Tamara de Lempicka, Jeune fille en vert (1927-30), oil on canvas [Seattle Art Museum, Seattle WA, Oct 11-Jan 13] © 2012 Tamara Art Heritage / ADAGP, Paris / ARS, NY

Frida Kahlo, The Frame (1938), oil on aluminum, reverse painting on glass and painting frame [Seattle Art Museum, Seattle WA, Oct 11-Jan 13] © 2012 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Dora Maar, Nusch Eluard (1935) gelatin silver photograph [Seattle Art Museum, Seattle WA, Oct 11-Jan 13] © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

This survey of modern and contemporary art comes to Seattle from the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou, which houses the Musée National d’Art Moderne, the largest museum for modern art in Europe. The international exhibition represents seminal women artists whose work paralleled the visual vocabulary of many major art movements with examples of painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation pieces from 1909 to 2007.

Organized thematically and chronologically, Elles focuses primarily on women who created provocative or challenging artworks rather than those who worked within a tradition. The exhibition begins with the avant-garde artists of the early 20th century and moves to the Paris photographers working from the 1920s to ‘40s, including forward-thinking and experimental artists of this era like Dora Maar and Claude Cahun.

Abstraction’s popularity in the mid-century is showcased by the works of early innovators like Sonia Delaunay and Joan Mitchell, cementing the female contribution to these genres. The section, Feminism and Critics of Power, classifies works from the 1960s to ‘70s that deal with changing perceptions of the female body and behaviour. The great interest in performance, installation and video art that surfaced in the 1970s is also prominently featured in the exhibit.

Lastly, artists like Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin and Barbara Kruger are represented in the segment, Narrations, where autobiographical, confrontational and fictional works often employ both text and images.

www.seattleartmuseum.org

Allyn Cantor