FRAN BEALLOR The Date (2001) Oil on canvas, 48 x 30 inches

SIENA GILLANN PORTA Ambiguous Selfie, Buddhist Nun, Chemo Patient (2024). Acrylic pigments and varnishes on canvas; 40 x 32 x 2 inches

Celebrating the staying power of their organization after a century, The New York Society of Women Artists (NYSWA) presents “Into the NOW: The Time of Our Lives” comprising of the works of forty-nine distinct creative voices. This is a moment for both joyful commemoration and contemplative remembrance. NYSWA was formed in 1925 by 26 painters and sculptors who collectively represented a major part of the avant-garde art community. Founding members participated in the Armory Show and were also members of the Whitney Studio Club, and the Society of Independent Artists. Others won Guggenheim Fellowships, The Prix de Rome, and were actively engaged with the Works Progress Administration established by President Franklin Roosevelt as part of his New Deal program. They were not outsiders by any means, yet in their time, they felt it necessary to create a group to advocate for themselves as female artists.

 

As an entity, NYSWA allowed progressively minded individuals to lay claim to the legacy of revolutionary idealism while at the same time confronting social change via generational models that, successively, created innate difficulty for female artists to be recognized for their talents and their cultural influence. As narrated in the exhibition catalogue, referencing the histories of The New York Society of Women Artists by Diana Freedman-Shea (President, 2016-2020), societal changes have always necessitated the structured intentions and dynamically organized opportunities that NYSWA provides for its members. The current moment is both an occasion for great celebration as well as an opportunity to refocus and reinforce the power of its combined members as the strikingly original journey they represent.

LORI HOROWITZ Growing Up (2024) Mixed-media relief: aluminum sculpted photo, fabric, wood fungus, fiber and encaustic wax; 72 x 32 x 20 inches

SUEJIN JO Seven Story Mountain (2024) Oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 26 inches

As a group, NYSWA supports its 60 member artists with focused exhibitions that put their talents, as well as their ideals, into play. Artists of their day, the NYSWA community represents the concept that “the personal is political” by finding innovative means to express themselves. Art in any age is not only about compositions, but also about beliefs. Whether overtly displayed on the surface of the work or implied through the projection of some elements and the obscurement or erasure of others, belief in art is constant and important. Many artists of NYSWA make decisive formal and ideological statements, either in surface detail or through process. Sometimes what one wants to say might overwhelm aesthetic appreciation, and sometimes it serves to aid and promote it. Depending upon how ardent and necessary the choices are, this will dictate the experiences in view. The current exhibition puts a full range of such choices on display.

 

In contemporary society, many issues remain obscure despite immense efforts to bring them glaringly into the light. Concerns such as human rights, climate change, sexism, racism, ageism, and ableism are an omnipresent , diversely expressed undercurrent in their work. In some, it may take the form of figurative sculpture meant to amplify the desperate lives of people struggling to survive in a society that cares little for the marginalized, while in others it takes the form of female nudes illustrating a wide variety of models of beauty, stereotyped by male artists of the past in contrast with the “real” bodies of today.

ALEXI RUTSCH BROCK Ecstasy Impressions #10 (2017) Oil monoprint, 22 x 30 inches

SARAH KATZ Woman Screaming in the Shower (2018) Glazed stoneware, 15 x 6 x 5 inches

Another contrasted example is climate, alternately dramatized by one artist as fiery conflagrations on bodies of water, portents of impending disaster in mankind’s future that are equally portrayals of illumination that draw us, like moths to a flame; another artist presents still lifes and metaphysically oriented arrangements of historical detritus excavated from Dead Horse Bay, an officially off-limits area that remains one of the few places in and around New York City where evidence of the past times can still be found. Other issues expertly portrayed by NYSWA members include societal bias against ethnically marginalized racial and cultural identities, in images of heroically manifested African Americans, to the depiction of ornate objects from Asia and the Middle East which present the bias of Western perspectives and speak to a provisional Otherness that is politically and intellectually limiting. Paintings with fantastic scenes that wouldn’t look out of place in Victorian romances or adventures: verdant plant life, endless fountains and pools of water, animals in the shadows, vast lakes and mountain ranges, all amazing scenes that stretch the imagination, with neither appealing images out of history or the news of the day, in which human beings may play an active role. These images portray a beautiful escapism rife with ambiguity.

 

The artists in this exhibition, as members of NYSWA today, carry throughout the storied history and united voices of its past members, expanding public understanding and the appreciation of the importance of women’s voices in the arts. Into The NOW: The Time of Our Lives represents a new plateau for NYSWA’s history to forge into the future.