In 2013, “Joan Semmel: A Lucid Eye,” the artist’s first solo museum exhibition, opened at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. To mark that occasion, Artforum joined Semmel in her Soho studio for a conversation about her life and work. Revisit the interview through the link in bio.
In the February issue, Ida Panicelli reviews “Joan Semmel: Against the Wall” at New York’s Alexander Gray Associates, a recent show that featured new works in which the nonagenarian artist “acknowledges her own finitude, depicting herself in spaces that appear confined and simultaneously infinite.” “Joan Semmel has never displayed any embarrassment about portraying her own body, confronting without compromise all the subtle modifications wrought by age,” Panicelli writes. “Rejecting the classical and idealized concept of the female body, the artist shows us her flesh, genitals, and abundant breasts—she is not interested in the face but in skin, minus any frills—and returns us to our shared humanity.”
