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Though a product of the early twentieth century, Alice Neel defined herself in opposition to the traditional expectations of her gender at that time. The honest and intimate representations of women she produced throughout her career carved out a space for feminist engagement with a genre that is often defined by the male gaze. In her works, she openly displays her empathy for her subjects, often people in her social circle, creating portraits that are tender, humorous, and frank.

Vera Beckerhoff belongs to a series of portraits that document the lively community of artists and activists with whom Neel consorted during the late 1960s and early ’70s. Beckerhoff, an artist who settled in Vermont, possesses a self-assured pose, deadpan facial expression, and direct gaze, all of which suggest confidence and a comfortable relationship with the portraitist. Beckerhoff’s manner of dress and self-presentation epitomize the bold unconventionality that emerged during the period.

Vera Beckerhoff contributes to the ICA/Boston’s holdings of works by female painters who employ expressive figuration, such as Marlene Dumas, Dana Schutz, Amy Sillman, and Lisa Yuskavage. In addition, this work forms part of the ICA’s collection of work by female artists responding to second-wave feminism, such as Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Ana Mendieta, Ree Morton, Faith Wilding, and Cindy Sherman.

2015.21

Cady Noland’s work engages the iconography of what could be described as the American underbelly. She draws inspiration from mass-media images, particularly advertisements, pairing them with a sculptural practice that repurposes the detritus of a uniquely American commercial landscape. Noland’s stark and provocative body of work questions America’s self-image as a place of unity, justice, and democratic freedom. Her work is often compared with that of artists such as Robert Gober, David Hammonds, Mike Kelley, and Richard Prince, all of whom are interested in the American psyche and its fascination with celebrity, violence, and wealth.

In Untitled, Noland silkscreens on an aluminum panel three dramatically contrasting images of femininity appropriated from the mass media. In the upper right is a group of young women adorned with flowers; at the lower left, a doubled and mirrored image of a shotgun-wielding couple walking astride; and at the lower right, the infamous newspaper heiress-turned-guerilla Patty Hearst posed, rifle in hand, in front of the seven-headed-cobra symbol of her “captors,” the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). The three images Noland juxtaposes offer three distinct constructions of identity formulated in relation to circulated images of idealized feminine subjectivity: the chastity and virtue of the young girls, the conservative domesticity of the couple, and the fallen antihero embodied by Patti Hearst’s transformation from debutante to revolutionary. The polished aluminum onto which the images have been silkscreened reflects the viewers’ presence, transposing their own image into this triumvirate of female archetypes.

Noland’s provocative exploration of the more nefarious aspects of American culture, and more specifically her unique approach to mass-media images and repurposing of vernacular objects, paved the way for a generation of artists who also use these methods in their pointed critique.

2015.23

Pope.L is an artist and educator who over the past twenty-five years has made a career out of contraries. Drawing inspiration from the absurd and idiosyncratic nature of American culture, Pope.L’s provocative and often humorous performances, paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, and writings reveal and resound with the ironies inherent in our contemporary existence.

Although Pope.L is often categorized as a performance artist, his work in sculpture, video, drawing, photography, and painting evince an oeuvre that is universally prescient, poignant, and committed to highlighting political, social, cultural, and economic contradictions.

Part of a series of twenty-four oil-on-linen works, AKA Fuschia Ending buries text in a garish allover abstract expressionist composition. The series unites a misspelling of “fuchsia” with words offered by a rhyme generator, creating irreverent and nonsensical pairings such as “Fuschia Ebola,” “Fuschia Larva,” and “Fuschia Mañana.” Pope.L considers the repetition of the word “fuschia” as a performance taking place within the space of the canvas; each utterance of the word creates new meaning, as each pairing changes the way the viewer considers the visual landscape of the painting. In his own words: “Like performance, writing durates; an act of enduring; want to make it more physical, more ham-fisted lyrical—there are things to be done with words that have nothing to do with paint. It’s like crawling when you can walk …” Pope.L’s “mistreatment” of the word, along with the clumsiness of the mechanized pairings and the stridency of the palette, challenges what is considered “good” taste and thus subtly undermines the dominant power structures that sustain and propagate it.

Inhabiting the realm of various disciplines at once, AKA Fuschia Ending joins comparable works by Charline von Heyl, Dana Schutz, and Amy Sillman in the ICA/Boston’s strong holdings in paintings, as well as text-based works such as those by Roni Horn, Kerry James Marshall, and Lorna Simpson.

800.15.02

In her absurdist films, Mika Rottenberg views the systems of capital through the lens of the offbeat, the exaggerated, and the gaudy. Her vision combines a penchant for the visceral, be it expressed through languid foodstuffs or bodily emanations, with a desire to express the physical realities of labor and the vexed systems by which goods are produced.

In 2014, Rottenberg travelled to the Zhuji, China, to witness the harvesting of cultured pearls––a laborious, repetitious, and undoubtedly alienating process that belies the vision of luxury, natural beauty, and ease that they evoke. NoNoseKnows provides a documentary-like account of the process, highlighting the bleak industrial urban landscapes that have resulted from the effects of the growing pearl trade in the region. The film documents the pearl production process in its entirety: irritants are inserted into young oysters to coax them into producing the pearls that later in the film are harvested by a woman crouching in a dimly lit room: she digs a sharp knife into the plate-sized mature oysters to extract a steady stream of pearls from their viscous pink interiors. At long tables supporting a seemingly unending line of bowls, rows of women sort the pearls, a blindingly quick process that gestures to the skill of the female laborers and the unremitting demand for the commodity.

Another narrative in the film is introduced by way of Bunny Glamazon, an impressively tall woman whose pantsuit suggests that she is a Western supervisor at the factory. She sits downwind of a fan activated by workers that blows the scent of flowers directly to her nose, which becomes irritated. The sneezes that follow materialize heaping plates of food on the desk where she sits. As the film cuts between Bunny’s food-producing sneezes and the oyster-producing pearls, the correspondence becomes clear—Rottenberg positions both the workers and the oysters as unwitting accomplices in an activity associated with an overabundance of capital. Rottenberg’s witty vision of human labor, and more specifically female labor, was one of the high points of the 2015 Venice Biennale, where the artist presented the film in a purpose-built room that visitors entered by way of a small re-creation of the pearl factory. NoNoseKnows (50 Kilos variant) includes the projection room and adds a 50-kilogram sack of the pearls just outside the doorway.

NoNoseKnows (50 Kilos variant) supports the ICA/Boston’s commitment to time-based media, which includes works by artists such as Kader Attia, Paul Chan, and Ragnar Kjartansson. The work expands the current holdings through its exploration of global issues and labor conditions.

2015.30

In a career spanning over twenty years, Arlene Shechet has made diverse works by embracing the chance processes dictated by materials that change from one state to another before solidifying as a finished object. According to Shechet, working with variable materials such as plaster, cast paper, glass, and ceramic is “like stopping time, creating a pause, in order to generate new ways to look at things.”

Shechet’s oeuvre ranges from series that draw on the forms and vocabulary of East Asian art to explorations of clay as a “three-dimensional drawing material.” During the last decade, she has worked predominantly in clay, a medium often overlooked in mainstream art discourses because of its associations with craft and domesticity. In 1983, Shechet visited the ninth-century temple compounds Prambanan and Borobudor in Indonesia, the latter being one of the largest Buddhist monuments in the world. Climbing among thousands of stone reliefs had a profound impact on Shechet, who described it as “an experience of sculpture as a language for transmitting information, feelings, beliefs, and thoughts.” Ten years later, Shechet made the first of several seated Buddha sculptures in plaster with applied paint skins. During the same period, she created a series of heads—including Essential Head—whose materials and visual vocabulary are similar to her Buddha-inspired sculptures. Though they are less overtly figurative, the form of the heads is drawn from the iconic portrait sculpture tradition of East Asian art. To make the heads, Shechet sets cut steel bars vertically into individually cast concrete blocks. As she grips the bar where it meets the base, she pours quick-drying plaster onto her clenched fist, grasping and forming with that hand while she continues to pour with the other. Through this process, Shechet both courts chance and emphasizes a physicality of making that becomes integral to the final object.

Essential Head is an important early work by the artist, emblematic of her sustained interest in East Asian art. The sculpture appeared in the ICA/Boston’s 2015 exhibition Arlene Shechet: All At Once, organized by former Mannion Family Senior Curator Jenelle Porter.

800.15.03

A renowned artist of the twentieth century who has had lasting influence, Louise Bourgeois is best known for her sculptural work. Influenced by surrealism and the work of émigré artists fleeing Europe during World War II, Bourgeois engaged a wide array of tactics—from enlargement to suspension and assemblage—to probe the human condition: its pain, fragility, violence, eroticism, and complexity.

In the early 1950s, Bourgeois began her series of spiral woman sculptures—swirling and suspended humanoid forms. In Spiral Woman, 1951–52, Bourgeois explores the abstract form and dynamism of the spiral by stacking blocks of wood on a steel rod. The spiral becomes rounded in Spiral Woman, 1984, implying flesh and folds, from which arms and legs protrude. Suspended by a cable from the ceiling, the sculpture resembles a corpse spinning on the axis of its demise.

Since introducing Bourgeois to Boston audiences in a 1953 group exhibition, the ICA/Boston has featured her work in a number of exhibitions, including the major 2007–08 solo show Bourgeois in Boston. These sculptures join the ICA’s rich collection of work by Louise Bourgeois and add to holdings of figurative sculptures by such artists as Rachel Harrison, Juan Muñoz, and Kiki Smith.

2015.12

A renowned artist of the twentieth century who has had lasting influence, Louise Bourgeois is best known for her sculptural work. Influenced by surrealism and the work of émigré artists fleeing Europe during World War II, Bourgeois engaged a wide array of tactics—from enlargement to suspension and assemblage—to probe the human condition: its pain, fragility, violence, eroticism, and complexity.

In the early 1950s, Bourgeois began her series of spiral woman sculptures—swirling and suspended humanoid forms. In Spiral Woman, 1951–52, Bourgeois explores the abstract form and dynamism of the spiral by stacking blocks of wood on a steel rod. The spiral becomes rounded in Spiral Woman, 1984, implying flesh and folds, from which arms and legs protrude. Suspended by a cable from the ceiling, the sculpture resembles a corpse spinning on the axis of its demise.

Since introducing Bourgeois to Boston audiences in a 1953 group exhibition, the ICA/Boston has featured her work in a number of exhibitions, including the major 2007–08 solo show Bourgeois in Boston. These sculptures join the ICA’s rich collection of work by Louise Bourgeois and add to holdings of figurative sculptures by such artists as Rachel Harrison, Juan Muñoz, and Kiki Smith.

2015.11

In her photographic, video, and performance work, LaToya Ruby Frazier addresses issues that range from the personal to the political. Over the course of the last decade, Frazier’s practice has focused on the social, economic, and environmental deterioration of her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, experienced through the tangible and psychological effects on her immediate family.

Mom Making an Image of Me is part of a 2008 series of double portraits of the artist and her mother posing in the family house in Braddock. Throughout the series, the artist provides minimal visual context—a metal heater or patterned curtains—to give a sense of the domestic space. Both Frazier and her mother are visible only in the mirror propped on the radiator. Between the two women stands the camera, a key third element in this triangulation. Just as Frazier and her mother are framed by the mirror, the image is framed by the room. Through her precise compositions and focus on the individual as well as family, Frazier visualizes complex relationships.

Joining other photographs by Frazier in the ICA/Boston collection, this work augments the museum’s strong and ever-expanding collection of photography, which includes works by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, Roe Ethridge, Ragnar Kjartansson, and Thomas Ruff that also explore identity through photography and portraiture.

800.16.04

Through photography, video, and performance, LaToya Ruby Frazier addresses a wide range of topics that concern her—from access to healthcare and the effects of deindustrialization to her family history. Combining social documentary modes with portraiture, Frazier creates penetrating views of everyday life. Over the course of the last decade, her practice has focused on the social, economic, and environmental deterioration of her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, experienced through the concrete and psychological effects on her immediate family.

Huxtables, Mom, and Me is part of a series of portraits featuring the artist and her mother posing in the latter’s house in Braddock. As in another work by the artist in the collection, Mom Making an Image of Me, Frazier here uses mirrors to create frames within frames, generating spatially disorienting compositions that implicitly involve the viewer. Frazier dominates the image, but her mother, wearing military fatigues, is reflected beside her in a mirror propped against the wall: through staging, the two women stand side by side despite their actual confrontation and separation in space. The artist frequently includes African-American cultural references; in this image she wears a T-shirt depicting the actors in The Cosby Show. Through her precise compositions and focus on the individual as well as the family, Frazier visualizes complex relationships with metaphorical implications.

Joining another series by Frazier in the ICA/Boston collection, this work augments the museum’s strong and ever-expanding collection of photography, which includes works by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, Roe Ethridge, Ragnar Kjartansson, and Thomas Ruff that likewise explore identity through photographic portraiture.

800.16.05

To explore the relationship between verbal language and photography, Shannon Ebner literally builds letters, words, and phrases from sundry materials and then sites and photographs them. She constructs imagery using language that is itself constructed.

In Yes Tomorrow, No Tomorrow, the words are barely visible, traced in a haze of stray black paint that floats in front of the picture plane and obscures the depiction of a green and golden hill. This threshold of visibility in the photographic image mirrors the uncertainty imbued in the phrase’s oscillation of “yes” and “no.” Through such careful interposition of text and image, Ebner’s work reminds us how profoundly imbricated vision is with the material substance of things, and how much meaning depends on the context of encounter.

This photograph contributes to both the ICA/Boston’s significant holdings in photography and its growing collection of language-based works, joining selections by Leslie Hewitt, Roni Horn, Ray Navarro, Kelly Sherman, Lorna Simpson, and Sara VanDerBeek.

2017.23