SHIRLEY GORELICK
FRIDA, PABLO, AND THE SELF: The Artist as Model
Left to Right: Image 1, Pencil, 1993; Frida, Charcoal, 1992; Self Portrait, Charcoal, 1992
THE LOOK OF LOVE: An Artists Gaze
By Katherine McFadden
Shirley Gorelick --painter, drawer, printmaker and sculptor-- left the world
(Five figures; Homage to Picasso), and Homage to Picasso II. These works
a record of her looking and making. Like most practitioners of visual art,
allow us to see Gorelick specifically employing Picasso’s masterpiece Les
Gorelick moved through numerous stages of development and practice in
Demoiselles d’Avignon as the fundamental compositional design: five female
her artistic maturation. She painted, drew, created prints and carved figura-
figures in related poses contained within a large canvas. Picasso’s nude
tively and abstractly a range of subject matter, yet the majority of her works
women are geometrically sharp abstractions whose edges knife the negative
involve models as leitmotif. Three particular uses of models are at the heart
space. The faces and poses of the women derive from a variety of sources
of this exhibition: studio models, role models and self-portraits (model as
such as African tribal masks, Iberian sculpture, and Egyptian tomb sculpture.
self). All three embody Gorelick’s fervent gaze.In previous centuries women
Gorelick is more concerned with truth and portrays naturalistic poses and
artists were forbidden to draw from a nude model. The male privilege
figures using confident, expressive, painterly brushwork in heavy dark out-
of studying the nude in the studio goes back at least as far as the Italian
lines. Like Picasso, she invents suggestions of space, air and light using warm
Renaissance, with few exceptions. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that feminist
and cool colors.
artists stridently questioned the historic pervasiveness of images made by
males and displayed in exhibition spaces that barred women. By using the
However, Gorelick’s Homage to Picasso I serves up a few tongue-in-cheek
representation of women as subject matter, Gorelick was part of a generation
departures from the original Les Demoiselles. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,
of women artists who defied long-standing traditions of macho genius and
a seminal work of modern art by Picasso from 1907 featured five prostitutes
patriarchal perspective. Artists electing to “work from life” in the academic
in a brothel in Barcelona. Two figures left and right of the composition push
tradition hire studio models or use friends and family who volunteer to pose.
curtains aside while the other three take on classic erotic poses. Gorelick
These have long served as driving forces and muses for figurative artists and
slyly substitutes the image of Picasso pushing aside blue curtains in place of
Gorelick is a member of this genre.
a masked whore, suggesting the voyeuristic persona of the modern master
who was a legendary womanizer. Thrusting away curtains of privacy and
Gorelick’s figurative work took on Pablo Picasso-esque compositions as well
boundary, he penetrates the space of Gorelick’s models, a certain reference
as Frida Kahlo’s stylistic approach to imagery. Artists historically choose
to the way he pervades 20th century art history. The presence of Picasso
masters to inspire, emulate, and study. Gorelick was not seeking to be a pupil
in the work feels transgressive, particularly when Gorelick’s women are not
of artistic outlaws Picasso and Kahlo, but their equal, which is the essential
sex workers. She renders them indifferent to his company and to that of
dynamic of choosing role models. The selection of these two particular art-
the viewer’s, each absorbed in their own thoughts whereas Picasso’s women
ists for role models suggests Gorelick considered Picasso’s classic male gaze as
confront us, daring us to look.
well as Kahlo’s essentially feminine one. The former concerns objectifying
otherness; the latter an existential self.
In the foreground of Les Demoiselles, Picasso placed a still life of fruit laid
on a table that includes an apple, grapes, pear and a slice of melon. Histori-
Picasso also worked in numerous media. His influence is evident in three
cally, such a painted composition would be considered vanitas, a Latin word
life-sized paintings featured in this exhibition: Homage to Picasso I, Untitled
meant to be a reminder of the transience of earthly life. Fruit also refers to
the idea of fertility as in Mother Nature or the Christian concept of Original
Sin in the Garden of Eden. Picasso’s flat plane of the pink melon echoes the
razor edges of his women and implies a dangerous encounter with someone’s
mouth. In Homage to Picasso I, Gorelick replaces the still life with a gridded
charcoal sketch of the master’s work. The overlay of a grid system onto a
drawing is traditional practice for an artist copying a masterwork in order to
gain insight into compositional issues. By making this substitution, Gorelick
pays her respects to a master of modern art, at the same time negating the sexist patrimony of woman-as-sex-object by asserting her status as painter.
Gorelick mimics Kahlo’s surrealist representational style in her monumental
Sister Chapel painting Frida Kahlo. The exhibition also includes two portrait
drawings in which Kahlo is both role model and model. Gorelick turned her
gaze to survey Kahlo’s iconic features. With the painting, devotion to Kahlo
is seen in Gorelick’s synthesis of realism and symbolism as well as a tender
application of local color. All of these images may be perceived as Gorelick in
the mask of Frida, assuming an intense and fierce identity with which she has
fallen in love.
The idea of gaze culminates in a number of self-portraits in which Gorelick
situates herself as staged model. This is seen in two paintings, several etchings
and three drawings. Like vanitas imagery, self-portraits allude to a tenuous hold
on life. They speak to the essential search inherent in an artist’s journey that
of representation, identity and belonging. Gorelick’s act of self-portraiture is
an interior visual dialogue that speaks of an artist’s aloneness in her studio at
the same time staking a claim of entitlement. The mirror, usually associated
with the iconography of pride, now reflects scrutiny and truth of historical and
personal proportions. In all of these images of herself, Gorelick’s forthright gaze
challenges us to understand what is at stake for a woman artist at her time of history.
Frida, Charcoal on paper, 2001
THE POWER OF SISTERHOOD:
Shirley Gorelick And Frida Kahlo
By Andrew D. Hottleith Ta
The upper part of Gorelick’s large figure is an appropriation of Frida Kahlo’s
Shirley Gorelick’s monumental Frida Kahlo (1976) was created as a
wears a Tehuana costume and bears the head of Diego Rivera on her brow.
component of the Sister Chapel, a collaborative installation by thirteen
An in-progress photograph of Gorelick’s painting demonstrates that she
women artists which celebrated heroic female role models. When it was
initially retained the head of Rivera, but placed it among the blossoms in
originally exhibited in 1978, the Chapel consisted of a circular arrangement
Kahlo’s floral crown. Moreover, the diminutive Frida, held by her larger
of eleven paintings – each nine feet high and five feet wide – that was
manifestation, was originally the mirror image of a figure in Kahlo’s The
surmounted by an abstract ceiling; a tent-like enclosure for the entire Chapel
Two Fridas (1939). As Gorelick’s painting advanced, the hands of the small
was designed but never executed. Although the paintings were powerfully
Frida were altered and the head of Rivera was situated in a balloon, as was
unified by their size and single-figure compositions, the strength of the Sister
a fetus that alludes to Kahlo’s miscarriages. Tied to the left index finger of
Chapel also lay in the freedom of each artist to work in her own style and
the small Frida, the balloons echo the autobiographical symbols that are
choose her particular subject. Gorelick’s interest in the life and art of Frida
tethered to blood vessels in Kahlo’s Henry Ford Hospital (1932). Gorelick’s
Kahlo (1907-1954) led her to select the Mexican painter as her heroine;
large Frida also wears a dangling pair of bracelets, which consist of the brace
in fact, Gorelick had already visited Kahlo’s former home and studio in
that appears in Kahlo’s The Broken Column (1944) and a pair of skeletons
Coyoacán, Mexico City, in 1970.
that evoke both the Día de los Muertos celebration and the related papier-
Diego in My Thoughts (1943), a bust length self-portrait in which the artist
mâché skeleton that was affixed to the canopy of Kahlo’s bed. The turbulent
Rowan University Fine Arts Gallery Mullica Hill Rd. Glassboro, NJ 20008
sky in Gorelick’s painting was also inspired by the background of The Two
Fridas, while the large, leafy plants are similar to the vegetation in several of
Kahlo’s self-portraits, especially Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace (1940).
Gorelick approximated Kahlo’s color scheme for the headdress of the
Tehuana costume, but the overall dominance of blue and red were entirely
her own. These hues are featured in Homage to Picasso I (1965), Homage to
Picasso II (1966), and several other paintings from the same period. By her
own account, Gorelick used “invented color for the environment … as a
device to deal with deep space, to suggest light and air,” but her work in
the 1970s turned to “figures in their real environments but keeping the
space shallow by using trees, rocks, etc. as background-walls.”1 While the
shallow setting of Frida Kahlo is only “real” to the extent that it echoes
the idiosyncratic Mexican artist’s self-portraiture, Gorelick’s painting
is otherwise characteristic of the shift toward meticulous realism that
distinguishes her work of the 1970s and 1980s.
In addition to the painting for the Sister Chapel, Gorelick executed at
least two pencil drawings and three silverpoints of Frida Kahlo (ca. 197576). It is unclear whether these served as preliminary studies or existed as
autonomous works, but they are definitely related to the large painting.
One pencil drawing, in which Kahlo’s facial features resemble those in her
painted counterpart, is unmistakably derived from a photograph taken by
Nickolas Muray. Kahlo’s plaited hair, tilted head, earrings, necklace, and
rebozo are nearly identical to Muray’s Classic Frida (with Magenta Rebozo)
(1939), although Gorelick reversed the image. In another pencil drawing,
Kahlo’s rebozo becomes a kerchief that covers any trace of coiffed hair or
Frida, Charcoal on paper, 2001
jeweled adornment. Her narrowed eyes, pronounced cheeks, prominent
lips, and squared features belie the apparent glamour of the photographic
sources. The face seems to be careworn and intensely human, as opposed the
mask-like gravity of the self-portrait that inspired the diminutive Frida in
Gorelick’s painting. The towering painted Frida is similarly individualized,
yet Kahlo’s actual features are not duplicated. To access the humanity of her
artistic forebear, Gorelick used both photographs and mirrors;2 thus, there
is an element of self-portraiture in her representation of Kahlo. Moreover,
Gorelick injured her back and painted the monumental canvas while
lying prostrate. This remarkable coincidence evoked Kahlo’s suffering and
heightened Gorelick’s already strong identification with her.3 In the end, this
contributed to the success of Frida Kahlo, which beautifully reveals Shirley
Gorelick’s ability to incorporate the salient symbolism of her predecessor’s
imagery while remaining true to her own artistic identity.
Pablo, Charcoal on paper, 2001
1.
Shirley Gorelick, untitled artist’s statement [ca. 1980], Collection of the Estate of Shirley Gorelick.
Shore (Feb.-March 1981): 27.
3.
2.
Joy Perla, “Shirley Gorelick: Perceptive Master of Portrait Painting,” North
Gloria Feman Orenstein, “The Sister Chapel: A Traveling Homage to Heroines,” Womanart 1 (Winter/Spring 1977): 19.
COVER ART & SPECIAL THANKS/ Frida, Oil on Canvas, 1990. Special thanks to the Gorelick Family,
Andrew Hottle, Katherine McFadden, Rowan University, Jennie Thwing, etc.
Rowan University Art Gallery, 201 Mullica Hill Rd. Glassboro, NJ 08028
Exhibition Dates, April 14 – May 29, 2008 / Gallery talk, 4/16, 4:30 PM / Reception to follow from 5 – 7 PM
Hours, Monday - Thursday 10 - 5PM, or by appointment
(856)-256-4521 / [email protected] / www.rowan.edu/westbygallery