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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you so much for sharing part of your day with us. Couple of programming notes for next week. Sarah Silverman will join us to discuss her new standup special, Someone You Love, as well as her very thoughtful podcast. Also, next week we kick off our Pride coverage. We're going to have a month-long series on banned books with author George M. Johnson, their young-adult memoir, All Boys Aren't Blue. Is about growing up Black and queer.

It has become one of the country's most frequently banned books. George M. Johnson will join us to discuss. That is in the future. Now let's get this hour started with our final installment of our art history conversation with Katy Hessel.

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Alison Stewart: All this week we've been speaking with art historian Katy Hessel, author of The Story of Art Without Men. The title is a take on a seminal art history book called The Story of Art, which only includes one female artist. Hessel's 456-page book corrects the record with examples of women artists doing extraordinary work since the 1500s. Some of the artists we've been talking about all week have pieces in a new show that we'll discuss in a bit at the Brooklyn Museum. That is unique given that a recent report found that in America's museums, 87% of the art is by men, 13% by women.

Still, Hessel is hopeful about the future. As she writes in the last section of her book titled, Still Writing, Hessel notes that political events have been a driver for change; the AIDS epidemic, 9/11, the climate crisis, MeToo. As she writes in the book, "Artists pinpoint moments of history through a uniquely expressive medium and allow us to make sense of a time if we aren't seeing art by a wide range of people, we aren't really seeing society, history, or culture as a whole. I hope more books will follow this one, expanding the canon even more."

Here's our final conversation with Katy Hessel, the author of The Story of Art Without Men.

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Alison Stewart: In the very last part of your book, you note that during post-1970 female artists were demanding change. What did people want? What did women want? Where were people protesting? How did this manifest itself?

Katy Hessel: They wanted recognition. This was a time when women artists and artists of color, especially, were still not getting the recognition they deserve despite the fact that, as I demonstrate in my book, they've been artists for centuries. It's the fact that these stories needed to be told. For example, women had to come together to fight their overarching enemy who were the patriarchy. Really, everything changed at this point. We are still feeling the effects of this era. In New York, the Ad Hoc Committee of Women Artists was established in 1970.

Members included Faith Ringgold, critic Lucy Lippard, and they campaigned for the Whitney Museum of American Art to feature in their Whitney annual exhibition, 50% women artists and for 50% of that number to be Black. Actually, in the end, only 20% of women were included. Although the numbers had increased from the previous years, 5%, only two of those women were Black. Despite the fact that they were going around and protesting for their rights, it was not happening quick enough. Really what we see in this era in the '70s is also women putting their voices first.

One of my favorite artists of all time really is someone like Faith Ringgold. What she does is she actually paints the work of women into art history. She is an extraordinary artist in the sense that she works-- In 1971, she varies very much community-focused. In 1971, she worked with female inmates at the Correctional Institution for Women on Rikers Island. What she did, she created a mural for them which she called For the Women's House. It's this great painting that's now on view at the Brooklyn Museum. Everyone should go see it.

It's divided into these eight triangles. What each quadrant does is it displays scenes of interracial women playing sports and music and in professional roles. It might seem simple, a woman being a bus driver, a woman being a police person, a woman being a sports person playing basketball, but actually, how often do we still see women reflected in these roles today?

Alison Stewart: Maria Lassnig had an interesting way of depicting the body. It came from what she called body awareness. What did she mean by body awareness? How were her depictions of the body unique?

Katy Hessel: Also in the 1970s, this idea of painting the body really shifts as well. We've got the likes of Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh, Joan Semmel who paints the body from the perspective of looking down at your body in a bed maybe with a male partner. This idea of what does the aged body look like? Maria Lassnig created these works called Body Awareness Paintings and what she did, it was as though she actually felt within the body and painted that. When you see her works, there's these extraordinary paintings of her painting beside the canvas.

Literally physically touching the canvas as though she wants to highlight areas of her body which she could feel more or sense more. That's why when we see her work sometimes the nose is a bit accentuated or the skin is perhaps green or yellow. She wasn't afraid to experiment with this idea of body awareness paintings and actually translate her internal bodily sensations onto canvases. Actually, what was amazing about that and the women of this era was the fact that they painted for the first time bodies that were not society's idea of perfection.

They showed it for what it was. That, in itself, is a radical act.

Alison Stewart: My guess is Katy Hessel, the name of the book is The Story of Art Without Men. I did want to touch on two artists that people know, but I thought it was so interesting. You made me think about them differently, Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer, and the use of text to not only create art but also to protest. You think about Barbara Kruger's work is so iconic at this moment and so much part of the political discourse, that Your Body is a Battleground. How did it become iconography of the Reproductive Rights movement?

Katy Hessel: I think text is so powerful in art as well because I think when we have text out of context, it can mean so many different things. For example, Kruger, who worked for as an editorial designer at Condé Nast in the mid-1960s, she developed this very distinct appetizing text style. Really she sought to, in her words, bring the world into her art. As you mentioned, Your Body is a Battleground, from 1989, it was made for a pro-choice demonstration in Washington DC which protested the government's debate over anti-abortion laws.

When we think about what was happening then and what's happening now, it's how much has changed. Actually, this work, although it was made over 30 years ago in 1989, we are still discussing these matters today. Actually, it's visually empowering and arresting firstly, again, for its sharp, punchy, bold approach, but also it speaks to people of all genders when they are refused control of their own bodies and denied safety, which in 2023 is still happening.

Alison Stewart: I want to ask you about the 1993 Whitney Biennial. It was controversial for reasons that seem normal right now. The artists were taking on police brutality, inequity, sexism, but it really agitated some people in the art world. If you go back and read some of the reviews now, they're really cringy. [chuckles]

Katy Hessel: Oh my gosh. Totally.

Alison Stewart: That's amazing. Let me read this one from, I believe, in the New York Times. It says, "Pleasure is not what the '93 Biennial had uppermost in mind. Committed, provocative, and informative, it should not be missed as its flaws and achievements will be debated for some time. It too often loses sight of the fact that art is a form of visual communication that must exist for its own sake before it can further a cause. In the end, this ambitious show illuminates the pitfalls of politically inclined art far more than it triumphs." Wow. Why was this show so rad?

Katy Hessel: This show was one of the first mainstream exhibitions really to offer visibility to those usually sidelined from institutional conversations. We know that artists have been making politicized work for centuries, but what was amazing is that in the 1990s, suddenly something shifted in terms of perhaps also those working behind the scenes were willing to take a risk, even though it seems ridiculous, to actually spotlight these stories. Actually, as a result, we see some of these artists who were people like Lorna Simpson, Janine Antoni, Coco Fusco, Renée Green.

This younger generation of artists who are given this platform who are still so prominently known today. Really the reason why it was appalled and ridiculously torn apart by the establishment is because it didn't conform to what the establishment wanted, which was basically to not discuss political art.

Alison Stewart: Before we wrap, I do need to ask you about photography. In addition to the superstars like Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman, and Carrie Mae Weems you spend some time in your book, the Story of Art Without Men on a woman named Francesca Woodman who died by suicide.

Katy Hessel: Francesca.

Alison Stewart: Oh, I thought she pronounced it, Francesca.

Katy Hessel: Really? Gosh, well, maybe I'm completely wrong. You must be right.

Alison Stewart: I don't know. We'll look it up after. Francesca or Francesca Woodman, who died by suicide at 22, but she was extremely prolific and she used these interesting long exposures on her photos. One, why did you want to include her, and what images did she create that you think are, are interesting and people should investigate more?

Katy Hessel: I include her in a chapter called Text Image and Photographic Performances. It really looks at the 1980s because everything was shifting during that time. This idea of what was photography actually, what did it mean to be a female photographer at that time? How did you immortalize these stories? This was the era of Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Carrie Mae Weems and really it was a time when artists were tackling key issues of the era. I think what I'm so drawn to about Francesca Woodman's work is yes, these long exposures, but the way that she blends this tradition with the contemporary.

Also how she's at once absent and present and quiet, but powerful. I think this idea of what are we looking at? Is it reality or is it fiction? The fact that she uses herself as both model and photographer. I think she did die at 22. Most of her career was actually work that she made while she was at Rhode Island School of Design, RISD. Actually, the fact that so much of this work was college undergraduate level is remarkable because she had this just such acute eye and she just created these images that are so evocative, and in real life they're very small.

Really, I'm just personally so drawn to them for that absence and presence and that construing constant teetering or tension between the two.

Alison Stewart: As I said, there are so many artists we could continue to have conversations about, but what I was thinking about ending with were two questions. The penultimate question is this, how have modern women artists built upon what and who came before them? Can you think of-- I know you can think of many examples, but if you could give us one example.

Katy Hessel: There are so many examples because I think-- and what's fantastic about having all these artists in this one book is the fact that you can look at Carrie Mae Weems, and you can look at Julia Margaret Cameron in these 1880s, both photographers. You can look at Joan Mitchell of the abstract expressionist and compare her to Berthe Morisot the impressionist. There are so many interesting dialogues to be made. I think one artist who was in my chapter about figurative painting in the 2000s is Mickalene Thomas.

I have a quote by her in the book. She says, "Portraits are very powerful. They have a great representation and dominance in the world of trying to capture the essence of someone." This is a quote from 2013. What Mickalene Thomas does as she lionizes these incredible-- lionizes and elevates the presence of Black women in art, and specifically from the Black queer perspective. When she says portraits are very powerful, they have great representation and dominance in the world, is because when she was a law student growing up when she was young, she was actually lured to or encouraged to become an artist after seeing Carrie Mae Weems' Kitchen Table Series.

She saw herself represented in this. She says, "It was a transformative experience, not only to me as a young Black girl from Camden, New Jersey, standing in a museum in Portland, Oregon, but as a queer woman, a young artist, they changed my life. This idea of actually people seeing themselves in art encourages other artists to do the same and creates this long lineage of making work that matters. That will make people feel included in this conversation, whether they want to become an artist, whether they want to become the curator working in front of or behind the scenes.

I think that is what I want to set out with this book. I want anyone of any art historical level to read this. You may be someone's never even stepped inside a museum before and they might be a teenager, they have an internet connection and they can look up these artists. It's the fact that actually, I want people to see themselves in it and feel like they're part of the conversation.

Alison Stewart: Last question. There was a recent New York Times piece noting that many of the major art institutions in the country are now run by women, including our own Brooklyn Museum. Does that give you any hope there will continue to be growth in the area of inclusion when it comes to sex and gender?

Katy Hessel: It does because people in powerful positions can do so much. When I was 21 years old, I created an Instagram because that's all I had access to. When I was 23 years old, I curated my first-ever exhibition in a foyer of an appetizing agency because that's all I had access to. It's the fact that now I'm 29 years old and I have a book because I had access to that because things change and things progress and things develop. I always say to people always use what you have access to because even just a conversation, a thought, starting an Instagram account, writing an article can change something and spark, hopefully, a revolution.

I'm sure so many like-minded people will come on board and do the same. Actually, when we have these people in powerful positions who want to make changes for a positive impact and they want to progress art history. They want to engage in these conversations and debates and discussions, that is when things change. Is when people have access, when people have a platform that can make all the difference. Really from the top down, it can really have this ripple effect that can encourage a new time.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is The Story of Art Without Men. It is from Katy Hessel. Katy, thank you for spending the week with us. We really appreciate your time and your energy.

Katy Hessel: Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Alison Stewart: Just want to let the entire week of conversations about the history of art without men will be available on the All of It homepage at wnyc.org. That's going to happen this weekend. You can check it out yourself. I will promise to link to it on our Instagram from @AllOfItWNYC when it goes live.

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