Journey with me the “complicated and imperfect women rife with irony,” by the hand of figural and still life painter Anna Weyant.
Other Works Highlighted: (from left to right): Judith Leyster, “Jolly Companions,” 1630; Clara Peeters, “Bouquet of Flowers,” 1612
Resources for Episode 132 include: Marilyn Stokstaad, “Art History,” The Art Story (theartstory.org), Met Museum (metmuseum.org)—essay by Walter Liedtke, writers Bill Powers, Lisa Rees, Sasha Bogojev, Paul Laster, Blum and Poe Gallery, George Newell, co-founder of Winter Street Gallery, Edward Gorey (edwardgoreyhouse.org) Anna Weyant website (annaweyant.com) Image Credit: Anna Weyant website. Weyant IG handle: @annaweyant Featured Image: W Magazine
Script: Episode 132: Anna Weyant: The Strangeness of Beauty: Before we start the show I want to share deserved recognition for my friend and artist Amy Chaiklin. Her “Cultured Pearls Portraits” is celebrated in Create, an independent magazine that features contemporary art around the world. I explored Chaiklin’s portrait series of women, artists, curators, historians, women she personally knows and have inspired her work on this show, in episode 119. I encourage you to explore Chaiklin’s “portrayal of women, individualized in their assertiveness, “demanding attention” as she looks directly out at the viewer.” In the podcast show notes I included links to Create magazine feature, my episode with Chaiklin and her website.
Texas Tech University Women’s and Gender Studies is hosting a virtual event this Friday, October 1 at 12 p.m. in celebration of Latinx/Hispanic Heritage month, a panel discussion, featuring another guest and artist from my show, Leslie C. Sotomayor, The event “Café con Leche”(Spanish for coffee with milk) Una Platica (translates to a conversation) about empowered Latina/x Women. Other distinguished guests on the panel include owner/publisher of Latino Lubbuck Magazine, Christy Martinez-Garcia, Vice President, Hispanic Association of Women Martha Soliz, the panel will be facilitated by Alesi Hernandez, President Hispanic Student Society. I put a link in the podcast notes for more information—Leslie is a multi-media artist who expresses visual narratives of her own story as a Latin American woman. I journey through one of her works, a site-specific installation, “Reconciling the Waters,” in Episode 107—a firsthand visual experience of living within the borders and the bodies of water that bridge her family’s migration from Cuba to the United States.
Now on to the show—my celebration of painter Anna Weyant. Let’s begin as I often do with the visual expression.
Anna Weyant’s painting “Falling Woman,” is both intriguing and strange—The composition depicts a young woman upside, her partially exposed breasts are “affected by the gravity of the fall” they bubble like two mounds beneath the woman’s white ruffled blouse, her hair streams past her face, her gaze is tense, mouth open, her pink tongue sticks out from her mouth —perhaps reverberating a wail as she tumbles. We cannot see what caused the fall or where she is heading—she is in mid-flight, the portrayal of the woman is so convincing — I want to reach out and save her, break her from the fall and yet I feel as if I am unable to step into the scene, because there is something about this woman that is unreal, —yet so very real, you can practically feel the whish of her cascading hair, you feel the fear in her eyes, the smoothness of her milky white skin as she plunges—she appears as if she is a character from a fairy-tale. It is all a bit surreal. All of Weyant’s figurative paintings, her individualized portraits of women are quite unsettling. “I have always loved the line in the children’s book Madeline when Miss Clavel says, “Something isn’t right!” Weyant revealed in an interview with the writer Lucy Rees. It is a fitting way to describe the level of “discomfort” I the viewer feels as I journey or rather am drawn into her paintings.
Like the painting “Falling” Weyant’s individualized portraits of women (this is from her bio) “combine the palettes of 17th century Dutch painters with a contemporary feminine perspective.” This especially delights me, your host; because we will be able to see Weyant’s work through the perspective of art history, in the context of 17th century portrait painters like Frans Hals and Judith Leyster. So let’s dive in! 17th century Dutch portraiture “ranged from single figures in sparsely furnished settings to groups in elaborate costumes. Faithful descriptions of facial features and apparel were an important gauge of the portrait painter’s success.” I would like you to think about or consider the “face” as composition of color and form interacting with light. Frans Hals went beyond faithful descriptions and convincing expressions. He conveyed a sense of mood or emotion in the sitter. He accomplished this with brush and paint through slashing strokes and angular patches of paint. He tried to “recreate the optical effects of light on the shapes and textures of the face. The loose technique suggests a sense of spontaneity, in many of his portraits we can’t help to embrace the infectious joy that comes through the twinkle in their eyes, smiles that play at edges of their mouths. Hals painted the wealthy, but I love his eccentric figures. “Malle Babbe” (1633-1635) is a famous portrait of an elderly woman with a large beer stein her right hand and an owl perched on her shoulder. She seems to be laughing and shouting at once—the brushstrokes are looser and full of energy, like the sitter. She is based on a real person, a barmaid who was eventually confined to a charitable mental institution; the word Malle means looney or mad. What we see is in this disreputable looking woman is an infectious exuberance. (stokstaad)
More controlled with her brushwork is Hals contemporary Judith Leyster. She too captured relatable subjects, informal but technically precise—Her understanding of light and texture is truly remarkable. The portrait “Jolly Companions” “depicts a couple as they drink and play music together. The man wears a wide black hat and large white ruffles, legs are casually crossed, in his hands he holds a violin. His companion is a woman with flushed cheeks, she looks over at him fondly holding an open beer jug and a glass of beer is almost to her lips. The couple is depicted in a moment of fun—the surface is activated with this lively energy. Both artists blended sharp and vivid colors—overall the color tones are warm—bold use of soft ochres, natural pigments that come from the earth and broad lines of hues heavily tinted with white to show light breaking in upon texture.” (the art story)
Weyant employs those same warms tones, but what we don’t experience is that sense of ease portrayed in the Dutch painters’ figures. Weyant’s women appear more rigid, tense even in their relaxed demeanors. What permeates through her sumptuous paintings, as Weyant describes, is a “pretty eclectic range of influences. I source a lot of inspiration from other artists.” In the painting “Falling” that I highlighted in the beginning of the episode, Weyant said inspiration “started with an Edward Gorey’s illustration of a girl tripping down a grand staircase. The woman in my painting is upside down, almost like a George Baselitz figure, only the pose is meant to be naturally occurring, not intentionally flipped.” Edward Gorey was an artist and writer—his pen and ink illustrations have a macabre characteristic and unmistakable Gothic style frequently set in Victorian or Edwardian eras. Baselitz, a German Neo-Expressionist painter from the mid-20th century composed brash and emotive artworks.
“Falling” carries the dark atmosphere of a Gorey illustration and the expressiveness of a Baselitz portrait, but her “doll-faced” woman, realistically rendered, is laden with humor albeit dark humor. Weyant says, “The title is a play on the term ‘fallen woman.” I wanted the fall to be sexy and kind of fun.”
Paul Laster, who interviewed Anna Weyant for “Art and Object” earlier this year wrote, “Weyant filters her influences through her mental and visual sieves to create charming canvases ripe with dark humor.” This is a beautiful summation of Weyant’s prolific figurative works. Let’s explore another portrait of a young woman.
In the work, “Loose Screw,” oil painting from 2020, “depicts a lone woman at a bar laughing. She is in profile, her gaze, smiling eyes, is outside the frame of the canvas. She wears a navy blue blouse with ruffled neckline and cuffs, the material is soft and gently embraces her petit figure. Her chin rests on her left hand, the right hand covered in a white bandage, nails polished in burgundy red, is composed around an empty, crystal wine glass. Weyant says, “She looks somewhat desperate, lonely and unhinged. (And I can say that because it’s kind of a self-portrait. A lyric in Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady, “I probably got a couple of screws in my head loose,” was the inspiration for the title.
“Many of my paintings are in some way autobiographical or they depict people, mostly women, who I know intimately,” Weyant shared in a recent email exchange, “Though, the characters are all to some degree fictionalized. I try to let my characters be complicated and imperfect.”
In my looking experiences with Weyant’s women, what rises is my curiosity for the women and narrative of the scene. Like in the painting “Falling” I want to join this woman, this young well-dressed lady who is sitting at the bar. I am curious—who is at the receiving end of her gaze, in her joyful expression. But I sense this tension that keeps me from leaning more into the painting. She appears unapproachable, dare I say “tightly wound”? Compared to Leyster’s “Jolly Companions,” “Loose Screw” lacks the sense of ease, the merry-making one associates with having a couple of drinks. Both women express or have an aura of “fear, desperation, isolation, laced with humor and as note in Weyant’s bio “rife with irony.”
I want to explore Weyant’s still lifes with you, specifically, her series of floral pieces. There is a sculptural quality to her floral motifs, recurring images of a vase with roses, “wrapped inside her melancholic sepia-toned palette,” (thanks to the writer Sasha Bogojev for the description. Weyant expresses memento mori—literally means “Remember you must die” through objects in arranged compositions that serve as a reminder of death. 17th century Flemish painter Clara Peeters accomplished this through “table top still lifes” an example is the painting “Bouquet of Flowers” 1612. “Peeters’ still-life depicts an opulent bouquet of flowers in a roemer glass, placed on a low stone shelf. The late spring and early summer blooms range from roses to tulips, narcissi, carnations, and irises. Fallen blossoms rest on the pitted ledge, including a sprig of forget-me-nots near the artist’s signature, a typically playful self-referential device.” (codex reference) She “paid close attention to the naturalistic details like dewdrops, insect bites and drooping tulips that hint at transience and decay.” (met museum)
In Weyant’s painting, “Cut Flowers” oil on linen, 2020 she composes with sculptural, delicate perfection a clear glass vase with four, thorned stems leaning against the rim of the vase. Surrounding the vase are the creamy white buds, the petals are tender in their loveliness, laying precariously by the side of the vase is sharp, gold knife, the point of the blade pierces just beyond the rose buds into the space of the viewer. It is beautiful yet so eerie. Weyant describes the composition. “I cut all the buds off the top so it’s like a murdered bouquet with just beheaded stems sticking out and a sharp knife resting on the table beside them. Of course, all cut flowers are dead there’s an inherent violence in how they became so.”
In another floral still life, freshly bloomed creamy white roses are arranged in a clear glass vase, same sepia brown background as in the Cut Flowers composition—what is unnerving is the striped sipping straw that sticks out of the bouquet. Weyant says, I thought it was interesting to add a straw like someone was trying to suck the water out of the vase.” If you look at that painting as memento mori then the addition of the straw is almost an accelerator to kill the flowers faster. Weyant quotes a line from the movie Jaws—“I always liked that line from the movie about there’s something in the water. The sinister can often be masked by beauty or even tranquility.” The meticulous precision and arrangement of the flowers, you fall into their beauty and yet there is something ominous and dark. As in her round faced women, her paintings “tell eerie and unsettling narratives.” She is able to “freeze the moment” and imbue a heightened sense of emotions in her women, her still lifes. That stains (and I use this word with great intent) my looking experience—I initially walk into this pathway of beauty but end up down this rabbit hole of cringiness, of feeling unsettled but oh so very intrigued.
George Newell, cofounder of Winter Street Gallery in Edgartown, Massachusetts who recently presented a show of Weyants’ drawings said about her compositions, “do not rely on knowledge of insider references, but it kind of has a language that can be widely understood widely legible.” Though it is wonderful to see and connect the broad range of historical references and contexts in her work, I agree with Newell, collectively we can visually read what is just below her as the writer Bogojev described “highly polished veneer that covers the scenes of her paintings, from the fabric surfaces to the porcelain skin, and may I add to the folds of the rose petals, to the sparkling clear glass vases,” She is able to freeze moments with exquisite sculptural qualities, and arrests our attention with such gravity, it is like being pulled into the undertow where the stillness of beauty collides with fear, isolation shrouded in waves of dark humor.
Thank you for listening. Resources, and there are several from art history texts, Met Museum and several contemporary writer are listed on my website at beyondthepaint.com. In the podcast show notes are links to Weyant’s website and her Instagram profile handle.