Joan Semmel

Joan Semmel (born October 19, 1932) is an American feminist painter, professor, and writer.

She is best known for her large scale realistic nude self portraits as seen from her perspective looking down.

Semmel was born in New York City.

She began her artistic training at Cooper Union, where she studied under Nicholas Marsicano.

She went on to study with Morris Kantor at the Art Students League of New York before earning a BFA from the Pratt Institute in 1963.

She spent seven and a half years in Spain (1963–1970), where her work, "gradually developed from broad gestural and spatially referenced painting to compositions of a somewhat surreal figure/ground composition...(her) highly saturated brilliant color separated (her) paintings from the leading Spanish artists whose work was darker, grayer and Goyaesque."

Semmel returned to New York City in 1970 and earned an MFA from the Pratt Institute in 1972.

Upon returning to New York in 1970, Semmel was shocked by the number of sexualized images of women she saw on American newsstands.

She began to paint in a figurative style, and incorporated the erotic themes for which she is known today.

Her MFA thesis show at Pratt consisted of paintings from the First Erotic Series. Although Semmel's mother was comfortable talking about her own sexuality, seeing her daughter's paintings of sexual scenes was difficult for her because she still kept a kosher home and had a traditional notion of modesty.

In New York, Semmel became involved in the feminist movement and feminist art groups devoted to gender equality in the art world.

She has been a member of the Ad Hoc Committee of Women Artists, the Fight Censorship (FC) group, Women in the Arts (WIA), and the Art Workers Coalition (AWC).

These large scale depictions of sexual activities reclaimed gaze of the female nude, which heralded an unprecedented approach to painting and representation in the 1970s.

Referred to by Semmel as "fuck paintings," the Second Erotic Series paintings are sharp and realistic but retain the intense, unnatural colors of the First Erotic Series. The paintings are based on photographs of a man and woman having sex, which Semmel took over several sessions with the couple's consent.

When no commercial gallery in New York would show the series, Semmel rented space in SoHo and exhibited the work herself, attracting attention from critics.

Semmel refused requests by Penthouse and Playboy to publish work from the series.

Erotic Yellow (1973) was used without her permission in the “Hot Erotic Art” issue of Screw magazine (May 1974).

Joan Semmel, like said before, contained a fascination with the human body and including it within her art pieces in a sensual form.

But, unlike her male chauvinist counterparts, she believed that women need to be represented how they should have always been presented within the art community; without categorizing females as a whole.

Semmel takes us back to looking at the whole concept between an individual who is naked and one who is nude.

The “Ways of Seeing” allows us to understand that “To be naked is to be oneself.

To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself.

A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.

(The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself.

''Nudity is placed on display.

To be naked is to be without disguise''” Semmel realizes that women have been tainted not by them being nude within these paintings, but mainly from the male viewer who interprets them as nothing but naked, which immediately sexualizes them personally therefore making them associate that with any female they find attractive.

It's insulting and degrading.

Semel even has been quoted saying it herself; “I am always asked the question about my feelings of being publicly naked, and I always answer: It isn't me, it's the painting,”

She forces the viewer to keep in mind the whole concept of nudity opposed to being naked by making most of the individuals in her paintings anonymous and keeping their faces hidden.

This element is beneficial because it therefore compels the viewer to focus on the sexual connection itself and the personal interaction instead of two specific individuals.

During the summer of 1973, while teaching at the Maryland Art Institute in Baltimore, Semmel began painting what she calls “the idea of myself as I experience myself, my own view of myself.” The self-portraits such as Me Without Mirrors (1974) include the artist's body from about the collar bone to the feet and do not include her face.

In 2000 Semmel taught at International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria.

About major themes in her work, Semmel states, "While my work developed through series, the connecting thread across decades is a single perspective: being inside the experience of femaleness and taking possession of it culturally."

Though Semmel has created many different series throughout her career, the majority of her oeuvre features themes of sexuality, the body, intimacy and self-exploration both physically and psychologically.

The First Erotic Series depicts heterosexual couples having sex.

The subject matter is explicitly erotic, but the compositions give a nod to abstraction with expressive, unnatural colors and a strong emphasis on individual forms.

The Women's Caucus for Art honored Semmel as a 2013 recipient of the organization's Lifetime Achievement Award.

As of 2013, she is Professor Emeritus of Painting at Rutgers University.

During a 2015 panel discussion titled "Painting and the Legacy of Feminism" at Maccarone Gallery, Semmel stated "I would like to get away from the basic declaration of why there are no great women artists. There are great women artists. There are many great women artists. And we shouldn't still be talking about why there are no great women artists. If there aren’t great celebrated women artists, that's because we have not been celebrating them, but not because they are not there."

Semmel has taught at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Maryland Institute College of Art.