Alpesh Kantilal Patel on Joan Semmel
Joan Semmel’s “Pores and skin within the Recreation” on the Pennsylvania Academy of the Wonderful Arts—her first retrospective—evinced a sustained, fearless, and full of life studio observe, which the artist has maintained for greater than six a long time. She joyously examines the physique, and infrequently her personal. Hung chronologically, the exhibition included fifty-one work, all oil on canvas, in addition to a number of works on paper. Regardless of the modest choice, the present coated an excellent portion of Semmel’s profession.
The presentation started with an Summary Expressionist portray, Perfil Infinito (Infinite Profile), 1966. Her unabashed use of shade on this work, which we see all through the exhibition, is on full show: Irregularly sized fields of daring, saturated hues—verdant inexperienced, taupe, mustard yellow, indigo, darkish orange, and creamy white—fill the roughly seventy-two-by-sixty-six-inch canvas. But her therapy of type turns into more and more tighter by the early Nineteen Seventies in sequence similar to “Intercourse Work,” 1971, when she turned to figuration and kinkier subject material.
She doesn’t, nevertheless, absolutely drop the frenetic AbEx gesturalism till her “Second Erotic Sequence,” 1972–73. Primarily based on pictures Semmel took of varied heterosexual {couples} having intercourse, the acute close-ups of genitals and cropped our bodies sans heads in these photos are paying homage to straight mainstream porn. But their titles, similar to Purple Ardour, 1972, make express her persevering with emphasis on shade. On this piece, two folks seemingly float earlier than a deep-violet floor; the person’s bright-orange pores and skin contrasts sharply in opposition to the sickly yellow flesh of the girl driving him. However the artist appears to be critiquing this scene of normative boy-on-girl intercourse: Along with her garish palette, Semmel transforms an strange fuck right into a second that’s comically bizarre, ersatz—even grotesque.
The artist turns the digital camera on herself within the “Self Picture” sequence, 1974–79. Whereas among the items from this grouping, similar to Me With out Mirrors, 1974, are based mostly on pictures, others are linked to collages created from photographs in addition to drawings finished in pastel, oil, and crayon, quite a few which, as beforehand talked about, had been on show. Apart from the pink undersides of Semmel’s toes, Me With out Mirrors is essentially composed of varied fleshy browns. Since artist and mannequin are one and the identical on this work, topic and object are blurred. Certainly, the artist portrays her physique not as a type of spectacle, however as one thing she humbly gives as much as us.
In distinction are the work from the “Model Sequence,” 1996–2000, which depict the titular objects, however normally lacking an appendage. Right here, Semmel transforms these damaged idealizations of the feminine type into symbols of merciless objectification, displaying us how girls are discarded once they get outdated. Within the canvas Disappearing, 2006, Semmel renders herself holding a digital camera whereas trying right into a mirror. The title is telling: The artist, in her early seventies on the time this work was made, fractures and fades into the background, turning into blurred, summary—nearly unrecognizable. But this picture looks like a little bit of an outlier, as most of her work after 2000 unflinchingly examines the ageing physique. Take the cluster of self-portraits from the neck up which can be a part of Untitled, 2007, by which the artist straightforwardly depicts her unadorned self, gazing instantly on the viewer. On this work, she turns her vulnerability right into a type of generosity—as she appeared to do in every single place on this exhibition.
Probably the most monumental piece right here (and the present’s namesake), Pores and skin within the Recreation, 2019, was a four-panel portray that’s eight toes excessive and an astonishing twenty-four toes huge. On this work, Semmel depicts a multiplicity of aged our bodies—all her personal—in numerous sizes and positioned at varied angles, coloured in an array of pinks, golds, greens, tangerines, and plums. That the figures seem like in a perpetual state of turning into relates not solely to the artist and the developments of her personal life, but additionally to her wealthy protean imaginative and prescient as a painter. Whilst she enters her ninth decade, Semmel by no means fails to shock, shock, and completely delight.
— Alpesh Kantilal Patel
