Three summers ago, a precocious Bronx Science high school Sophomore, Oona Zlamany, interviewed Leonardo Drew in his Brooklyn studio on video for artcritical. Zlamany was able to draw on familiarity with the artist as she had grown up with him as a close family friend. Now an undergraduate at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, our interviewer has shed some puppy fat but little of her youthful verve, and Drew gives as good as he gets, explaining the motives and working practices underlining both his Madison Square Park commission, where the interview takes place, and his current spectacular solo exhibition at Galerie Lelong, his debut with that Chelsea venue. In acknowledgement of the 2016 exchange, this interview is billed by Zlamany as “Part Two”.

Leonardo Drew: City in the Grass at Madison Square Park, June 3 to December 15, 2019
Leonardo Drew at Galerie Lelong, May 16 to August 2, 2019

Oona Zlamany Calls on Leonardo Drew (June 2016)

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Philip Pearlstein Today, Betty Cuningham Gallery, May 10 to June 17, 2017
15 Rivington Street, between Chrystie Street and Bowery, New York City, bettycuninghamgallery.com

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MotorGrrl, a female owned and operated motorcycle garage in Greenpoint, is as much a community center for the women and men who ride bikes as it is a repair shop and showroom. April 28, 2017 the space becomes a performance and exhibition venue for two rider-artists whose wheels are a vehicle of expression. Photographer Susana Rico portrays women on their bikes using the vintage “tintype” photography process giving her subjects, who she casts as contemporary viragos, an at once gritty and ethereal quality. Grace Roselli, whose work fuses painting, photography, collage and performance, takes self-declared “kick ass” feminist ownership of the stereotypes that conflate women’s bodies and motorcycles in a gesture that adds gasoline to the cause of empowerment–although wait ’til you hear what she says to OONA ZLAMANY about empowerment. Camerawork by Brenda Zlamany. DAVID COHEN

MotorGrrl from David Cohen on Vimeo.

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I was only four and yet I had a job already. I’m walking, hand in hand with my mother, down crowded, chaotic New York streets and my job is to provide protection whenever we pass a group of men. Even though we were a mother-daughter duo, they’d be watching her like a hawk. I never forgot the helplessness I felt at that moment, because I knew that the men’s gazes demoralized my mother, yet what could I do?

This distinct memory came to mind the other day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A show of portraits of grand ladies like Marie Antoinette and Russia’s Princess Alexandra Golitsyna created during the late 1700s showed off the artist’s meticulous skill and way with vibrant pigments. The artist who painted these portraits of such esteemed individuals was a woman: Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, who was active as a portrait painter from teenage years until her death. Vigée Le Brun spent her early years in a convent, moving to the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris when her widowed mother remarried a wealthy jeweler. Thereafter she grew up in an influential circle of court artisans. She was accepted to the Royal Academy and was then allowed to show her work in their Salon. Nevertheless, Vigée Le Brun was a fish out of water, since the academy was completely dominated by men. I can only begin to imagine the ridicule and disdain that her fellow male artists showed her, just for being a woman and endeavoring to fulfill her passion. In 1776 she married painter and art dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, whose great-great uncle was Charles Le Brun, the first Director of the French Academy under Louis XIV.

As I strolled around the Met, looking at her paintings, I felt a strong sense of pride, respect, and indeed gratification towards Vigée Le Brun for helping to pave the way for female artists and women in general, just through her unconventional success. The painting that had the most drastic impact on me was one of a famous subject in a non-traditional dress: La Reine en gaulle (1783) whose subject is Marie Antoinette. In this painting the doomed queen, unadorned by royal jewels, wears a loose fitting muslin dress with a simple sash around the waist. She delicately holds a rose and wears a straw hat. This painting caused quite a stir when it was first shown, what with the Queen of France in such a relaxed and un-royal pose: It was a major faux pas. Yet to me, even though the painting does not show her in the typical grand style that was the custom with the royalty during that time, I believe that Marie Antoinette exudes a sense of regality—even though, at first glance, one would not recognize the subject as a royal or a wealthy individual, since it has all the bearings of a commoner. When I first laid eyes on this painting, despite the casual aspect of it, I knew that the subject of the painting was someone of great importance, simply through her stature and poise. Even in a simple smock, Marie Antoinette exudes elegance and that is what I find most striking. Marie Antoinette had a reputation for disregarding tradition and etiquette at Versailles, one that this painting confirms. It shows her “wild” side, the individual she might have become if she wasn’t a royal. That’s what attracts me to this painting, the unconventional female artist and her equally unconventional royal subject.

Due to public uproar that greeted this risqué painting, Vigée Le Brun was forced to execute another, this time with Marie Antoinette adorned in a lavish headdress and a heavy corseted blue satin gown. Ironically, the new painting mimicked the old, with the same body position, and Marie Antoinette once again posed holding a rose—a rose that by any other name would smell as sweet. All that differs is the style of dress. The curators have placed these paintings side by side, inviting comparison. I almost feel as if Marie Antoinette and Vigée Le Brun planned it so, as if to say “take a hike” to their harshest critics.

Max Weber once wrote, “Power is the chance to impose your will within a social context, even when opposed and regardless of the integrity of that chance.” I believe that this applies to Marie Antoinette and Vigée Le Brun. In a time where women had little or no power, art was the outlet in which these women interpreted themselves. That is why I find this work so powerful. Most art is meant to please, but La Reine en Gaulle was meant to provoke.

Since the dawn of time, society has regarded women as incapable, unequal, and subordinate to their male counterparts. The same can be said for the art world. According to a famous poster by the Guerrilla Girls from the 1980s, less than 4% of the artists in the modern section of the Met are women, but 76% of the nudes are female. This is only one statistic that shows how the art world is a man’s game. My mother, who I mentioned earlier, the artist Brenda Zlamany, has always been an inspiration to me, a single parent trying to create art in a field where the odds are set against her. She is a portraitist and has used me as the subject of countless paintings, which might be why I took such a liking to Vigée Le Brun who also created many a painting with her daughter as muse. Both artists show the stages of growth of their daughter, from infant, to tween, to teenager. Vigée Le Brun is not as well known as Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Auguste- Dominique Ingres, but women who are equal to men in every way are often left in the shadows. Even now in the “modern” era, women can still make less money than men for the same job and are often excluded from opportunities, just because of their gender. I hope to use Vigée Le Brun as an example and express my feelings about gender equality through art and the power of words. Art and words can change the world. Maybe I’m an optimist for saying that, but I really believe it.

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