Grace Graupe-Pillard, Grace Pulled Along by Lamentation, 2014
(based on Niccolo dell'Arca, The Lamentation (detail). с 1485-90.
Terracotta, lifesize. Sta. Maria della Vita, Bologna)
Grace Graupe-Pillard is fierce! A feminist with a cause, her work courageously addresses pressing political and personal issues that need our collective attention. Any exhibition about the female body must have a Grace Graupe-Pillard, whose work was featured in The Female Gaze at Cheim & Read in 2016. Relentlessly training her sights on human rights, social injustice, political misconduct, and the power of art in history, we find a facet of her relationship to art and life depicted in Grace Pulled Along by Lamentation, from her prolific series Grace Delving into Art. Here, she is both captive and deliberate interloper, or as she puts it: "I travel the world to explore historical works of art - and my presence often changes the 'meaning' of these historical masterpieces."
Grace Graupe-Pillard, Women in Cloisters, 2013
For our Bosom Bodies exhibition, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness, we chose her medieval self-portrait in Women in Cloisters, 2013, a riff on "The Boppard Gallery" of The Cloisters, Fort Tryon, Washington Heights, NYC (a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Situated between two unknown saints' busts, Grace lifts her arms into the ancient pose for prayer, orans, or, perhaps, ecstasy. Both meanings body forth her exuberant intentionality. Art is her canvas and her body redirects the gaze to an editorialized re-presentation. This is not "Grace Underfire." This is "Grace on Fire" -- Grace Graupe-Pillard unfiltered and unfettered by self-doubt, the realization of feminist agency promulgated by our foremothers in the 1970s.
Grace Graupe-Pillard, Grace in Clover Leaf Gown (James), 2014
Grace Graupe-Pillard, Jeff Koons 3 Ball 50-50 in Tank and Grace, 2013
What can we glean from Grace deconstructing or disrupting the original artist's gazes? Does she question their purpose through her feminist eyes? Does she intercede to expose latent misogyny? Sometimes. However, most often we see her robust nude body taunting the artwork itself. She is in dialogue with a fictional figure or a fictional representation of a real object (the installation's real objects) as we see in the modeling of Charles James extravagant creation on view during the exhibition Charles James: Beyond Fashion in 2014 and Jeff Koon's well-known Three Ball 50-50 Tank, 1985. However, all this playfulness pales in comparison to her more explosive ammunition.
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Grace Graupe-Pillard, Changes of Life - Nancy, 1994
Grace Graupe-Pillard, Crouching Grace as Blonde, 2014
Changes of Life and Crouching Grace as Blonde take aim at our reception of the body: the former is about breast reconstruction after a mastectomy and the latter attacks ageism and cultural clichés, such as "Do Blondes have more fun?" (a Clairol compaign from the 1960s). A visit to Grace's website opens the door to much more of her fight, directed at the subjugation of women in the Middle East, the current U.S. administration, warfare, the Holocaust, her relationship with her mother, and body image. All received her highly charged critique in various media (painting, photographs, videos, installations, and prints) that demand long periods of concentration. For Grace is a pistol, a force to be reckoned with as an artist determined to fix the world with her provocative creations.
To find out more about Grace Graupe-Pilllard's prolific body of work, please visit her website on NeoImages:
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Bosom Bodies: An Exhibition in Honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month is a New York Arts Exchange project, curated by Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, director and owner of NYAE, www.nyarts-exchange.com. For more information, please contact Beth at nyarts.exchange@verizon.net
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