seen in her “mannequin” and “locker room” series, works of which can be seen in Multiples (Fig.5) and Shower Stalls (Fig.6). Shifting Images as a series harkens back to the moment Semmel turned the camera on herself and began unveiling that self through her work.

DISCOVERING THE SELF

1974 proved to be a major turning point for Semmel’s career. Earlier in the decade she began using photography rather than sketches as reference imagery for her large-scale paintings in the “erotic series.” By 1974 she would find inspiration in her own physicality, moving in front of the lens as both model and photographer. Her pursuit in the disruption of the genre of female nude painting transitioned to what Semmel called “an attempt to capture the feeling of self, and the experience of oneself.” This body of work, though created decades prior, would inform Semmel’s later and most recent body of work in more than just subject matter. Grappling with a change in physique is something all humans may endure but acquiring the sense of self that allows you to be at your most vulnerable in a public capacity is rare. Semmel in her first Self Images, an example of which is Pink Fingertips (Fig.7), moved away from sexuality to the pursuit of a non-objectified female nude, who is neither intentionally self-referential nor idealized. She was reclaiming the gaze, subverting the tradition of nude painting from within, all in the midst of being told “feminism was over.” [6] A defining moment for Semmel’s career, and one that succinctly illustrates the impetus for her definition of self is the creation of Mythologies of Me (Fig.8). When her nudes didn’t fit neatly into an exhibition entitled A Patriotic Show, Semmel simply sandwiched the work between the male fantasy driven imagery of pornography and the machismo laced work of De Kooning. She in that moment carved out a space of her work and herself, and the reverberations of that decision can still be felt in each piece in A Necessary Elaboration.

NOTES

[1] Alejandro Jassan, ed., Joan Semmel: New Work. (New York: Alexander Gray Associates, 2016)[2] Jassan, 3.[3] Jassan, 4.[4] Carmen Winant, “Our Bodies, Online.” Aperture, (Winter 2016), 138.[5] Jassan, 4.[6] Ursula Davila-Villa and Rebecca Wolf, ed. Joan Semmel: Across Five Decades. (New York: Alexander Gray Associates, 2015)