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Katy Hessel

Created off the back of @thegreatwomenartists Instagram, this podcast is all about celebrating women artists. Presented by art historian and curator, Katy Hessel, this podcast interviews artists on their career, or curators, writers, or general art lovers, on the female artist who means the most to them.

The Great Women Artists

TODAY on The Great Women Artists podcast is the esteemed writer, Deborah Levy on avant-garde pioneer Gertrude Stein. 

The author of several novels, including August Blue, Hot Milk and Swimming Home, alongside the critically acclaimed Living Autobiography trilogy (some of my favourite books of all time): Things I Don't Want to Know, The Cost of Living and Real Estate, Deborah Levy is one of the most recognisable and influential writers working today. She has been shortlisted twice each for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Booker Prize, is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has written for the Royal Shakespeare Company. 

But the reason why we are speaking with Levy today is because she has just published a new novel, My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein, which follows a narrator who has travelled to Paris to find out more about Stein, the enigmatic, trailblazing writer and patron; a woman who bolted through the 19th to the 20th century and paved the way for modernism as we know it today, with her daring, experimental writing, from Tender Buttons to The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and her patronage of artists such as Picasso, Cezanne, and Matisse – and I can’t wait to find out more.

My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein https://www.waterstones.com/book/my-year-in-paris-with-gertrude-stein/deborah-levy/2928377373535 

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: www.famm.com/en/ www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037
Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael 
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Deborah Levy on Gertrude Stein

TODAY on the GWA Podcast, is art historian, Alyce Mahon discussing the great Surrealist, Dorothea Tanning. 

Born in Illinois in 1910, where she said “nothing happened but the wallpaper”, Tanning immersed herself in gothic literature to escape to other worlds. Travelling to Paris to hunt down the Surrealists, Tanning “entered” or “birthed” herself into art in 1942 with her self-portrait “Birthday”, which sees her bare-breasted and standing in front of slightly ajar doors that seemingly lead to nowhere. 

Settling in NYC, where she exhibited with Peggy Guggenheim, it was then to the wide-open landscape of Sedona Arizona, where she painted Caspar David Friedrich-like paintings of herself standing before nature – ”asserting the centrality of woman” (as Mahon wrote in her new book). She then returned to postwar France and, switching up her style, moved into a cloud-like and splintered abstractions, before turning to bodily-like soft-sculptures. Although she famously said, "don’t ask me to explain my paintings". 

Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and a Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, Mahon is one of the leading scholars on Surrealism in the world today. The author of numerous books including Surrealism and the Politics of Eros, 1938-1968 (2005), Eroticism & Art (2005), The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde (2020), Mahon has also curated or advised on exhibitions on the likes of Leonor Fini, the great Argentine-born artist known for her meticulously rendered, proto-punk renaissance-like works, who she discussed with us on episode 48, as well as the Indian-born, once Cornish-based Ithell Colquhoun. 

Mahon was the curator of the monumental exhibition at Tate Modern in 2018, and now – has just published a brilliant, extensive book: Dorothea Tanning, a Surrealist world – our with Yale UP this month – that charts her life story across the places she lived in America and France and the place she imagined in her art, bringing alive her works, steeping them in history, and introducing us to Tanning’s surreal world – and I can’t wait to find out more. 

Alyce's book: https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300244601/dorothea-tanning/

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: www.famm.com/en/ www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037
Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel 
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Alyce Mahon on Dorothea Tanning

TODAY on the GWA podcast: curator SONNET STANFILL on ELSA SCHIAPARELLI!

Sonnet is the Senior Curator of Fashion at the V&A, where she has worked since 1999. Stanfill has curated numerous highly acclaimed exhibitions, such as New York Fashion Now, Ballgowns: British Glamour since 1950, and the landmark The Glamour of Italian Fashion (2014), which traveled to several museums across the US. She has published and lectured widely on various aspects of fashion design and holds an MA in the history of dress. But the reason why we are speaking with her today is because she has just curated the monumental exhibition, Elsa Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art at the V&A, which charts the fearless life and daring work of the artist, designer, surrealist, influencer and general pioneer of who the modern woman was and what she could be. A creator of surrealist wonderlands with her fantastical gowns with floating eyes, lips, and lobsters, woven jackets embellished with astrological symbolism and mirrors inspired by Versailles, plus carrot-shaped buttons with embroidered cauliflowers, Schiaparelli – who also made jewellery and perfumes and wrote extensively – was one of the most inventive people of the 20th century. Born in Rome in 1890, she fled her conservative life for London, New York, and later Paris, where she befriended the surrealists and built a business on a scale hardly any woman had done before. 

 Elsa Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, V&A South Kensington https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/schiaparelli?srsltid=AfmBOormAlPprtKeObeDZhw4NDLACOBGb9Z-ApA9ZHIsKAio0A3mDHAZ

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: www.famm.com/en/ www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037
Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Mikaela Carmichael. Music by Ben Wetherfield

Sonnet Stanfill on Elsa Schiaparelli

TODAY on the GWA Podcast: the esteemed scholar, author, and art historian DIANE APOSTOLOS-CAPPADONA on MARY MAGDALENE!

Professor Emerita of Religious Art & Cultural History and Haub Director of the Catholic Studies Program at Georgetown University, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Art History Program at The George Washington University, Apostolos-Cappadona has written extensively on art history. The author of Mary Magdalene: A Visual History (2023); A Guide to Christian Art (2020); Encyclopedia of Women in Religious Art (1996); Dictionary of Christian Art (1994); and The Spirit and the Vision: The Influence of Christian Romanticism on the Development of 19th-Century American Art (1995), and “In Search of Mary Magdalene: images and traditions” (2002)... Apostolos-Cappadona is one of the leading scholars in the world on religious art and, in particular, the image of Mary Magdalene. 

So - today - unlike in episodes where we deep-dive into a single artist, we will be taking an approach like we've previously done with Marina Warner on Eve, or Natalie Haynes on Medusa, and deep-diving into one of the most popular yet enigmatic figures in art: Mary Magdalene, who has been documented by artists in paint, sculpture, and more, for the past 16 centuries – and counting… and who seems to be portrayed differently every time. After all, Apostolos-Cappadona has referred to her as the most flexible figure in art. 

Look at images of her and you’ll see a reader, preacher, follower and witness; crying at the foot of the Cross, washing Christ’s feet or looking up to the heavens – repenting her sins with pearl-like tears – and too often conveniently exposing her chest. Sometimes identified by her jar of ointment or red robe (a contrast to the sanctified Virgin Mary’s blue), she is most popularly known, today, as Christ’s lover or a prostitute, despite no passage in the Bible describing her as such. Yet, the truth is we don’t know who she was, and it seems artists have adopted her in ways that coincide with their needs, and the needs of the time. 

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037
Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Tory Peters and Nada Smiljanic. Music by Ben Wetherfield

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona on Mary Magdalene

TODAY on the GWA Podcast: choreographer Meryl Tankard on her mentor and friend, the legendary dancer and choreographer: PINA BAUSCH (1940-2009).

Artist, choreographer, visionary, and trailblazer in bringing dance into the modern world, Pina Bausch – one of the most popular names when it comes to artists' influences – was hailed for her raw, haunting, experimental dances, and all-encompassing productions.

Born in 1940 in Germany in the midst of WW2, from an early age Pina took ballet and dance lessons. In the 1950s, a scholarship at Juilliard took her to NYC, a time of great artistic reinvention, and then back to Germany, where she founded Tanztheater Wuppertal and created her groundbreaking choreographies. While the group, at first, faced hostility, the crowd – and the world – soon realized her innovations. 

On the magic of dancing with Pina Bausch, Meryl told me: "Every time we moved it had an emotion behind it ... that's what really shocked everyone at the beginning, because dance had always hidden the pain, hidden the insecurities; we had beautiful hair and costumes. And Pina went, 'let's forget all that. Let's talk about what you are really feeling'. She choreographed vulnerability. She choreographed all our insecurities, and she put music to it. People were just like, wow, that's me. They could see themselves."

I meet with Meryl Tankard on the occasion of her creating a new encounter with Bausch's piece "Kontakthof", with “Kontakthof – Echoes of ‘78”, to be performed at Sadler’s Wells here in London (7–11 April). With nine of the original dancers returning to their roles, the production will integrate projections of archival footage from the original performance, reflecting the passage of time since its creation. And I can't wait to find out more!

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

"Kontakthof – Echoes of '78" https://www.sadlerswells.com/on-tour/current-productions/kontakthof-echoes-of-78/

Meryl Tankard on Pina Bausch

I am so excited to say that my guests on the GWA Podcast are the esteemed scholar and curator, Katlijne Van der Stighelen, and Royal Acdemy senior curator, Julien Domercq!

Part 1 – Katlijne Van der Stighelen
Part 2 – Julien Domercq

A professor at KU Leuven until 2024, who has published books on artist Anna Maria van Schurma, Katlijne is also a curator, having, in 1999, along with Mirjam Westen, curated the first ever exhibition on women artists in Belgium and the Netherlands. She is also the curator of Van Dyck l'Europeo: His Journey from Antwerp to Genoa and London', currently on view at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa. 

But, the reason why we are speaking with Katlijne today is because she has, according to some news outlets, made the greatest artistic discovery of the 21st century - and no, we are not talking about Banksy. It was digging around in a museum basement just over 30 years ago that Katlijne stumbled upon the extraordinary work of Michaelina Wautier, then a totally obscure name not even known to 17th century specialists, active in the mid-1600s and at famed for her colossal paintings of mythological scenes, smaller meticulously rendered, almost breathable garlands of dazzling flowers, and portraits of strong female saints and characters, not unlike her Roman contemporary, Artemisia Gentileschi. 

But clearly something got lost upon the way – because until Katlijne’s work, Wautier’s name had been merely a footnote in art history. But now, thanks to decades of her tireless work, she is righting that wrong with Wautier’s first ever exhibition in the UK - following critically acclaimed shows at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, MFA Boston, MAS-Museum in Antwerp, and more. 

Part one of this podcast will deep dive into this extraordinary artist – and story – and in the second half, we will walk around the exhibition with Royal Academy senior curator Julien Dormecq to transport you to London, and I can’t wait to find out more. 

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Tory Peters
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Michaelina Wautier told by Katlijne Van der Stighelen (part 1) and Julien Domercq (part 2)

TODAY on the GWA PODCAST: esteemed curator DITA AMORY, discussing HELENE SCHJERFBECK!

Currently the Robert Lehman Curator in Charge of the Robert Lehman Collection at The Met, Amory has curated numerous critically-acclaimed exhibitions, such as Pierre Bonnard: the Late Interiors, Madame Cézanne, Félix Vallotton, Vertigo of Color, and more. A graduate of art history at Trinity College, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she earned a master’s degree – Amory began her career as a librarian, before becoming Curator of Drawings, then Chief Curator at the National Academy of Design. She joined the Met in 1997 as Assistant Curator of the Robert Lehman Collection, taking charge of the department in 2007 as Acting Associate Curator in Charge, and later Curator in Charge.

And WOW has she worked on the most incredible projects since…. including the reason why we are speaking to her today: the extraordinary, current exhibition: Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck, that brings together 60 works by the Finnish-born artist, who travelled to Paris to study in the late 1800s, as one of few women who could be awarded an education on a par with their male counterparts. Leading an artistic life imbued with freedom, Schjerfbeck spent summers in Brittany – where she painted en plein air – producing radical paintings devoid of figures but full of modernist feeling. It was also here where she embarked on a life-long subject, her self-portrait, that she would tackle in Helsinki and beyond… She was an artist whose life moved with changes in the 20th century, and worked in a style that not only charted the changes in a war-filled world, but a woman battling with her own ageing. 

Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck is the first exhibition to showcase the work of the artist in a major US museum. On now, until April 5. https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/seeing-silence-the-paintings-of-helene-schjerfbeck

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Tory Peters and Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Dita Amory on Helene Schjerfbeck

TODAY on the GWA Podcast: the renowned art historian and writer, Nicholas Fox Weber discussing ANNI ALBERS!

A graduate of Columbia College and Yale University, who received his PhD at the University of Groningen, Weber is a prolific and esteemed author of over a dozen books – including The Bauhaus Group, Le Cor­busier, Balthus A Biography, Patron Saints, The Art of Babar, and many more – as well as being the founder of a non-profit organisation that supports arts, education and medical care in Senegal…

But! The reason why we are speaking to him today is because, for nearly 50 years, he has devoted himself to the lives and works of the pioneering 20th century German-born artists – who lived in the US for much of their adult life – Josef and Anni Albers. As the Executive Director of their foundation, Weber has written extensively on them, bringing their work to the fore, and championing and preserving their legacy. 

While Josef Albers is a trailblazing artist whose theories on colour, and teaching methods, have shaped much of contemporary art, it is the brilliant Anni Albers who we will be discussing today. Born in 1899, and a student of the Bauhaus and a teacher at Black Mountain College, Albers is known for spellbinding weavings that span large-scale practical wall-coverings to smaller thread-based works that she infused with geometric, rhythmic patterning and electric colouring. The first artist working in textile to be honoured with a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and a celebrated writer known for her books – On Designing / On Weaving – Albers, it is fair to say brought the medium into the modernist world, while also deeply rooting it in ancient textile traditions from around the world. 

I am delighted to be speaking to Weber ahead of the publication of his extraordinary new book, Anni Albers: A Life, out this April, that charts the life of this artist who he was lucky enough to call a close friend, and who we are lucky to now witness in a new way thanks to the extensive personal stories he has gathered from the many times they would meet, whereby he would rush to write down everything she said verbatim, so we could one day have this extraordinary record.

HIS BOOK: https://www.waterstones.com/book/anni-albers/nicholas-fox-weber//9780300269376?sv1=affiliate&sv_campaign_id=626889&awc=3787_1773140986_d2d13306eaf5d21d4b7bc0e74ed2dd43&utm_source=626889&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=adstrong

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Nicholas Fox Weber on Anni Albers

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the author, academic, screenwriter, creator of fantastical worlds and nocturnal roof-climber, Katherine Rundell. 

An award-winning non-fiction author for adults and fiction writer for children – whose books have sold over 4million copies worldwide, Rundell has penned works that span from the Impossible Creatures series – set in magical, endangered Archipelago – to Rooftoppers, about a young girl called Sophie who climbs the roofs of Paris in search of her mother, which is, one of my favourites. Because another of Rundell’s great works is Why You Should Read Children’s Books Even Though You Are So Old and Wise, a small yet mighty book that argues for children’s fiction as integral to our reading output. A place which invites us not only to understand the fundamentals of good and evil, but reminds us of the importance of taking kids seriously, as Sophie, the protagonist in Rooftoppers, reminds us: “Do not underestimate children, do not underestimate girls.” I also highly recommend Rundell’s lecture on this subject that was published in the London Review of Books last winter. 

A Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford and quondam fellow of All Souls College, Oxford – where she was admitted as the youngest fellow in 2008 – Rundell is also a scholar on the 16th century poet, preacher, politician, lawyer, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral (and more) John Donne, with her electrically-written biography, Super Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne that won her the Baillie Gifford Prize. 

A #1 NYT and ST bestselling author, the winner of Waterstones Book of the Year, and the Author of the Year, as recognised by the British Book Awards, Rundell is one of our greatest thinkers, writers, creators, and campaigner for “putting imagination first”. And it is reading her books that I am reminded of that superpower, the brilliance of human capability that not only gets us to dream up different worlds, but imagine how we can make this complex one a much more beautiful and better place. 

This week marks World Book Day 2026, and excitingly the publication of my first children's book, so I couldn't be more honoured to speak with Katherine today, about writing, art, books, and more. 

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KATHERINE'S BOOKS: https://www.waterstones.com/author/katherine-rundell/53343

MY CHILDREN'S BOOK! https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-story-of-art-without-men/katy-hessel/9780241824214

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Katherine Rundell – World Book Day Special!

Dame Tracey Emin is BACK on The GWA Podcast! 

Hailed for her paintings, videos, textiles, neons, writing, sculptures, installations, and now, her extraordinary work as an educator, raising the next generation of artists at TKE Studios in Margate, right by where we are recording today – Emin has been at the forefront of art for more than four decades. Born in Croydon, and raised in Margate with her twin brother Paul, Emin had a complex child- and teenagehood, which she details in her part-memoir, Strangeland – as well as in works such as Why I Never Became a Dancer or Mad Tracey From Margate. Officially leaving school aged 15, Emin went to Maidstone College of Art, and onto the Royal College – where she won over her interviewees with her impressive sketch book selection. 

In 1993, she kept a shop in Brick Lane, titled “The Shop”, which ended with a party on her 30th birthday, and that year had her first exhibition – at a then-new gallery called White Cube. On view were objects she had collected over the years – from teenage diaries to toys, paintings, drawings and unsent letters. She titled it My Major Retrospective, just in case she never had another show. However, this was just the start. 

Emin has since exhibited all over the world – most recently the Yale Center for British Art, where I saw her work a floor above JMW Turner, getting me to realise the painterly relationship between the two artists – despite working 250 years apart – from how Emin plays with moods akin to his stormy weathers, to how the bodies in her paintings evoke his mountainous landscapes, with vein-like rivers. As well as Palazzo Strozzi, highlighting Emin's relationship to the history and iconography in Italian art – such as life, death and the crucifixion, to the decay of the body and enlightenment through spiritual (and sexual) quests. It challenged the city’s history, revealing the rawness of a woman's perspective in a culture that so rarely addressed it. 

Now, we meet in Margate on the occasion of the largest – and perhaps the most important – exhibition in her life so far, “A Second Life” opening at Tate Modern on 27 February, in the very city where her artistic life thrived. But it’s also a show taking place after monumental personal shifts, such as her mother’s passing in 2016, surviving cancer in 2020, the opening of her free studio-based art school in 2023, but also when the world couldn’t be more excited for Emin. She has said of this show to be a “true celebration of living” and I can’t wait to find out more…

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION:

https://www.famm.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037

Follow us:
Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic
Music by Ben Wetherfield

Deborah Levy on Gertrude Stein

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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