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Nancy Spero: Dancers & Goddesses

Archive exhibition
23 Sep - 5 Nov 2022 Golden Square
  • Frith Street Gallery is pleased to present Dancers & Goddesses, the gallery’s first exhibition representing the Estate of Nancy Spero (1926–2009). Focussing on a particularly productive time for the artist, 1984–96, Dancers & Goddesses shows the dynamic range of Spero’s ‘pantheon’ of figures, including athletes, mourners, dancers and goddesses.

     

    After spending the early 1960s in Paris, where she made her series of Paris Black Paintings, Spero returned to New York in 1964 amid the unrest of the Vietnam War. Rejecting paint-on-canvas as ‘too heroic’, Spero devoted the rest of her life to working on paper, starting with the War Series (1966–70), paintings that confronted American aggression in Vietnam. She then worked on the Artaud Paintings (1969–70) and Codex Artaud (1971–72), tapping into the rage of the French poet Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) by integrating snippets of his poetry into her work. Notes in Time (1979), now in MoMA’s collection, marked one of the last works where she used language as a core medium.

     

    In the 1980s, she believed that the images could provide her with a hieroglyphic language, and she developed her own lexicon of ‘woman as protagonist and hero’: about 400 images of women, drawn from across art history, media and mythology, which she used and reused over the next three decades. With her cast of women from all walks of life, Spero wanted to reverse the tradition of portraying men as heroes.

     

     

    Nancy Spero and Leon Golub are the subject of a display at Tate Modern until spring 2023 and Notes in Time (1979) is now on display at MoMA.

    Dancers & Goddesses is organised in collaboration with Galerie Lelong & Co. and the Spero Golub Foundation.


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    ‘I articulate women’s situation and actions from repressed, victimized states to buoyant, self-confident stances.’

     

     


     

  • Picasso and Frederick's of Hollywood, 1990
    Picasso and Frederick's of Hollywood, 1990

    In Picasso and Frederick’s of Hollywood, Spero combines a range of different figures from her repertoire of female archetypes: a lingerie-clad woman from a Frederick’s of Hollywood ad, a Mexican figurine depicting a birth, a woman’s body given a Cubist treatment by Picasso, and an Australian indigenous figure all occupy the same space. Each of these figures are deployed more than once, in colours that shift in tone from dark to neutral to florid. The horizontal scrolls are presented doubled, one on top of the other, a structure that might suggest a stage, as if the figures here are performing different roles.

  • Goddess and Dancing Figures, 1985
    Goddess and Dancing Figures, 1985

    In Goddess and Dancing Figures the ‘dancing figures’ are adapted from indigenous Australian art, with the same elongated figure repeated six times at varying pressures to create different tones and colours, with just the torso of another such figure appearing on the right. The closely grouped repetitions of the backing figures lend a sense of both pictorial depth and a celebratory expression of community. In the foreground a triumphant ‘Goddess’ figure raises her arms above her head as if in celebration.


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  • Balinese Dancer, 1990
    Balinese Dancer, 1990

    Balinese Dancer combines a range of historical and mythological figures in the same pictorial space, not least the titular dancer at the top of the scroll, Egyptian figures, and an early Greek image of a warrior decapitating a centaur. The open expanses of space in the scroll are typical of Spero's work from the 80s and 90s – she considered these areas of contemplation, where the viewer's own imagination can create the connections and relationships between the various figures 'through time'.

  • Totem, 1996
    Totem, 1996

    Totem features the same Cycladic idol repeated in a vertical structure against a background grid of deep reds, golds and greens. The idol is printed in a range of tones and textures, bringing a variety of moods to each figure. The ‘totem’ of idols conjures a mysterious sculptural presence, projecting a sense of quiet authority.

  • Vietnamese Women, 1985
    Vietnamese Women, 1985

    In Vietnamese Women, Spero has used a single image, adapted from a news report about the Vietnam War, repeated in a double procession across the horizon. Some of the figures are printed directly on the paper, whereas others are printed separately, then cut and collaged over the top of the printed figures. Sometimes dragged or smudged across the surface, the figures printed on the paper create a sense of movement or dynamism. This kinetic energy is reinforced by a shift in position and attitude of each figure, as if they were walking at different paces or rhythms, either escaping a threat or travelling to an unknown destination.  


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    ‘I combine in one work figures derived from various cultures whose extremely diverse and often disproportionate body sizes and types coexist in simultaneous time.’

     
     

     
  • Propitiatory, 1993
    Propitiatory, 1993

    Propitiatory is a significant multi-panel scroll work that features a large repertoire of Spero's female figures and goddesses, including multiple Sheela-na-gigs, a Cycladic idol, a Greek goddess, contemporary and ancient athletes, and an anatomical torso. The title Propitiatory – to try to gain the favour or goodwill of a god, or anyone – could refer to the viewer's stance toward these goddesses and figures, or perhaps an ironic observation about the role of women through history. The multiple figures that seem to leap from scroll to scroll create a sense of energy and abundance.

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    This group of five works, spanning a decade of the artist’s life, together express the struggle and conflict of women across centuries.

     

    Hanging high on the wall, the frieze-like composition of Monsters 2 (1984) depicts on the far left the torso of a woman clutching her breasts, on the far right a woman wielding a club to some aggressor beyond the confines of the work, and at the centre of the scroll a mysterious, bucktoothed monster flanked by four women running in different directions. The mood of the work is prehistoric or primeval, suggesting violence at the dawn of time.

      

    On the far left, Hanging Totem II (1986) depicts violence against women across cultures and eras. At the top of the scroll, a medieval image of women being hanged as witches gives the overall composition a strong gravitational force, with the gallows forming an upper border. As the scroll moves downward, reinforced by red lines, Spero deploys more images of violence against women, including press images of a Cambodian woman crying before being executed, and a repeat of the gallows from the top of the work.

  • Liberty - Athlete, 1995
    Liberty - Athlete, 1995
    Liberty – Athlete pairs a naked running athlete with the famous figure of Liberty at the barricades from Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, which commemorated the July Revolution of 1830.
  • Untitled, 1986
    Untitled, 1986
    On the wall directly opposite, Untitled features one of Spero’s invented figures, ‘Miss Liberty’, a combination of a Sheela-na-gig and the Statue of Liberty. With her arms raised and jagged teeth bared, she takes the form of a forbidding, ambiguous monster. Beside ‘Miss Liberty’, a woman, naked and vulnerable, appears with a child on her back. The clarity of the composition, with the two figures side by side, evoke the contradictory roles foisted upon women: as both beast and nurturer.
  • Untitled, 1985
    Untitled, 1985

    Untitled (1985) – hanging to the left of Liberty – Athlete (1995) – depicts the same figure intertwined as if engaged in a kind of dance or wrestling match. The two women are printed separately, in different colours, then cut and collaged, overlapping each other.

  • Athena and Chorus, 1995
    Athena and Chorus, 1995

    In Athena and Chorus (1995), the central figure of Athena, a goddess associated with wisdom, war and the arts, stands against the background of a grid dominated by shades of red. The chorus appears in the form of disembodied heads, with their long tongues extended, possibly singing her praises, or warding off evil. Spero developed the image of the head with the extended tongue while making the Codex Artaud and reused it frequently in her work.


  • Mourning Women: Le Cimetiére de Varsovie, 1993
    Mourning Women: Le Cimetiére de Varsovie, 1993

    Mourning Women: Le Cimetiére de Varsovie uses layered imagery of Egyptian mourning women from the tomb of Ramose, Thebes, with archival press photographs. At the highest point of the scroll, there is an image of a woman raising her clasped hands to her face, while within that space there is a different image of the corpse of a woman in the Warsaw Cemetery amidst the cruelty and suffering of WWII. Below a large gap of empty space that occupies the scroll like a breath, there are more Egyptian women, raising their arms in sympathy or prayer.


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    ‘These are female bodies – I use them to speculate on what is possible and to comment upon immediate events – political, sexual, rites of passage or otherwise.’
     
     

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  • Nancy Spero and Leon Golub Display
    Nancy Spero and Leon Golub Display

    A collection display of work by Leon Golub and Nancy Spero is currently on display at Tate Modern, London as part of the Artist and Society collection route.

     

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Email: 

info@frithstreetgallery.com

Phone: 

+44 (0)20 7494 1550

Golden Square 

17–18 Golden Square

London

W1F 9JJ

Soho Square

60 Frith Street

London

W1D 3JJ

 

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Saturday: 11–5 (during exhibitions)

Sunday–Monday: Closed

 
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