In episode 32 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the phenomenal, Brooklyn-based artist, JULIE CURTISS!!

[This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!]

One of the MOST exciting artists working today, Julie is known for her bold, graphic, highly stylised and Neo-Surrealist works of faceless and fragmented women, and food. Often swept up in an eerily dreamscape, her often cropped works allow us as viewers to interpret a world beyond what we are looking at. 

Working in a myriad of mediums including painting, sculpture, and gouache on paper, Julie focuses on the relationship between nature and culture, as well as exposing and reworking female archetypes through motifs of flowing hair, long nails, and high heels. 

Speaking about her work she has said: "In my images, I enjoy the complementarity of humour and darkness, the uncanny and the mundane, grotesque shapes and vivid colours."

Born and raised in Paris, Curtiss studied at l'Ėcole des Beaux-Arts before moving first to Japan and then to New York. She is known for referencing 18th and 19th century French painting, as well as fusing together the pop-like imagery the Chicago Imagists, reminiscent of comic books and advertising. 

But in a similar manner to the Post-Impressionist painters, she mines her subjects from contemporary, everyday life, representing and exposing its curious, small details in cropped and ambiguous compositions that are erotically charged, cinematic and dreamlike in feel. 

I LOVED this HIGHLY fascinating conversation with Julie. In this episode we speak about her INCREDIBLE paintings, as well as her introduction to art through posters, her upbringing in France vs life in America, advertising, Jeff Koons, obsession with technologies entering our life, darkness in cinema, FOOD, the post-war era of the housewife, the constant upkeep of appearances for women, and MANY MORE!!

Further reading:

https://whitecube.com/artists/artist/julie_curtiss

https://antonkerngallery.com/artists/julie_curtiss

ENJOY!!

WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE

Lateral Embrace 

Orlando 

Double Selfie MoMA

Guests

Further reading: 

http://www.houldsworth.co.uk/exhibition-thumbnails/little-is-enough-for-those-in-love-1579801608/1

https://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/cassi-namoda

This episode is sponsored by Alighieri 

https://alighieri.co.uk/

@alighieri_jewellery

Use the code: TGWA for 10% off! 

Follow us:

Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel

Sound editing by Amber Miller (@amber_m.iller)

Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner

Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/