Audrey Flack

Audrey Flack (born May 30, 1931, Washington Heights, New York, U.S.—died June 28, 2024, Southampton, New York) was an American painter and sculptor whose choice of subject matter added a sociopolitical dimension to the Photo-realist movement. She was one of the first artists to use a projection of a photograph as an aid to painting.

Education and early career

Flack began studying art while at Cooper Union in New York City from 1948 to 1951. However, she was recruited to Yale University by German American painter Josef Albers, then chairman of that university’s art department, and she graduated from Yale with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1952. At Yale Flack was influenced by her mentor’s Abstract Expressionist style, which can be seen in her early work. Thereafter she returned to New York City to study art history (1953) at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

Moving away from Abstract Expressionism

During the late 1950s Flack retreated from the Abstract Expressionist aesthetic, which she felt did not communicate effectively or clearly with viewers. That realization marked an important turning point in her artistic career. Because she thought her ability to paint in a realistic manner was inadequate, Flack enrolled at the Art Students League to study anatomy with Robert Beverly Hale. She looked to artists such as Spanish Baroque artist Luisa Roldán and Italian Renaissance painter Carlo Crivelli as models. Her Photo-realist painting of a crying Virgin Mary, Macarena of Miracles (1971), makes direct reference to Roldán’s sculpture Virgen de la Macarena, La Esperanza.

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Photo-realism and innovative techniques

The 1960s brought the development of Flack as a pioneer of Photo-realism. She became one of the first painters at the Art Students League to use photographs as the foundation of her work. Her innovative method led to paintings such as Kennedy Motorcade, November 22, 1963 (1964), which depicts a scene from the assassination of U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy. It was during that period that the artist also began to fine-tune her photographic method and her subject matter. In addition to works with sociopolitical commentary, such as her painting of the Kennedy assassination, she also began to paint mundane objects such as perfume bottles or items of makeup, which she featured as a way to question the construction of femininity. Unlike male Photo-realists such as Richard Estes and Chuck Close, who chose subjects that avoided emotional content—Estes, for example, was known for his paintings of Manhattan landscapes—Flack sought a broader message through her work.

A significant painting from this period, Farb Family Portrait (1969–70), was the result of a new working technique. Starting with a slide of the family portrait, Flack projected the image onto the canvas to use as her guide for painting. This method relieved her of having to make preliminary drawings. She also developed a method of applying paint in layers with an airbrush. Using those innovations, Flack created a number of iconic works, including a portrait of Michelangelo’s David (1971).

1970s still lifes

The early 1970s marked the beginning of Flack’s mature body of work, composed primarily of still lifes, including the well-known Royal Flush (1977), a close-up hyperrealistic painting of a table strewn with money, playing cards, cigars, cigarettes, beer, and whiskey. She also turned to photographs from her own family albums and to images of public figures for inspiration. She applied Photo-realism to her Vanitas series, still life paintings of items ranging from flowers to jewelry to photographs of prisoners in concentration camps during the Holocaust. Notable works from that series included World War II (Vanitas) (1976–77), Marilyn (Vanitas) (1977), and Wheel of Fortune (Vanitas) (1977–78).

Sculptures

Flack underwent another transformation in the early 1980s, when she switched her primary medium from painting to sculpture. The fledgling sculptor began to use iconographic and mythological elements to communicate in her new medium. Flack’s sculptures started to trend toward reinterpretations of mythological figures and goddesses that evoke a feminist message. Pieces such as Egyptian Rocket Goddess (1990) and Medusa (1991) exemplify the types of heroic women she portrayed through sculpture. Her new trajectory led to many public commissions for her artwork. One of the best-known is Civitas, also called the Monumental Gateway to the city of Rock Hill, South Carolina (1990–91). It consists of four 20-foot- (6-metre-) high bronze figures on granite bases. Another Civitas sculpture (1990) is also installed at the Sagaponack Sculpture Field in New York. Her Recording Angel (2006–07) and Colossal Head of Daphne (installed 2008) were both commissioned by and are located in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Post Pop Baroque

While continuing to make sculptures, Flack returned to the canvas in the mid-2010s, producing a body of work she called Post Pop Baroque. Large-scale pieces, including Fiat Lux (2017), combine figures from 20th-century comic books and Baroque prints, while smaller drawings depict women misrepresented in history. One such piece, Crazy Bad Girl, depicts the sculptor Camille Claudel, whose contributions to Auguste Rodin’s most famous works were overlooked. Flack, adept at using kitsch to make a statement, spelled out the title, a tongue-in-cheek oversimplification of Claudel’s biography, in glitter.

History of Art Band, memoir, and other work

An avid banjo player, Flack formed a music group called the History of Art Band, which released a self-titled album in 2012. It features songs with lyrics by Flack about Lee Krasner, Mary Cassatt, and Vincent van Gogh. Flack was the subject of the documentary Queen of Hearts: Audrey Flack (2019), wherein she described the challenges of being an artist and a single mother and the sexism she experienced during her career. She published her memoir, With Darkness Came Stars, in 2024, a few months before her death at age 93.