Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen
Since the 1960s, multidisciplinary artist Howardena Pindell has been pushing the limits. She was one of the first women of color to curate at a major museum. She was an abstract painter when black artists were expected to represent their ideas figuratively, and she was overt about social and political issues when abstract artists where expected to produce work free of such “impurities”. She broke the boundaries of painting itself, using unconventional materials and techniques in her work from the beginning of her career. And she continues to challenge art world dogma, both with her words and with her art, as her career moves into its 6th decade. Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen is the first major survey of the New-York-based artist’s five-decades-long career.
Howardena Pindell and exhibition co-curators Valerie Cassel Oliver and Naomi Beckwith talk about Howardena’s body of work and some of the biggest questions swirling around art today.
Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen is on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts through November 25, 2018.
“I think I need to do both (figurative and abstract work) in order to create balance. If I just do the work about issues, I get really depressed. And I have a lot of fun with the others, but then in the back of my mind is - I should be doing the (issue-based work). So they feed on each other in a positive way.”
Paige hosts the LookSEE podcast and is a freelance audio producer, an art lover, and a lifelong Richmonder. Her favorite place to be is in a museum. A close second is a bookstore.
