So What

Judy LedgerwoodWW-1998-037167

1998·Oil on canvas·243.8 × 274.3 cm (96 × 108 in.)

Judy Ledgerwood paints monumental abstractions that explore both the perceptual effects and the politics of color, luminosity, pattern, and scale. Early on Ledgerwood turned to traditionally “feminine” pastels and decorative forms in order to challenge the stereotypes of gendered approaches to painting: “I wanted to find a way to try to push the notion of what is feminine, and what is powerful in painting,” the artist has explained. Ledgerwood borrowed this work’s title, So What, from a 1959 “cool period” jazz composition by Miles Davis. Made during winter, the painting features pale colors evocative of the season and at first appears quiet and serene. Yet sustained looking reveals subtle modulations in the blue-green, yellow, and white circles, which recede and advance in complex alternation across the work’s surface.

Catalogue

Year: 1998
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 243.8 × 274.3 cm (96 × 108 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Judy Ledgerwood

Artist

Judy Ledgerwood

Painting

Judy Ledgerwood is an American abstract painter and educator, who has been based in Chicago. Her work confronts fundamental, historical and contemporary issues in abstract painting within a largely high-modernist vocabulary that she often complicates and subverts. Ledgerwood stages traditionally feminine-coded elements—cosmetic and décor-related colors, references to ornamental and craft traditions—on a scale associated with so-called "heroic" abstraction; critics suggest her work enacts an upending or "domestication" of modernist male authority that opens the tradition to allusions to female sexuality, design, glamour and pop culture. Critic John Yau writes, "In Ledgerwood’s paintings the viewer encounters elements of humor, instances of surprise, celebrations of female sexuality, forms of vulgar tactility, and intense and unpredictable combinations of color. There is nothing formulaic about her approach."

Brazil, IN, USA

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