Uptown at the Jewish Museum, Joan Semmel: In the Flesh provides a survey of 16 works, spanning from 1971 to 2023, that tell the rich and compelling story of Semmel’s artistic evolution. And further downtown at Alexander Gray Associates, Continuities presents recent works, painted within the last two years, from the same pioneering artist. Together, these concurrent shows spark timely questions about womanhood, self-image, and transformation.
The Jewish Museum’s show begins with works from Semmel’s Erotic Series—from the early 1970s—that depict heterosexual couples having sex. In Flip-Flop Diptych (1971), the first painting shows a woman, rendered in a yellow-orange hue, straddling a reclined man. The second image, as the title suggests, flips their positions. Nearby, Erotic Yellow (1973) shows a couple laying down, intertwined. The woman’s body is painted in cherry pink; the man in dark, olive green. The bodies appear as if inserted onto the canvas from somewhere else, and the colorful backdrops can almost feel sterile. The scenes are recognizable and undoubtedly of real life, but they’re also luminously artificial and constructed, as if these figures are on a sound stage, posing.
