Text by Rachel Middleman, Jodi Throckmorton, Amelia Jones.
A much-needed survey of the influential feminist painting of Joan Semmel, with rarely seen drawings and collages
This publication, the first comprehensive catalog on the painting of New York–based artist Joan Semmel (born 1932), traces the artist’s career from early abstract paintings through her movement-defining feminist art and activism and, finally, to the vital and monumental images that she is making today of her own mature body. The book gives readers the opportunity to experience almost 55 years of Semmel’s extraordinary work, including a selection of her rarely seen drawings and collages. In the face of persistent censorship and in defiance of deep-rooted sexism and ageism, Semmel has relentlessly made paintings that reflect the ongoing struggle for women’s equal representation, power to make decisions about their own bodies and sexuality, and empowerment through the self. At a moment when sex and body positivity have become international movements, this volume celebrates Semmel’s pivotal and under-recognized role in bringing these ideas forward.
"Double Take" (1991) is reproduced from 'Joan Semmel: Skin in the Game'.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Bookforum
Fran Bigman
Joan Semmel, along with other women artists who shifted from abstraction to more representational painting in the 1960s and 1970s, faced a challenge: Could they overthrow the centuries-old tradition of male artists objectifying female nudes? Joan Semmel: Skin in the Game, an illustrated collection of three essays that accompanies the eighty-eight-year-old Semmel’s first-ever retrospective, demonstrates that Semmel faced this challenge by painting, literally, from her own perspective.
Women's Art Journal
Tanya Augsburg
The dynamic layout generates multiple visual orgasms with each turn of the page.
“Recognition” (2020) is reproduced from Skin in the Game, the first comprehensive catalog on the influential New York feminist painter Joan Semmel. Published in advance of her October retrospective at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, this long-overdue survey features key paintings alongside rarely seen drawings and collages. “Semmel’s work has in itself always been a mirror—reflecting our own insecurities and fears about bodies, beauty and now aging,” Jodi Throckmorton writes. “In critiques about the overt sexuality in art, music, television, etc., made by women, a fear of women’s freedom is apparent. Women today may not choose to show their sexuality as many feminists in the 1970s had hoped. There remains a divide between the sex celebrated by artists like Semmel and the sex-positive movement that began in the 1980s that has seeped into popular culture today. Much of the divide is centered on the acceptance of pornography and, for Semmel, the way many female artists appropriate the images and symbols pictured in pornography without inquiry into what those images signify. This divide can hinder us from fully understanding the important work that Semmel has done towards the acceptance of female sexuality and better awareness of women’s bodies.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 10.5 in. / 128 pgs / 100 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $40.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $54.5 GBP £31.50 ISBN: 9781646570164 PUBLISHER: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts AVAILABLE: 8/3/2021 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Text by Rachel Middleman, Jodi Throckmorton, Amelia Jones.
A much-needed survey of the influential feminist painting of Joan Semmel, with rarely seen drawings and collages
This publication, the first comprehensive catalog on the painting of New York–based artist Joan Semmel (born 1932), traces the artist’s career from early abstract paintings through her movement-defining feminist art and activism and, finally, to the vital and monumental images that she is making today of her own mature body. The book gives readers the opportunity to experience almost 55 years of Semmel’s extraordinary work, including a selection of her rarely seen drawings and collages.
In the face of persistent censorship and in defiance of deep-rooted sexism and ageism, Semmel has relentlessly made paintings that reflect the ongoing struggle for women’s equal representation, power to make decisions about their own bodies and sexuality, and empowerment through the self. At a moment when sex and body positivity have become international movements, this volume celebrates Semmel’s pivotal and under-recognized role in bringing these ideas forward.
