Introduction
Nicole Eisenman (born 1965) is an American artist who is known primarily for her paintings. Eisenman was a professor at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson from 2003 to 2009. She has been awarded the Guggenheim fellowship (1996), the Carnegie Prize (2013), and has twice been included in the Whitney Biennial (1995, 2012). On September 29, 2015, she won the MacArthur "Genius Grant" award for "restoring the representation of the human form a cultural significance that had waned during the ascendancy of abstraction in the 20th century”. Eisenman currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
Early life
Nicole Eisenman was born in 1965 in Verdun, France where her father was stationed as an army psychiatrist. She grew up in Scarsdale, New York and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1987. Her great-grandmother was Esther Hamerman.
Work
Eisenman's figurative oil paintings often toy with themes of sexuality, comedy, and caricature. Though she is known for her paintings, the artist also creates installations, drawings, prints, and sculptures. With A.L. Steiner, she is the co-founder of the queer/feminist curatorial initiative Ridykeulous.
Eisenman's paintings often represent expressionistic portraits of characters that she says are portrayed as her friends and even herself. These characters are based on Eisenman's observations of life from a cultural and contemporary perspective.
Eisenman's early influences include Sigmar Polke, Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Haim Steinbach, Jeff Koons, Chris Burden and Cindy Sherman. Alongside graphic art she's seen in comics, punk rock culture, fellow artists in her neighborhood and ethos. Eisenman credits her exposure in the 1990s to the works of Janine Antoni, Marlene Dumas, Kiki Smith and Nicola Tyson being particularly inspiring as she searched for her own artistic voice. Most of her early work style was an inspiration from Edvard Munch, Philip Guston and Amy Sillman
Eisenman is represented by Galerie Barbara Weiss in Berlin, Anton Kern Gallery in New York City and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects in Los Angeles.
Partial exhibition history
Solo exhibitions
- Nicole Eisenman, Kunsthalle Zürich (2007)
- Matrix 248, Berkeley Art Museum (2013)
- Dear Nemesis, Nicole Eisenman 1993–2013, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2014).
- Dear Nemesis: Nicole Eisenman 1993–2013, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2014).
- Masterpieces & Curiosities: Nicole Eisenman’s Seder (2015), The Jewish Museum
- Nicole Eisenman: Al-ugh-ories, New Museum (2016)
Group exhibitions
- Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art (1995)
- Provocations, California Art Center (2004)
- Prospect.2 New Orleans (2011)
- Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art (2012)
- 2013 Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art (2013).
- Manifesta10, The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (2014)
- NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum (2013)
- The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, MoMA (2014)
Recognition
Eisenman has been awarded numerous grants and prizes including the Guggenheim Fellowship (1996), the Carnegie Prize, the Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2014) and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant (1995). She was also the recipient of a 2015 MacArthur "genius grant." Also in 2015, she was named as one of The Forward 50.
Collections
The artist's work can be found in a number of institutions, including:
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
- Kunsthalle Zürich
- The Jewish Museum