Male artists dominate MoMA’s permanent collection. In contrast its latest show features exclusively women artists. So, is gender relevant to artistic greatness? Perhaps yes: “[A]rt by women possesses a feminine essence that makes it incomparable with art by men”. Another critic goes further: “work by women … was the major inventive force propelling and shaping late-20th-century art.” Wow!
Irving Penn arrived at photography after trying unsuccessfully to be a painter. Once hired by Vogue his signature style quickly emerged – striving for “simplification and elimination” and obsessive attention to detail. Add to this, of course, an ability to see an image others couldn’t. He said “Whatever the photograph … battlefield … Hollywood celebrity … images to sell soap – all of them are equally important.” More images are here.
One critic observes that “calling Peter Voulkos a ceramicist is a bit like calling Jimi Hendrix a guitarist”. Having become an “absolute master of wheel-thrown vessels”, a summer teaching job led him to abruptly switch to ceramic abstract sculptures. Over the next 15 years he channeled influences as diverse as Picasso and abstract expressionism to “redefine his medium and transform the craft into fine art”.