Audrey Flack

(1931- )

Audrey Flack is an American artist best known for her photorealist

paintings and sculptures. Born in New York in 1931 to a middle class
family, she attended the Music and Art High School in New York
City before going on to graduate from Cooper Union in 1951. At this
time, Flack identified as an Abstract Expressionist and found herself
having to be "one of the boys" in order to fit in. Flack says that she
was not treated differently as a woman as a student, but many artists,
students and visitors, could relate to her only as a woman. She said
that her goal of becoming a professional artist was not taken
seriously because she was a woman.
Following her graduation from Cooper Union, Flack attended Yale University and studied
under Josef Albers. It was there that Flack was influenced to move beyond abstract
expressionism. Albers encouraged her to use realism instead of abstract expressionism to
express her political messages. She graduated from Yale with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in
1953 and subsequently moved back to New York to study anatomy at the Art Students
League. Flacks first solo exhibition was held at the Roko Gallery in New York in 1959.
While it was considered acceptable
to use a photograph as the basis of a
painting prior to the birth of
Photorealism, it was not considered
acceptable for the painting to look
like the photograph. In 1965, Flack
painted her first portrait based on a
photograph, imitating its colors and
appearance. Her use and
outspokenness about the technique
isolated her from the art community
and other realists. Unlike many
photorealists at the time who used
masculine and often unemotional
subjects, Flacks paintings concentrated on highly emotional social and political themes. She
is known for her feminine color schemes, which were dominated by pastel colors. Many of
her photographs came from documentary news and included numerous public figures. One of
her most well known and significant works depicts President Kennedys motorcade moments
before his assassination. Flack became the first photorealist painter to get into the collection
of the Museum of Modern Art in 1966.
During the 1970s, Flack worked on her well-known series of still-life paintings and in 1972,
she began to explore the role of women in society. Many of her paintings featured female
religious statues and goddesses. Flack began sculpting in the 1980s. Her first sculpture,
which could fit into the palm of a hand, was a cherub clasping a shield over his heart. She

then began work on a series of much larger sculptures that embodied female strength. In
1988, Flack was commissioned to create her series of Civitas, four twenty-foot high bronze
goddesses that guard the entrance to Rock Hill, South Carolina. She was also later
commissioned to create Islandia, a nine-foot bronze sculpture for the New York City
Technical College in Brooklyn, NY.
Consistent through Flacks career is her emphasis on symbolism. She tries to make her work
universal, something that all audiences can relate to and understand.
Flack holds an honorary doctorate and was awarded the St. Gaudens Medal from Cooper
Union and the honorary Albert Dome professorship from Bridgeport University. She is also
an honorary professor at George Washington University and has previously taught at
honorary professor at George Washington University, and is currently a visiting professor at
the University of Pennsylvania, The Pratt Institute in New York, New York University, and
The School of Visual Arts. Flack has also written two books.
Janson's History of Art 7th Edition (excerpt)
By Anthony F. Johnson
Published by Prentice Hall Art
Contemporary sculpture has lost its "idol" quality,
in the full meaning of the term that Baudelaire
intended: not simply its solid, space-filling reality
but its role as fetish - an object to be worshipped
for its demonic power, the symbol of something
mysterious and profound even if, according to the
author, it prevents the artist from expressing his
unique point of view. But how is it possible to
endow sculpture with the status of a fetish in this
postmodern age, with its pervasive belief in
nothing except the failure of Western civilization?
It can be done, but only by rediscovering the
power of myth and using it to invest sculpture
with new meaning.
One of the few artists who has succeeded in the
difficult task of rediscovering the power of myth
and using it to invest sculpture with a new
meaning is Audrey Flack. She gave up painting
some 20 years ago after having achieved
everything she wanted to in that medium. She reinvented herself as an artist by turning to
sculpture, which she had to learn from the ground up. As a Photorealist, Flack naturally
turned to traditional naturalism.
A spectacular example of this new woman is Flack's "Head of Medusa". We discuss this
work at length here, Caravaggios Medusa making it a demonstration of what has been
missing in late modern and Postmodern sculpture: imagery that compels our interest because
of its profound content. The three Gorgons (Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale) were originally

hideous goddesses of revenge who lived in the far west region. (Medusa has an even more
ancient origin in Minoan art as the "Snake Goddess" and "The Mistress of the Animals".) In
traditional mythology, the snake-haired Medusa was so frightful that the sight of her face
could turn a man (but not a woman) into stone. Thus she was the ancestor of all sculptors.
Unlike her sisters, Medusa was mortal. With the assistance of the goddess Athena, Perseus
beheaded Medusa while she was asleep. In some versions of the story, her head was then
attached to the shield of the goddess Athena to ward off evil. By the Hellenistic era, however,
Medusa had become a beautiful woman who was a victim of tragic, unjust fate. Flack drew
on these later myths that told of Medusa's rape by Poseidon in the Temple of Athena, and the
winged horse, Pegasus, was born from their union. (Perseus later used Pegasus to help rescue
Ariadne.) In revenge, the goddess Athena punished the victim by turning her hair into snakes.
The artist's quest for the "real" Medusa was set off by Benvenut o Cellini's famous statue in
the Florence loggia, which incorporates both aspects of the
myth
: Perseus holds the Gorgon's beautiful head as he stands
triumphantly over her sensual body. She is, then, both
fearsome and alluring. Flack herself experimented with
every kind of image, including a horrific, slightly less than
life-size bronze head that is indebted to a painting by
Carvaggio, and a small pendant whose tragic expression is
strikingly similar to the head in Cellini's sculpture. The
definitive version, reproduced here, comes closest to the
Rondanini Medusa, a Roman copy of an original attributed
to Androsthenes of Athens from around 200-170 b.c. Yet
there was no single source for Flack's Medusa. She was also inspired by a wide range of Late
Classical and Hellenistic examples.
Flack's Medusa is all of these and none, for she
incorporates their characteristics into a mythological
creature that adds up to something entirely new. Her
full significance emerges only in the context of the
other mythological heads and figures Flack created in
the mid 1990s. These include Daphne, American
Athena, Civitas, Medicine Woman, Sophia, and
Islandia; Medusa shares features with all of them and
thus combines aspects of their different meanings.
Flack's life has been filled with tragedy, both personal
and professional, from an early age. Although Medusa
masks her pain behind her classical features, the
artist's obsession with this mythological creature attests to a personal identification with her.
To Flack, Medusa is a kind of personal talisman, so that she is, in effect, a fetish filled with
magical powers. (The amulet of the Medusa head is meant to be worn around the neck as
protection against evil.) Medusa thus becomes not merely a personal emblem but a worthy
symbol of woman for the new age - strong, heroic, beautiful, yet tragic in being bound by
what fate has decreed.

Name: ____________ Block:_____

Audrey Flack Crossword

Across
1. Painted based on these.
4. Flack is known for being this type of painter.
7. Graduated from this private art school.
8. Explored the role of ___ in society
9. From this state.
10. Commissioned to create these sculptures in Rock Hill, SC
11. Before photorealism, Flack painted in this style.
12. Flack began doing this in the 1980's after her painting career.
Down
1. Her work has emotional, social and ___ themes.
2. "The artist's obsession with Medusa attests to a ___ with her."
3. Her personal political stance.
5. Has an honorary doctorate from this university.
6. The name of one of her famous sculptures