Lynda Benglis facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Lynda Benglis
|
|
|---|---|
Benglis in a 1974 photograph
|
|
| Born | October 25, 1941 |
| Known for | Sculptor, painter |
| Partner(s) | Anand Sarabhai |
Lynda Benglis (born October 25, 1941) is an American sculptor and visual artist. She is famous for her unique wax paintings and sculptures made by pouring latex. Lynda Benglis lives in several places, including New York City, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Kastellorizo, Greece, and Ahmedabad, India.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Lynda Benglis was born on October 25, 1941, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. She is Greek-American. When she was young and in her early twenties, Lynda often traveled to Greece with her grandmother. She later said these trips were very important for her art. Her father, Michael, owned a business that sold building materials. Her mother was from Mississippi. Lynda is the oldest of five children.
Lynda Benglis went to McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. In 1964, she earned a degree in fine arts from Newcomb College in New Orleans. This college was part of Tulane University. There, she studied ceramics and painting. After graduating, she taught third grade in Louisiana. In 1964, Benglis moved to New York City. She met many important artists there, like Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, and Eva Hesse. She continued to study painting at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. Later, in 1979, she met her life partner, Anand Sarabhai, in Ahmedabad, India.
Artistic Career and Style
Lynda Benglis's art is known for mixing natural shapes with new art methods. She was influenced by artists like Barnett Newman and Andy Warhol. Her early artworks used materials like beeswax. Later, in the 1970s, she started making large sculptures from polyurethane. She also used gold leaf, zinc, and aluminum in her art.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, Benglis became known in the New York art world for her poured latex and polyurethane pieces. At the same time, she also made smaller wax paintings. Her work, like Fallen Painting (1968), was similar to Jackson Pollock's famous "drip" painting style. In her artwork Contraband (1969), she didn't use a canvas. Instead, she created the art directly on the floor. These bright, flowing floor pieces challenged the male-dominated minimalism art movement.
In the 1970s, Lynda Benglis started using video art. She made more than a dozen video works between 1972 and 1977. In the mid-1980s, she began working with metal casting. She created several public fountain projects. Benglis has also taught art at universities like the University of Rochester and Princeton University.
Video Art and Feminist Ideas
During the 1970s, Lynda Benglis used her video art to discuss ideas related to the feminist movement. She started making video art in 1971. She wanted to use this new way of making art to share her feminist views more easily.
Benglis was interested in the human form in her sculptures. This interest also appeared in her videos. She often explored the idea of self-reflection. Video art could show figures directly and illustrate how bodies interact in space. This made it useful for discussing feminist ideas. Benglis used different video techniques to explore how we see ourselves. For example, she filmed television screens that were playing videos she had filmed before. This created many layers of images. This technique made it hard for viewers to tell what was real or when things were happening. It also questioned how much we trust what we see.
In 1971, Benglis started working with artist Robert Morris. They created her first video artwork, Mumble (1972). In Mumble, figures are shown on several screens. The artist often names the people off-camera, sometimes giving them different roles. This makes the viewer question the person speaking in the video. Other videos like Document and On Screen have strong feminist themes. In Document, Benglis shows herself taking control of her image. In On Screen, she makes faces at the camera in many layers of video. This shows private expressions that people make when they think no one is watching.
One of her well-known videos is Female Sensibility (1973). In this video, she interacts with fellow artist Marilyn Lenkowsky. Many of Benglis's early solo films were carefully edited and re-taped. This blended present and past video scenes. For example, in Now (1973), her face appears many times. She overlays a video of herself shouting commands like "Now!" over an older video of herself. This blurs the line between a real event and a performance. It also makes it hard to tell which image of the artist is happening now or in the past.
In Noise (1972), Benglis used repeated video and sound loops. This created more and more distortion. It showed how sound and image can become separated. In On Screen (1972), Benglis created an endless loop of time and space. She manipulated video tapes to confuse the viewer's sense of time. By doing this, Benglis showed that video art is based on copying images. This challenged the old idea that fine art must be unique and original.
Important Exhibitions and Shows
For a long time, Lynda Benglis's art was not fully recognized. But in 2009, the Irish Museum of Modern Art held a large show of her work from the past 40 years. This show helped people see her as a major artist in modern art. It showed her many artworks and her willingness to explore difficult topics. The exhibition focused on her work from the 1960s and 1970s. This was when her art connected painting and sculpture the most.
The show included her wax pieces from 1966. These were shaped like lozenges (diamonds) and had many layers of colored wax. They honored Jackson Pollock's drip painting style. It also showed her knotted, bow-tie shaped wall sculptures from the 1970s and some of her videos. Her art from the 1980s and 1990s was also displayed.
In the versions of the show in the United States, more works from the 1980s and 1990s were included. These featured her ceramic pieces. These clay artworks were shaped by hand. Viewers could see how they were made, with squeezing, folding, and throwing the wet clay. The glazes looked like they were thrown on casually. This reminded people of the abstract expressionism art movement that Benglis is part of. Her ceramic pieces felt handmade and had strong colors.
By focusing on Benglis's early work, the curators showed her as a key artist in the diverse art of the 1970s. This period is seen as important for the wide range of art styles we see today. Her art is also important because it focuses on the process of making art and the materials used. Each piece helps you understand it physically.
- 2011 Show at the New Museum: In 2011, The New Museum held a show of Benglis's sculptures from four decades. It also included videos, Polaroids, and magazine clippings. The New Yorker magazine praised the show, telling viewers to "prepare to be floored."
- 2015 The Hepworth Wakefield, UK: In 2015, The Hepworth Wakefield presented Benglis's first museum show in the UK. It featured over 50 artworks from her career. The show explored how different places influenced Benglis's art, especially her homes and studios in New York, New Mexico, Greece, and India.
- 2015 Storm King Art Center, New York: Lynda Benglis: Water Sources was the first exhibition focusing on the outdoor water fountains Benglis has created since the early 1980s. This show also looked at her interest in water and landscapes over the last thirty years.
- 2016 Cheim & Read, New York: In this new work, Benglis used handmade paper wrapped around thick wire frames. She often painted the paper in bright, metallic colors with dark black strokes. Sometimes the paper was left plain. These works showed the dry, windy landscape of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they were made. Benglis also showed a large aluminum work called "The Fall Caught" and new spiraling black ceramics called "Elephant Necklace."
- 2016 Thomas Brambilla gallery, Italy: In December 2016, Lynda Benglis had her first solo show in Italy, called "Benglis and the Baroque." The exhibition included large marble sculptures called Torsos. The show explored Benglis's interest in Baroque sculpture. Like Gianlorenzo Bernini, Benglis tries to capture a powerful moment and combine beauty and feeling in her art.
- 2019 Goulandris Museum of Cycladic Art, Greece: The NEON Organization for Culture and Development held Lynda Benglis's first solo museum exhibition in Greece. This country has been very important in her life and art. The exhibition, Lynda Benglis: In the Realm of the Senses, brought together 36 of her unique artworks from 1969 onwards.
- 2022 Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas: The Nasher Sculpture Center's 2022 summer exhibition, titled Lynda Benglis, showed three types of her work. These included traditional bronze sculptures and decorative glitter art. The exhibition highlighted some of Benglis's more recent artworks.
Selected Artworks
Lynda Benglis's video works distributed by the Video Data Bank include:
- The Amazing Bow Wow (1976), 30:07 min, color, sound
- Collage (1973), 9:30 min, color, sound
- Discrepancy (1973), 13:44 min, black and white, sound
- Document (1972), 6:08 min, black and white, sound
- Enclosure (1973), 07:23 min, black and white, sound
- Female Sensibility (1973), 13:05 min, color, sound
- The Grunions are Running (1973), 5:41, black and white, sound
- Home Tape Revised (1972), 28:00 min, black and white, sound
- How's Tricks (1976), 34:00 min, color, sound
- Monitor (1999), 00:20 min, color, sound
- Mumble (1972), 20:00 min, black and white, sound
- Noise (1972), 07:15, black and white, sound
- Now (1973), 11:45 min, color, sound
- On Screen (1972), 7:45 min, black and white, sound
Exhibitions and Collections
On November 4, 2009, Benglis's first European art show opened at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. It then traveled to other museums in France and the United States.
Between 1969 and 1995, Benglis had over 75 solo exhibitions of her work. These shows were held in the United States and other countries. Lynda Benglis's art is part of many important collections. These include The Guggenheim, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Awards and Recognition
Mary Beth Edelson's artwork Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper (1972) used Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Edelson placed the faces of famous women artists over the heads of Christ and his apostles. Lynda Benglis was one of these artists. This image became a very important symbol of the feminist art movement. It showed how religious and art history often overlooked women.
Benglis received a Yale-Norfolk Summer School Scholarship in 1963. She also won a Max Beckmann scholarship in 1965. In 1975, Benglis was given a Guggenheim Fellowship. She also received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, one in 1979 and another in 1990.
Benglis received several art grants in 1988. These included grants from the Minos Beach Art Symposium and the Delphi Art Symposium. She also received a grant from the Olympiad of Art Sculpture Park in Korea. In 1989, she received a grant from the National Council of Art Administration.
In 2000, Benglis received an honorary doctorate degree from the Kansas City Art Institute. In 2017, The International Sculpture Center gave Lynda Benglis and Tony Cragg the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award.
See also
In Spanish: Lynda Benglis para niños
Images for kids
-
Benglis in a 1974 photograph
-
Contraband (1969) at the Whitney Museum in 2023
-
Vittorio (1979) at the National Gallery of Art in 2009
