SLAM: Modern and Contemporary Art

LES FLÂNEUSES, Ghada Amer, 2008, Minneapolis Institute of Art: Contemporary Art

white ground with outlines of six female figures and birds; dark purple, black, pink, green and yellow; unframed Ghada Amer was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1963. At the age of 11, her family moved to France where Amer studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Nice and the Institut des hautes Etudes en Arts Plastiques in Paris. Although Amer also creates sculpture, installations, and performance pieces, she has always referred to herself as a painter. Using traditional embroidery techniques and an acrylic gel medium to fix the thread to the canvas, Amer drew images of women performing domestic tasks. By using needlework, Amer elevated craft to the level of fine art. In Les Flâneuses, Amer uses embroidery—a medium typically associated with women’s domestic life—to create images that frankly explore aspects of female sexuality. She “draws” with thread, creating complex networks of lines, in which erotic images are partially concealed. In this work, Amer juxtaposes pornographic-magazine photographs of sexualized women with images of the innocent young girls of Walt Disney’s film version of Snow White. By bringing together two female stereotypes in this signature work, Amer illustrates how women have been marginalized. Ghada Amer’s embroidered and painted canvases, which deal with issues of empowerment and representation, confront traditional ideals of womanhood and assert her belief in women’s rights. Embroidery is traditionally a women’s craft and her work links traditional women’s work with contemporary desires for self-expression and power. In Les Flaneuses, the serial images - including the iconic image Snow White - speak to the representation of women, while the myriad horizontal black threads make it difficult to see the images clearly. The word flaneuses refers to a French term coined by Baudelaire - le flaneur: a man who walks the city to observe and participate in the urban experience. The term is associated with an understanding of modern society in relationship to the individual, a theme Amer is also exploring in her work. Size: 66 ¼ x 80 in. (168.28 x 203.2 cm) Medium: Acrylic, embroidery and gel medium on canvas

Untitled, Willem de Kooning, 1948, Art Institute of Chicago: Contemporary Art

Willem de Kooning established his reputation as a key figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement with a series of black-and-white paintings that he created in the late 1940s using household enamels and paper. Characterized by lyrical brushwork and biomorphic abstractions, these works marked the artist’s shift from a figurative drawing style, largely influenced by Arshile Gorky and other European artists, to the evolving gestural tradition of the New York School. Having eliminated color from his palette at that moment, de Kooning became more spontaneous with his application of paint, pushing his compositions to the edge of the paper. The resulting works embodied the physical act of painting, a defining characteristic of what would later become termed “action painting.” Gift from the Mary and Earle Ludgin Collection Size: 92.1 × 123.8 (36 ¼ × 48 ¾ in.), without frame Medium: Oil and enamel on paper, mounted on composition board

Thomas Lister and Family at Gisburne Park, Arthur Devis, 1740, Art Institute of Chicago: European Painting and Sculpture

Gift of Emily Crane Chadbourne Size: 115.1 × 103.8 cm (45 5/16 × 40 7/8 in.) Medium: Oil on canvas

Study for Amorpha, Warm Chromatic and for Fugue in two colors; Study for The Fugue by František Kupka, 1910, Guggenheim Museum

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1976 © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris Medium: Pastel on machine-made laid-line paper