Joan Semmel

Joan Semmel included in the exhibition Hope and Hazard: A Comedy of Eros curated by Eric Fischl, at Hall Art Foundation, Reading, VT.

Approximately sixty-five artists are represented in Hope and Hazard: A Comedy of Eros, which includes over eighty paintings, photographs, works on paper and sculptures selected by Fischl from the Hall and Hall Art Foundation collections. In this fresh and provocative show, Fischl illustrates the absurd extremes associated with romantic and sexual love. Desire, passion, vulnerability, disappointment, pleasure and torment are expressed as a Greek or Shakespearian comedy – epic and tragic, hopeful and hazardous.

While the bright springtime yellow, pink, and orange colors in Joan Semmel’s Untitled (1971) signal pleasure, passion and rebirth, the male and female forms also appear to be engaged in an act of violence. The woman’s body is being penetrated and torn apart at the same time, signaling that love and sex can result in as much pain as pleasure.