Nicola L

Nicola L.
Nicola L. with The Giant Foot, 1969
Born
Nicola Leuthe

1932 (1932)
Mazagan, Morocco
DiedDecember 31, 2018 (aged 85–86)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
NationalityMoroccan born - French
Education
Years active1950s - 2018
Known forConceptual artist, video artist, filmmaker, performance artist
PartnerAlfred Lanzenberg (m. 1956, div. 1982)
ChildrenChristophe and David Lanzenberg
RelativesSuzanne and Jean Leuthe (siblings)
Websitenicolal.com

Nicola L. (born Nicola Leuthe, 1932 – December 31, 2018)[1][2] was a Moroccan-born French visual artist. Her most famous sculptures include White Foot Sofa (1968) and Red Coat (1969). Her work has been acquired by several galleries, including FRAC Bretagne in France and MAMCO in Geneva.

Nicola L.'s work engaged with radical ideas in feminist politics, equality, and collectivity. She was particularly known for her anthropomorphic sculptures that fused female bodies and domestic objects.[3] Similar to other women artists such as Carolee Schneemann, Valie Export, Rosalyn Drexler, and Marisol, the nude feminine form became a recurring motif within her career.[4] She has described her work as "an ephemeral monument to freedom."[5]

Early years

Born in Morocco to French parents, the artist was initially associated with the Pop Art movement. Throughout her career she created interactive sculptures, radical performances, and collage-like paintings, films, and plays.[6]

Nicola L. moved to Paris in 1954 to study abstract painting at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, mentored by the painter Jean Souverbie who encouraged her to "cut the body up in the same way that light was cutting the live model." During this period she befriended critic Pierre Restany and met Alfred Lanzenberg, whom she married in 1956. In 1966 Lanzenberg opened an art gallery in Brussels,[2] collaborating with influential dealer Ileana Sonnabend on exhibitions of American Pop artists. During her studies, Nicola L. became aware first-hand of the prejudice faced by female artists and stopped using her surname, later shortening it to "L".[7]

Career

In the 1960s, Nicola L. became close to the French New Realist group, which advocated that art should comment on society using existing objects and materials. Motivated by Pierre Restany, the movement also included Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Christo and Niki de Saint Phalle. In 1964, while working between Paris and Ibiza, L. met the conceptual Argentine artist Alberto Greco, who had an important influence on her artistic development. Having recently returned from New York where he had encountered Marcel Duchamp, Greco repeatedly questioned L.'s pursuit of painting.[2]

Terming much of her sculpture as "functional art" Nicola L. created objects resembling furniture, which were based on the artist tracing real bodies, exaggerating, and simplifying their contours. In "La Femme Commode" (1969-2014) lacquered wood cabinets are arranged in the shape of a body, with eyes, mouths, and breasts serving as drawers. L.'s 1969 sculpture "Little TV Woman: 'I Am the Last Woman Object'" depicts an oversized female form with a television monitor for a stomach, periodically displaying a message: "I am the last woman object. You can take my lips, touch my breasts, caress my stomach, my sex. But I repeat it, it is the last time." The soft and pliable forms in "The Giant Foot" (1967) and "White Foot Sofa" (1968), works meant to be opened up and sat upon, were the artist's first experiments with vinyl.[citation needed]

One of her works from Pénétrables, an eleven-person garment titled Red Coat (1969) was first activated in a performance at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970 with participation from musicians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, members of the Neo-concrete movement in Brazil.[2] She recalls, "at the end of the performance we were distributing gloves on which was written 'same skin for everybody', and people started chanting the phrase."[8]

In 1975, Nicola L. shifted focus to film projects. In 1977 she directed the feature film Les Têtes sont Encore Dans L'île (The Heads are Still in the Island) with Terry Thomas and Pierral, shot in Ibiza.[9] In 1979 Nicola L. moved to New York, where she continued to focus on filmmaking.[9] Her first documentary captured the punk-rock band Bad Brains at the Lower East Side nightclub CBGB. This was followed by a 1981 documentary about activist Abbie Hoffman. Nicola L.'s final film was Doors Ajar at the Chelsea Hotel (2013),[2] where she had lived for nearly three decades.[2]

In the 1990s, Nicola L. returned to feminism through a series of paintings and works on paper. For Poems by Dorothy Parker (1994), she created collages on wood that included a snail form along with a snippet of a poem. The Femme Fatale paintings (1995), made from painted bed sheets accompanied by images and texts, explored women who had died tragic or violent deaths, among them Marilyn Monroe, Billie Holiday and Ulrike Meinhof.[5]

Towards the end of her life, L. continued to develop her Pénétrables series with several public performances, including The Blue Cape, which premiered in Cuba in 2002, followed by performances on the Great Wall of China (2005) and the Venice Biennale (2016). L.'s Red Coat was performed in London on the occasion of the work's display at the Tate Modern gallery in 2015.

Influence and Legacy

Nicola L.'s work has been acquired by international collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris; FRAC Bretagne, France; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; Musée d'Arts Plastiques, Brussels; Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp; and MAMCO, Geneva.[5] The Nicola L. Estate is represented by Alison Jacques, London in collaboration with the Nicola L. Collection & Archive.

References

  1. ^ "Nicola L." AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d e f ""Nicola L, Whose Feminist Art Had a Useful Side, Is Dead"". The New York Times.
  3. ^ Frank, Priscilla (28 September 2017). "Before Boobs Were A Design Trend, Nicola L. Made Quite The Feminist Body Of Art". HuffPost. Archived from the original on 8 April 2023. Retrieved 26 February 2024.
  4. ^ Epps, Philomena (September 2021). "Second Skin". Frieze (221): 84–91 – via EBSCO Art & Architecture Source.
  5. ^ a b c "Nicola L. - Overview | Alison Jacques Gallery". Archived from the original on 2020-10-31. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  6. ^ Smith, Roberta (2019). "Nicola L, Whose Feminist Art Had a Useful Side, Is Dead". New York Times. Retrieved February 24, 2024.
  7. ^ "Nicola L." Alison Jacques. Retrieved 2024-03-04.
  8. ^ Tate. "Artist interview: Nicola L". Tate. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  9. ^ a b "Take a Break From Work and Enjoy a Lunchtime Art Talk". Retrieved 2024-03-01.