{"id":20039,"date":"2026-01-10T14:39:35","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T14:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/01\/10\/at-93-joan-semmel-continues-to-assert-the-female-gaze\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T14:39:44","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T14:39:44","slug":"at-93-joan-semmel-continues-to-assert-the-female-gaze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/01\/10\/at-93-joan-semmel-continues-to-assert-the-female-gaze\/","title":{"rendered":"At 93, Joan Semmel Continues to Assert the Female Gaze"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Transitions<\/em> (2012) by Joan Semmel at the Jewish Museum in New York. Photo: Fred Voon for Observer<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1973, when no gallery in New York would show her vivid paintings of bodies in various configurations of sex, Joan Semmel<\/a> created her own space. She poured her savings into renting a unit on 141 Prince Street, called it a gallery and mounted her first solo show in the city. \u201cI believed in the work, and I wanted it to be seen,\u201d she said in a recent conversation at the Jewish Museum. Her new exhibition, \u201cJoan Semmel: In the Flesh\u201d (on through May 31 and one of our picks for must-see exhibitions<\/a>), presents 16 oil paintings across five decades that engage with nudity and sexuality on a woman\u2019s terms. Each work is unabashed in its frankness and its proportions. The largest, Skin in the Game <\/i>(2019), is 24 feet wide and 8 feet tall. It\u2019s as if Semmel always paints as far as her arm can reach.<\/p>\n

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Semmel was born in the Bronx in 1932, and her studio is located in SoHo. In the \u201960s, however, she spent seven years as an abstract expressionist in Madrid, with solo shows that traveled to Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Though Francoist Spain was more conservative than America\u2014marriage could not be legally dissolved, and the newspaper would announce a Catholic saint of the day\u2014she enjoyed some degree of freedom there as a foreigner. In 1970, Semmel was back in New York as a single mother of two. She had left because of her husband\u2019s work; now she had returned to divorce him.<\/p>\n

In those days, the sexploitation of women in magazines and pornography to satisfy male fantasies was rampant. As John Berger wrote in Ways of Seeing <\/i>(1972), \u201cMen look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.\u201d Semmel was shocked at how lopsided the sexual revolution was, and she longed for equal participation. Thus followed her erotic paintings, which retain an abstract expressionist palette that gives her subjects an otherworldly glow of pink, orange or green.<\/p>\n

Painting naked women\u2014from Sandro Botticelli\u2019s The Birth of Venus <\/i>(c. 1485) to Gustave Courbet\u2019s The Origin of the World <\/i>(1866) to Tom Wesselmann\u2019s Great American Nudes<\/i> (1961\u201373)\u2014has long been the province and prerogative of men. Semmel\u2019s depictions of sex defied the taboo against women broaching the topic, and she sought to correct the power imbalance, sometimes in literal ways. In Flip-Flop Diptych <\/i>(1971), a couple takes turns to be on top. In Intimacy-Autonomy <\/i>(1974), lovers lounge side by side, neither dominating the other.<\/p>\n

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After returning from Spain to New York in 1970, Semmel switched from abstract expressionism to painting nudes. Photo: Fred Voon for Observer<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then came her iconic series of \u201cself-images\u201d: paintings of her body from her perspective, often wearing nothing but a signature turquoise ring. These aren\u2019t \u201cself-portraits,\u201d Semmel insists, since she is unconcerned with producing likeness, capturing character or conferring status. Rather, her self-images are a direct assault on the male gaze\u2014by asserting her own. One is titled Through the Object\u2019s Eye <\/i>(1975). Another, Sunlight <\/i>from 1978, shows her tenderly caressing her calf and sole, untethered from male validation.<\/p>\n

In the triptych Mythologies and Me <\/i>(1976), she sandwiches a self-image between parodies of a Playboy <\/i>centerfold and Willem de Kooning<\/a>\u2019s Woman I <\/i>(1952). In the former, the female figure is sexualized by the commercial media; in the latter, it is disfigured by a pre-eminent contemporary artist. Semmel\u2019s response is to insert her viewpoint and desecrate the two great cultural forces, sticking lace and feathers onto the Playmate and attaching a nursing nipple to the abstracted monstrosity.<\/p>\n

As an artist and a curator, Semmel was among the second-wave feminists who resisted censorship and objectification. This places her earlier paintings in the company of landmark works such as Carolee Schneemann\u2019s short film Fuses <\/i>(1967), Betty Tompkins\u2019 Fuck Paintings <\/i>(1969\u201374), Tee Corinne\u2019s Cunt Coloring Book <\/i>(1975) and Judy Chicago\u2019s installation The Dinner Party <\/i>(1979) with its vulva-inspired plates, now on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum.<\/p>\n

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Accompanying Semmel\u2019s works is a mosaic of 42 thematically related pieces she selected from the Jewish Museum\u2019s collection. Photo: Fred Voon for Observer<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the decades, Semmel\u2019s self-nudes began to take on a new dimension and question our impulse to hide or dismiss aging bodies. It\u2019s remarkable that Skin in the Game <\/i>(2019), in full Technicolor glory, is her largest work to date. Rather than shrink from the canvas, Semmel continues to push back on prevailing prejudices. Her work today is as confrontational as ever, asking us: What arouses you? What disgusts you? And, most importantly, why?<\/p>\n

Baring it all in full view of the public is confronting, too, for the artist. In Parade <\/i>(2023), Semmel\u2019s naked body seems to shy away from observation. Alice Neel took five years to complete a nude self-portrait in 1980, at the age of 80. \u201cThe reason my cheeks got so pink,\u201d she said, \u201cwas that it was so hard for me to paint that I almost killed myself painting it.\u201d Similarly, Semmel admitted in a 2016 interview with the Brooklyn Rail, \u201cIt shakes me up a little sometimes, putting that out there. But it\u2019s what I chose to do, so I have to go through with it.\u201d And so the art must go on. \u201cMy work has been dedicated to empowering women,\u201d she said recently. \u201cAnd in order to empower women, I had to empower myself first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/b>Joan Semmel: In the Flesh<\/b><\/a>\u201d is on view at the Jewish Museum through May 31, 2026.<\/b><\/p>\n

More exhibition reviews<\/b><\/h3>\n

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