| Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is proud to present Revised Edition, a solo show of paintings by artist Coral Woodbury. Focused through a new, more inclusive and representative art historical lens, Woodbury explores those who have been overlooked by a world centered on the accomplishments of male artists. She critically reinterprets Western artistic heritage from a feminist perspective, bringing overdue focus and reverence to the long line of women artists who worked without recognition or enduring respect. Through this body of work, Woodbury presents profiles of a multitude of female artists, superimposing their image on the very pages of art history that sought to omit them. |
| Barely a generation ago, art history texts routinely excluded women artists entirely. Woodbury’s portraits and multi-figure paintings critically reinterpret Western artistic masterpieces from an intersectional feminist perspective. Using the pages of one such preeminent textbook as a ground, Woodbury inks portraits of women artists over images from the well-known canon of Janson’s History of Art. In parallel with this series, she also repaints masterpieces from the textbook, but with the figures recast. Instead of a Madonna or paterfamilias portrait, Woodbury inserts images of female artists drawn from photographs and their own work. As a historian gazing backward, and as an artist creating anew, her paintings are a way to heal the injustices and omissions of art history. “Revised Edition is a research study as much as it is an art project, and an honoring of the women denied a place in art history,” Woodbury explains, “I will not have run out of them when I have filled every page.” The show is ongoing through April 25, 2021. You can preview the work online as well. |
Daughters of Unfinished History: Asawa, Thesleff, Bell, Vincenzo, 2019. Oil on canvas. 60 x 72 in.
