Episode 08: Three Women Artists

Ryan sits down with two of his WT colleagues, Dr. Amy Von Lintel, Professor of Art History, and Dr. Bonnie Roos, Professor of English, who join him to discuss their new book, Three Women Artists: Expanding Abstract Expressionism in the American West, forthcoming in February 2022 from Texas A&M University Press. The book seeks to “recenter” Abstract Expressionism by examining how this NYC-based movement flourished in the Texas Panhandle in the 1960s and ‘70s, as Amarillo art dealer Dord Fitz helped create a network of patrons and students for Elaine de Kooning, Louise Nevelson, and Jeanne Reynal (whose 1974 mosaic portrait of Nevelson is the image accompanying this episode). The book also explores how the work of these artists was shaped by their time in the “Middle American West”; considers the role of gender performance in defining and re-defining Ab Ex; and makes the case for why Reynal’s mosaics and Nevelson’s wall sculptures should be considered part of this painting-centric movement. The interview touches on what being a part of this artistic community meant for queer and Black artists in this deeply conservative region, and it ends with a consideration of Fitz’s legacy here in the Panhandle. (Who, if anyone, is the modern-day Dord Fitz?) For more information on “The Women: Tops in Art,” the 1960 show that helped create the art scene explored in this book, see Von Lintel and Roos’s article in the Fall/Winter 2021 edition of Woman’s Art Journal, available for order here.