Shirley West "Discovery: A Retrospective"
The Chelsea Art Museum
This event has ended.
West's accomplishments span a wide variety of media, including design, painting, drawing, and sculpture. Of all the arts, sculpture is closest to West's sensibility; she is responsible for several remarkable, epic size outdoor sculptures, as well as many smaller pieces. West's long experience in New York demonstrates a close familiarity with the work of the New York School, a familiarity most evident in her expressive, gestural paintings.
An ambitious woman artist, West nonetheless belongs to a generation that was more than fairly macho in its sentiments and posturings. To an extent, then, the artist was pushed to the side, even when she was in her abstract-expressionist period in the 1940s, 50s and again, later on in her career. Her passionate, rough-edged abstract paintings remain compelling; their thick swathes of paint roll across the canvas, as if they had been driven by the winds of a storm. The language of these works of art transcends gender, in a way that emphasizes not only the achievements of the expressionist movement, but also the accomplishments of West herself.
[Image: Shirley West "Prairie Woman" (1968/69) Welded rods, mesh, cement 3 x 39 x 10 ft.]
Media
Schedule
from October 03, 2009 to November 14, 2009