SUMMER READING LIST ✨🌞✨ Popped by @hatchardspiccadilly to sort myself out for some summer reading. So many good titles this year, including a NEW book from my favourite @thecharlieporter. His triumph "What Artists Wear" came out in 2021, and his new book all about fashion and the Bloomsbury Group – Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, John Keynes, EM Forster, you name it – publishes this September. Like WAW, I devoured it in one sitting. His writing is some of my favourite. It makes me want to write and is emotional, intelligent, and informative. (PLUS don't miss @charlestontrust's upcoming exhibition on Bloomsbury and Fashion in our NEW gallery in Lewes!) ☄️🌿☄️🌿☄️ But that's not all! We've got a new book by @joannamoorhead on her cousin, Leonora Carrington; Art is Magic by Jeremy Deller, a sketch-book-like-book set up like a mini retrospective; Alicia Foster on Gwen John; @talkart THE INTERVIEWS by @russelltovey and @robertdiament; @lauren_elkin_'s much anticipated "Art Monsters"; Clare Dederer's "Monsters" on can you really divorce the art from the artist?; Ali Smith on Munch; and SO MUCH MORE! I've missed out a lot, and will post more, but here are a few to be getting on with...! 💘💘 As always, sign up to my SUBSTACK to find out more recommendations: www.katyhessel.substack.com Plus, The Story of Art Without Men 📚😎📚 HAPPY READING!!

Spent my morning at Elizabeth Peyton's show "Angel" at @davidzwirner ✨🕊️ I love her work. It somehow transports me to being a teenager: you instantly fall in love with each of her paintings, and her sitters. It's the way she captures this intense intimacy – like falling in love for the very first time. But going to this show, I realised so much more than I had before. Maybe I haven't seen many of her paintings in person, or maybe they're always framed or behind a glass case. Because what you witness here are these jewel-like objects, with each stroke so considered. You get to be so close to them. You see the sides: it's so interesting how thick the base is, like she coats the board with this thick white gesso. This way, the painting becomes an object, creating a dichotomy with the image itself, which is so delicate. And sometimes you only notice the elfin-like figures seeping through such delicately applied strokes after looking at the work for a while. Some, on first glance, look like a still life. She paints her community - the people she knows and loves: Ang, the Tibetan guide or film director, Luca Guadagnino - but also, my favourite, pop and rockstars. From Jarvis to Elvis, they appear on the threshold between stoic classical heads with high-cheekbones men on the cusp of adolescence. They're angelic, and some are glistening (see the video in image 6!!) 🏹❤️ Also: I love seeing her work out the colours on the canvas, board or sheet of paper - small marks in paint or pencil. It's electric. There's so much good portraiture on in London right now. Go see Frank Auerbach down the road at @hazlitthollandhibbert for a nice antidote to this show. #ElizabethPeyton #WomenArtists

I've been back in my writing room at @tracey_emin_artist_residency and the best thing about it is being amongst artists all day. You never know who you're going to bump into, and subsequently spend 30min or even 2 or 3 hours chatting to. Yesterday I ran into the supremely talented @biancaraffaella, whose beautifully hyper-sensitive approach to painting allows for some of the most tactile works: with figures swarming in and out of her feather-like strokes, that range from couples to nudes to angels and self-portraits 🕊️✨ Each artist on the TEAR has their own studio and entering into them is like entering into their world, mind, imagination -- as though we're given a key to their language -- that produces these magic works. Although Bianca's works are flat there's a sculpture-like quality to them, as though we're experiencing the figure through layers of film. But the more you look and spent time with them, the more they become visible to you, the more they move, the more they become alive. I've been feeling overwhelmed with work, hence not posting here everyday, and Bianca sat me down and chatted it through. We thought what would be a calm exercise? So she painted me (see image 3!) and suddenly I feel a lot calmer, a lot more confident to write. She said, go buy a sketchbook and do a drawing a day! Go see art in person, it changes everything 🏹❤️ • #BiancaRaffaella #WomenArtists

WATCH NOW! ✨✨✨ My thoughts on Berthe Morisot @dulwichgallery – an unmissable exhibition by the French Impressionist painter ✨✨✨ Running until 10 September, and the first show of hers in the UK in 70+ years!! Watch the full video now on the gallery's YouTube channel 📽️ Born in 1841, Morisot captured vividly and intimately the private worlds of women – lamenting their lack of independence but celebrating their small freedoms. She was the only female in the first 1874 Impressionist exhibition (exhibiting in all but one of their eight exhibitions), and went on to have a highly successful career. Her style encompassed quick, feathery, at times rough, brushstrokes; and her subjects ranged from family life to the fashionable bourgeoisie. This exhibition demonstrates just that: we see self portraits, scenes of daily life, the private boudoirs of women and a world that was suddenly erupting with liberation and freedom for women. Morisot, through her splinter-like shapes that dissipate into almost abstract-like realms as the decades go on, captures a fleeting world. Just like her fellow Impressionists, she strived to capture an "impression" of the modern world. GO SEE 💘💘 • #BertheMorisot #WomenArtists

✨🎙 THIS WEEK on the GWA PODCAST we read an extract on SURREALISM from my book, The Story of Art Without Men (which is out now + available on audiobook!!) 📚🎧📚 In this chapter, we look at the trailblazing women of Surrealism working across photography, painting, objects, and more! Think Lee Miller, Dora Maar, Eileen Agar, Gertrude Abercrombie, Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington, and MORE 🕷️☁️🏹💫 Working in Europe and the Americas, these women pioneered Surrealism. They switched up the eroticised portrayal of their own bodies by turning their gaze back onto themselves. They looked to represent liberation and oppression, imagination and transformation, as well as magical and sensual qualities in their work. In their depictions of dreamscapes, landscapes and frequently claustrophobic architectural interiors, they showed women as strong, dominating and free.  Far from being muses, when artist Leonora Carrington was asked by legendary art historian Whitney Chadwick for her thoughts on the Surrealist muse, she replied, ‘I thought it was bullshit. I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse ... I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.’  ENJOY‼️‼️ Listen via iTunes, Spotify, or your favourite podcast platform (linkinbio) 🎧✨🎧 This episode is brought to you by @ocula.art ⭐️ www.ocula.com ⭐️ Sound edited by Mikaela Carmichael #WomenArtists

The SUBSTACK IS BACK! ✨✨✨ Resuming my fortnightly newsletter after a break post our US Tour ~ sign up: katyhessel.substack.com ❤️‍🔥 As always we’ve got everything you need to see, read, watch and do, celebrating all things women artists. Including: A piece on the newly refurbished National Portrait Gallery – a thrilling uplifting museum that rightly reflects a Britain I feel proud to be part of, complete with new doors by Tracey Emin and a mural by Jann Haworth and Liberty Blake celebrating the ultimate cool-girl gang. Quotes from recent episodes of the GWA Podcast, for example the great novelist and Zen Buddhist Priest, Ruth Ozeki: “The wonderful thing about writing is that it's not purely a visual medium. You can use all of your senses. It's like having a camera of the ear, a camera of the skin, and a camera of all these instruments of the body – physical instruments – that can observe, that can record, that can be used to describe and bring to life a location or a scene or a character.” 🔥🔥🔥 AND a lot more, including exhibitions to see, books to read, and podcasts to listen to... Yevonde @nationalportraitgallery Lisa Brice @sadiecoleshq Carrie Mae Weems @barbicancentre Lisa Yuskavage @davidzwirner Christina Kimeze (@itskimeze) at @whitecube @hannah.rothschild's High Time @lauren_elkin_'s Art Monsters SIGN UP: katyhessel.substack.com ✉️ ❤️

TODAY in the @guardian: I write my column on why I love the revamped @NationalPortraitGallery. Last week, I went to visit the gallery for the first time since it closed three years ago. As a kid, it was one of my favourite places. If I had a spare 30 minutes in town, I’d go in. I loved seeing the people who shaped this country. After three years of much societal and political change, how did I feel about going back to the gallery that reflects our complicated, crumbling nation? Unexpectedly emotional. Seeing pictures of the people who smashed through ceilings, and lived their lives so I can live mine, made me feel hopeful. For the first time in a long time, I felt proud to be British. A PREVIEW::::::::: Artists in conversation with boxers; playwrights next to composers; royalty juxtaposed with protestors; pop stars talking to Tudors; abolitionists facing suffragettes; pop jostling with expressionism; collage communicating with painting. Portraits, and the galleries that house them, make us ask questions. Who are the people who have really shaped this nation? Who deserves to be immortalised, to have their stories told, to hang on museum walls for ever? Historically, portraits were painted because the sitter belonged to a certain class, or looked a certain way. But not here. This National Portrait Gallery signifies a new era. This museum is an ode to a country that has birthed writers, dancers, philosophers, scientists and global megastars. It shows that every profession, every story, every background counts. It makes you feel part of something – of culture, history, literature, philosophy, art, music. So go see it. Go see yourself reflected in it, see the Britain we all live in, and the people we can aspire to be like. It’s all possible here. The pictures are evidence. LINKINBIO 🗞️🗞️🗞️🗞️🗞️🗞️ Congratulations @nicholascullinan @flavia_fffff ❤️✨ #WomenArtists

✨⭐️ HISTORY MAKING ⭐️✨ Yesterday it was announced that the DOORS of the new @NationalPortraitGallery are emblazoned with 45 bronze portraits by Tracey Emin (@traceyeminstudio). Although unspecific, Emin's faces instead evoke moods, states of minds – representing, in her words, the “every woman, every age and every culture throughout time”. They welcome us as we seek out and question what portraiture is today, and what a treat it was to see this in the flesh. Congratulations Tracey and @wellerharry ✨ It's like a modern-day version of Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise at the Florence Baptistery. Last week I went round the museum (strictly forbidden from posting!) but what I want to tell you is that is was one of the most emotional experiences in a gallery I've ever had. So much so that my @guardian column next week is a "love letter" to the @nationalportraitgallery ❤️ Keep posted!! 💘 • #TraceyEmin #WomenArtists

TODAY in the @guardian I write about one of my favourite portraits: "Self Portrait with Bernardino Campi" (1550) by the great Sofonisba Anguissola: "Staring out at us are two figures: a man in a dark suit and a woman in a thick crimson dress. He’s painting her, a portrait, dictating her appearance, as he gazes back at us, his eyes not quite meeting our gaze while her glassy eyes pierce our view. But take a second look at the caption and you realise the painting is not by him, but by her: Sofonisba Anguissola, his pupil. Not only has she painted herself one and a half times as big as him, she has him painting the embellishment of the jacket – a task normally assigned to an apprentice. Now look even closer and you’ll see her left hand – a third hand – guiding his around the canvas." ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨

✨🎙 THIS WEEK on the GWA PODCAST, I interview one of the most important and impactful writers today, RUTH OZEKI on 'looking', objects and observation 🔎👁️🔍 In this fascinating discussion, we deep dive into the power of objects, perception, time, the written form and imagination!! It's one of my favourite episodes 🌞 In addition to her role as a Zen Buddhist priest, Ozeki is one of my all-time favourite writers and thinkers. She is the author of four novels – and recipient of the @womensprize – and work breaks boundaries, reinvents storytelling, and melds ancient ideas with contemporary ones, looking at how they relate to our technology, religion, politics or pop culture. We discuss this, as well as how meditation can impact the way we see, create and respond to art. We also discuss ber 2016 book “Timecode of a Face” – a part-memoir, part-experiment – influenced by a Harvard art historian that saw her sit in front of a mirror for three hours and examine her face as she traces each line, mark, crease and feature back to story from her past. We also touch on some pioneering writers, such as Murasaki Shikibu (1) Sei Shonagon (2) from the Heian period (8th–12th centuries); followed by some of the early modern women rebel writers from the Bluestocking era, like Hiratsuka Raicho (6), Yosano Akiko (7), and Kanno Sugako ❤️ ENJOY‼️‼️ Listen via iTunes, Spotify, or your favourite podcast platform (linkinbio) 🎧✨🎧 This episode is brought to you by @ocula.art ⭐️ www.ocula.com ⭐️ Sound edited by Mikaela Carmichael #WomenArtists #RuthOzeki

💚6 years on💚 We remember those who died in the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017. This included Khadija Saye, the Gambian-British artist who was 24. Born to a Christian mother and a Muslim father, Saye used portrait photography to engage with Gambian spiritualist rituals, and as an act of self-healing: ‘I wanted to investigate how a portrait could function as a way of announcing one’s piety, virtue, soul, and prosperity’. At the Diaspora Pavilion 2017, alongside Yinka Shonibare and Isaac Julien, Saye exhibited six out of nine tintypes from her series Dwelling: in this space we breathe. Using a nineteenth century photographic technique, her black and white images exude a spiritual-like essence and timelessness, with precarious accidental marks born in the process. ✨ ✨ ✨

TODAY in the @guardian: I write my column on the blatant sexism when it comes to honouring the lives of women. This is in response to my post last week on how the artist Françoise Gilot – whose career spanned eight decades – was merely remembered by the New York Times as "in the shadow" of her former lover, who she split from over 70 years ago. A PREVIEW::::::::: My question is: does his name really have to be mentioned? Aren’t her career, her achievements, her name, enough to stand on their own? When will the media stop referring to women in relation to a partner they split from over seven decades ago, and perpetuating this blatant sexism? The New York Times’s subheading originally read: “An accomplished painter (and memoirist) in her own right, she did what no other mistress of his had ever done: She walked out.” The subheading has since been corrected from “mistress” to “lover”, considering their relationship lasted almost a decade, and the words “in her own right” have been removed. But I want to touch on those four words. This unnecessary parenthesis appears far too commonly, especially with women. It is used to highlight something that is “other” to what the establishment considers the default: the patriarchy. How do you think Gilot would have felt at her life being reduced to a headline that referred to a relationship she had in her 20s? In that 2016 interview, Brockes wrote: “She has always pointed out that it does her a great disservice as an artist to identify her as ‘Picasso’s lover’ or ‘a friend of Matisse’” – because she was so much more than that. Similarly, in 1997, the New York Times’s story about the death of Dora Maar – a pioneering artist working in photography, painting, and photomontage – merely addressed her as “Dora Maar, a Muse of Picasso, Is Dead at 89”, while perpetuating the problematic concept of the muse. LINKINBIO 🗞️🗞️🗞️🗞️🗞️🗞️ #WomenArtists #FrancoiseGilot