Jennifer Macdonald

Last updated
Jennifer Macdonald
Born
NationalityAmerican
Education Brown University, The School of Visual Arts
Known for Conceptual Art

Jennifer T. Macdonald is an American conceptual artist whose work explores the artifices and tropes used in the construction of language and meaning at the intersection of law, gender identity, sexual orientation and desire.

Contents

Macdonald, together with partner Hillary Leone, worked under the collaborative name of Leone and Macdonald for slightly over a decade in the 1990s. [1] Within the group of self-identified LGBT artists working in the American art scene, a number of gay male collaborative teams had established renown during this period, but Leone & Macdonald were arguably the first American lesbian art duo to do likewise. [2] [3] [4] Known for their visually seductive but often politically pointed pieces, Leone & Macdonald were also among the first women to address AIDS directly in their work. [5] [6] [7] [8]

Early life and career

Born in New York City, Jennifer Macdonald is the daughter of the American poet Cynthia Macdonald. Macdonald attended Brown University and graduated from The School of Visual Arts with honors before starting to collaborate with Leone in the late 1980s. Macdonald was an adjunct professor at Hunter College and a visiting professor at universities such as New York University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California at San Diego, Columbia University, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Leone & Macdonald are two-time National Endowments for the Arts grant recipients, three-time Art Matters Foundation Fellowship recipients, [9] Penny McCall Foundation Grant and Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant recipients.

Exhibitions (selection)

Written works

Notes

  1. North Dakota Museum of Art, (1999). Leone and Macdonald: Ten Years of Collaboration Archived 2017-10-03 at the Wayback Machine . Fargo: North Dakota Museum of Art.
  2. Helfand, G. (1997). Putting it together: Dynamic art duo Leone & Macdonald. Bay Area Reporter, March 20.
  3. Gold, C. (1995). Creative Connections: Contemporary Artist Couples. New England Art, October/November.
  4. Greenberg, S. (1991). Reading Between the Lines. The Advocate, December 31.
  5. Smyth, C. (1996). Damn Fine Art by New Lesbian Artists . Cassell. ISBN   0304333646
  6. Kalina, R. (1991). Hillary Leone and Jennifer Macdonald at Gracie Mansion. Art in America, January.
  7. Hay-Atkins, E. (1991). Contemporanea, January.
  8. Carlson, L. (1990). How Can They Be So Sure? Artweek, March 15.
  9. "Grantees — Art Matters Foundation". 2015-09-23. Archived from the original on 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2020-08-31.
  10. Hacket, R. (1999). A Poignant, unsettling exhibit at the Henry. Seattle Post, July 30.
  11. Updike, R. (1999). At the Henry: A Fine Focus On Some Well-Tread Topics. The Seattle Times, July 13.
  12. Platt, S. (1999). Shared Freedoms. Afterimage, Vol. 27, No. 3.
  13. Friis Hansen, D. (1998) Projected Allegories, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
  14. Gibson, J. (1997). Leone & Macdonald. Art & Text, Vol. 57, p.85-p.58.
  15. Monash University Gallery, (1997). Screen & Maniacs of Disappearance Archived 2015-03-12 at the Wayback Machine . Melbourne: Monash University.
  16. Clancy, L. (1996). Deceiving and being deceived. The Irish Times, August 21.
  17. David Winton Bell Gallery, (retrieved 2015). Critical Adjustments. Providence: David Winton Bell Gallery.
  18. Atkins, R. (1995) “Lesbian & Gay Whatzis,” Voice, June 20.
  19. Whitney Museum of American Art, (1994). Double Foolscalp. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art.
  20. Cotter, H. (1994) “Sculpture Under the Sky: Free, Daring and Soon Departed” New York Times, August 26.
  21. Kimmelman, M. (1993) “Art View: At the Whitney...,” New York Times, April 25.
  22. Taylor, J. (1993) "Mope Art," New York Magazine, March 22.
  23. Saltz, J. (2013) "Jerry Saltz on ’93 in Art" New York Magazine, February 3.
  24. TimeLife, (1993). Whitney 1993 Biennial. New York:TimeLife.
  25. National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, (1993). Under the Truth Seoul:National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Retrieved from: http://www.neolook.net/archives/20110918d [2015]
  26. Wilson, J. (1993) "Through Their Eyes..." Aspen Times, June 19.
  27. Sperling, T. (1992) "Exhibit Challenges Sexual Stereotypes" Chicago Tribune, February 14.
  28. Larson, K. (1991) Foreign Intrigue New York Magazine, May 20.
  29. MoMA PS1, (1991). Positions of Authority. New York: MoMA PS1. Retrieved from: http://www.artingeneral.org/exhibitions/55 [2015]
  30. McKenna, K. (1991). Eight Consorts. Los Angeles Times, July 30.
  31. Carlson, L. (1990). How Can They Be So Sure? Artweek, March 15.
  32. Perloff, M. (1991) Sulfur, vol. 29, pp. 216–221.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Currin</span> American painter

John Currin is an American painter based in New York City. He is most recognised for his technically proficient satirical figurative paintings that explore controversial sexual and societal topics. His work shows a wide range of influences, including sources as diverse as the Renaissance, popular culture magazines, and contemporary fashion models. He often distorts or exaggerates the erotic forms of the female body, and has stressed that his characters are reflections of himself rather than inspired by real people.

Jim Hodges is a New York-based installation artist. He is known for his mixed-media sculptures and collages that involve delicate artificial flowers, mirrors, chains as spiderwebs, and cut-up jeans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah Wilke</span> American artist

Hannah Wilke (born Arlene Hannah Butter; was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, video artist and performance artist. Wilke's work is known for exploring issues of feminism, sexuality and femininity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ronnie Landfield</span> American painter

Ronnie Landfield is an American abstract painter. During his early career from the mid-1960s through the 1970s his paintings were associated with Lyrical Abstraction, and he was represented by the David Whitney Gallery and the André Emmerich Gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Huma Bhabha</span> American sculptor

Huma Bhabha is a Pakistani-American sculptor based in Poughkeepsie, New York. Known for her uniquely grotesque, figurative forms that often appear dissected or dismembered, Bhabha often uses found materials in her sculptures, including styrofoam, cork, rubber, paper, wire, and clay. She occasionally incorporates objects given to her by other people into her artwork. Many of these sculptures are also cast in bronze. She is equally prolific in her works on paper, creating vivid pastel drawings, eerie photographic collages, and haunting print editions.

Lisa Yuskavage is an American artist who lives and works in New York City. She is known for her figure paintings that challenge conventional understandings of the genre. While her painterly techniques evoke art historical precedents, her motifs are often inspired by popular culture, creating an underlying dichotomy between high and low and, by implication, sacred and profane, harmony and dissonance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothea Rockburne</span> Canadian-American painter (born 1932)

Dorothea Rockburne, DFA is an abstract painter, drawing inspiration primarily from her deep interest in mathematics and astronomy. Her work is geometric and abstract, seemingly simple but very precise to reflect the mathematical concepts she strives to concretize. "I wanted very much to see the equations I was studying, so I started making them in my studio," she has said. "I was visually solving equations." Her attraction to Mannerism has also influenced her work.

Idelle Lois Weber was an American artist most closely aligned with the Pop art and Photorealist movements.

Peter Ford Young is an American painter. He is primarily known for his abstract paintings that have been widely exhibited in the United States and in Europe since the 1960s. His work is associated with Minimal Art, Post-minimalism, and Lyrical Abstraction. Young has participated in more than a hundred group exhibitions and he has had more than forty solo exhibitions in important contemporary art galleries throughout his career. He currently lives in Bisbee, Arizona.

Sylvia Plimack Mangold is an American artist, painter, printmaker, and pastelist. She is known for her representational depictions of interiors and landscapes. She is the mother of film director/screenwriter James Mangold and musician Andrew Mangold.

Ron Gorchov was an American artist. He was known for his colorful, abstract paintings on curved canvases.

Douglas Matthew Davis, Jr. was an American artist, critic, teacher, and writer for among other publications Newsweek.

Douglas Ischar is an openly gay, American artist known for his work in documentary photography, installation art, sound art and video art addressing stereotypes of masculinity and male behavior. He currently lives and works in Chicago, where he teaches art at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ischar serves on the curatorial board of Chicago's Iceberg Projects, a not-for-profit experimental exhibition space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frances Stark</span>

Frances Stark is an interdisciplinary artist and writer, whose work centers on the use and meaning of language, and the translation of this process into the creative act. She often works with carbon paper to hand-trace letters, words, and sentences from classic works by Emily Dickinson, Goethe, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, and others to explore the voices and interior states of writers. She uses these hand-traced words, often in repetition, as visual motifs in drawings and mixed media works that reference a subject, mood, or another discipline such as music, architecture, or philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Miss</span> American environmental artist (born 1944)

Mary Miss is an American artist and designer. Her work has crossed boundaries between architecture, landscape architecture, engineering and urban design. Her installations are collaborative in nature: she has worked with scientists, historians, designers, and public administrators. She is primarily interested in how to engage the public in decoding their surrounding environment.

Laylah Ali (born 1968) is a contemporary visual artist known for paintings in which ambiguous race relations are depicted with a graphic clarity and cartoon strip format.

Kay Rosen is an American painter. Rosen's paintings are included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. Rosen lives in Gary, Indiana, and New York.

Moira Dryer (1957–1992) was a Canadian artist known for her abstract paintings on wood panel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glen Seator</span> Visual artist

Glen Seator (1956-2002) was an American visual artist and conceptual sculptor. He lived in Brooklyn, NY and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Hillary Leone is an American conceptual artist who works across installation, sculpture, video, photography, digital, and writing mediums. Her work has focused on the intersection of art, science, and technology.

References