Eliana Willis

“Artemisia” at the National Gallery, LondonThrough January 24, 2021

What the museum says: “In 17th-century Europe, at a time when women artists were not easily accepted, Artemisia was exceptional. She challenged conventions and defied expectations to become a successful artist and one of the greatest storytellers of her time…
In this first major exhibition of Artemisia’s work in the UK, see her best-known paintings including two versions of her iconic and viscerally violent Judith beheading Holofernes; as well as her self portraits, heroines from history and the Bible, and recently discovered personal letters, seen in the UK for the first time.”
Why it’s worth a look: Artemisia Gentileschi is finally getting her due, after years languishing in the shadows while her male peers took the stage and set a standard for Old Master painters. Now, though, with an onslaught of scientific discoveries, extensive new research, and high-profile auction sales and museum acquisitions, the artist is at long last in the spotlight.
In the National Gallery’s survey, Gentileschi’s tumultuous life may be what draws viewers in—she is best known for her grisly depiction of the biblical story of Judith beheading Holofernes, which some critics have interpreted as a revenge fantasy alluding to her own rape—but her deftness as a portraitist and painter of baroque themes punctuated by strong women is what will keep them there.
What it looks like:

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and her Maidservant (ca. 1623-25) © The Detroit Institute of Arts.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Lot and His Daughters (ca. 1636-38). © Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura) (ca. 1638-9). © Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Esther before Ahasuereus (ca. 1628-30). © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy (ca. 1620-25). © Photo: Dominique Provost Art Photography – Bruges.

Artemsisia Gentileschi, Judith and her Maidservant (ca. 1615-17). © Gabinetto fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes (ca. 1612-13). © ph. Luciano Romano / Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte 2016.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and her maidservant with the Head of Holofernes (ca. 1608). © Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo / photo Børre Høstland.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Portrait of a Lady Holding a Fan (mid 1620s). © Photo courtesy of the owner.

Artemisia Gentileschi, David and Bathsheba (ca. 1636-7).© Columbus Museum of Art.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Jael and Sisera (1620). © Szépmüvészeti Múzeum / Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

Artmemisia Gentileschi, Self Portrait as a Lute Player (ca. 1615-17). © Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut.

Installation view, “Artemisia” at the National Gallery.

Installation view, “Artemisia” at the National Gallery.

Installation view, “Artemisia” at the National Gallery.

Installation view, “Artemisia” at the National Gallery.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Susannah and the Elders (1622). © The Burghley House Collection.

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As a child in Mexico, the artist Alejandro Almanza Pereda was obsessed with filmmaker John Carpenter’s cult classic, Escape From New York, in which Manhattan has been transformed into a prison and the hero is in a race against time to save the US president from a ticking time bomb. 
While this premise is a few light years removed from Almanza Pereda’s current life, he felt a kinship with it when he made the radical decision to leave New York (and its outrageous rent) for his native Mexico City. For the artist, New York may not have been a literal prison, as it was depicted in Escape from New York, but it became a figurative one that he describes as “a playground for really privileged people.”
In an exclusive interview filmed as part of Art21’s New York Close Up series, the artist tasks himself with a seemingly impossible mission: to create an entirely new body of work in the three weeks between the time he purchased a one-way ticket for Mexico and the day his plane departed.

Production still from the Art21 “New York Close Up” film “Alejandro Almanza Pereda Escapes from New York.” © Art21, Inc. 2015.

Instead of dwelling on his impending departure, Almanza Pereda channels his frenetic energy into his new project, riffing on Dutch still life paintings by staging similar tableaux that have a twist: the objects are underwater and upside down. The artist gathers knickknacks he accumulated in his Hunter College studio and goes shopping in Chinatown to find more objects. He recounts a lifelong fascination with underwater exploration, Jacques Cousteau, and sea creatures.
Here, on the surface, everything stays put—the gravity,” he tells Art21. “In the water, you can use those levitations to kind of create different sculptures in a way. It’s pretty spectacular.”
In the video, Almanza Pereda goes through a bittersweet tour of Chinatown, which he considers one of the most quintessentially New York neighborhoods, as he prepares his final work and his impending escape from the city.
“I have to say that I think everybody in the world should live in New York at least one or two years to just, kind of, make sense,” he says. “But it’s not the only lifestyle you can have. It’s not the only way of doing things.” Though he is sad to leave New York, the artist isn’t thinking he’ll be in Mexico City forever. “So I might escape from Mexico City, you know? I might go to LA and escape from there. I have to escape all the time.”

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Art in the Twenty-First Century below. The brand new 10th season of the show is available now at Art21.org. 
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This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.
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A sharp-eyed visitor to “Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle,” an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has identified a long-lost artwork by the pioneering African American Modernist that was hiding in plain sight—just across the park from the museum.
The lost painting, which belongs to Lawrence’s “Struggle: From the History of the American People” series (1954–56), was missing for 60 years, and has now been reunited with its companion works for the exhibition. The panel belongs to two neighbors of the visitor who spotted the work, and was purchased by the couple on the cheap around Christmas 1960, at a charity auction for a music school.
The person who recognized the work had been to the Met exhibition, and suggested the couple reach out to the museum. (The couple that owns the painting are not art collectors and wish to remain anonymous.)
“It is rare to make a discovery of this significance in modern art, and it is thrilling that a local visitor is responsible,” Met director Max Hollein said in a statement.
Jacob Lawrence, Panel 27. . . . for freedom we want and will have, for we have served this cruel land long enuff . . . —A Georgia Slave, 1810, (1956). From Struggle Series, 1954–56. © The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Randall Griffey and Sylvia Yount, who organized the traveling show’s Met iteration, were only CC’d on emails about the possible find last week, reports the New York Times.
Isabelle Duvernois, the Met’s modern paintings conservator, was promptly dispatched to the couple’s apartment and determined that not only was the painting authentic, it had been well cared-for and was ready to join the exhibition in short order.
Lawrence (1917–2000) painted the 30-panel “Struggle” series during the civil rights movement to highlight the roles of Black people, Native Americans, and women in building the country’s democracy.
Unlike the artist’s nine other series, which are all owned in their entirety by public collections, “Struggle” was purchased by a private collector, William Meyers, after two shows at Charles Alan’s New York gallery failed to attract an institutional buyer. It hasn’t been seen all together since the dealer’s 1958 show.
Jacob Lawrence poses in his Seattle, Washington, studio. Photo by George Rose/Getty Images.

Without a clause in the sales contract requiring the series stay intact, Meyers soon began selling the paintings individually. The current exhibition, which originated in January at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, is set to travel—in its newly expanded form—to Birmingham, Alabama; Seattle, Washington; and Washington, DC.
There were no existing photographs of the newly rediscovered work, panel 16 in the series, which was known only by its title, here are combustibles in every State, which a spark might set fire to. —Washington, 26 December 1786.
“Since reuniting the ‘Struggle series,’ the absence of panel 16 has been felt acutely. Represented in our galleries as an empty frame, it was a mystery that we were all eager to solve,” Peabody-Essex Museum director Brian Kennedy said in a statement. “We are thrilled to learn of its discovery—one that came about thanks to close looking and careful observation by a museum visitor.”
Jacob Lawrence, Panel 25. I cannot speak sufficiently in praise of the firmness and deliberation with which my whole line received their approach . . . —Andrew Jackson, New Orleans, 1815, (1956.) From Struggle Series, 1954–56. © The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

The painting depicts Shays’s Rebellion, in which Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led an uprising of struggling farmers in western Massachusetts in 1786 and ’87. The conflict, a protest against high taxes, is credited with helping to inspire the Founding Fathers to hold the Constitutional Convention.
“Lawrence’s dynamic treatment of the 1786–87 Shays’s Rebellion reinforces the overall theme of the series—that democratic change is possible only through the actions of engaged citizens, an argument as timely today as it was when the artist produced his radical paintings in the mid-1950s,” Griffey and Yount said in a joint statement.
Four paintings from the series remain missing. Another long-lost “Struggle” painting, panel 19, turned up at auction during planning for the current show. Art collector Harvey Ross, who owns half the series, spent $413,000 to buy Tensions on the High Seas at New York’s Swann Auction Galleries in 2018.
“Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, August 29–November 1, 2020. 
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