Corner Elbow

Joan Semmel uses photography to capture the angles and details of her body, and then renders them in large-scale yet strikingly intimate paintings. Her close-up approach translates the luminosity and curves of her skin into an almost unrecognizable landscape. Since 1970, Semmel’s unabashedly frank self-portraits have implicitly challenged images of the female nude made largely for men. Until recently, the history of art has been dominated by the visions of male artists in works such as Titian ’s Venus of Urbino and Édouard Manet ’s Olympia. Semmel rejects the male gaze by choosing to portray her own body in an unconventional manner.

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