NEW YORK, NY.- During a trip to Fort Worth, Texas in 2005 to do some research at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, American artist Nancy Davidson attended her first Women's Professional Rodeo event taking place in a ring next door. She witnessed the last bucking bronco ride of American rodeo champion Jan Youren who was 63-years-old at the time. Davidson couldn't believe a woman Youren's age was still able to participate in such a death-defying sport. The experience ignited her life-long fascination with the iconic American cowgirl who she describes as "the wild child of early feminism."
Over the next seven years, Davidson's art would incorporate the cowgirl and her celebrated place in American culture. The work was recently published for the first time in book form in Cowgirl (
Daylight Books), a hybrid publication that interweaves historical photographs of cowgirls with images of the artist's bold, colorful, inflatable sculptures that offer an absurdist and playful exploration of the myth and reality of the American cowgirl.
A character unique to the American frontier, the cowgirl has captivated the public's imagination since she burst on the rodeo scene in the 1890s with her no-holds-barred spirit of independence and her superb ranch and rodeo riding skills. Davidson will talk about her work inspired by the American cowgirl at the New York Academy of Art (111 Franklin Street) on Wednesday, September 9 at 6:30pm. The talk is followed by a book signing for Davidson's new book Cowgirl. The event is open to the public, first come, first serve.
Cowgirl includes photographs of "Dustup," Davidson's monumental work that is a 21-foot-tall inflatable installation inspired by the classic comic dustball images. "Dustup" depicts an epic battle between three cowgirls who are lashed together and tossed up in the air with legs and bulbous forms everywhere, boots kicking and leather trailing. The word "dustup" is a phrase that originated in the American West and was first used in 1879.
In an interview with artist Kate Gilmore for Brooklyn Rail that is re-printed in Cowgirl, Davidson says: "I realized that the rodeo cowgirl maintained her own place outside the structure of society. She did things that were unacceptable ... that's the kind of transgressive complexity, self-motivated dominance I'm attracted to in popular culture."
In the 1950's the cowgirl was embraced by Hollywood and her image changed dramatically. Although some female movie stars were accomplished rodeo riders, the cowgirl's skills were underplayed and her femininity was transformed into overt-sexuality. Davidson's voluptuous, cartoon-like forms representing boobs, butts, legs, and other body parts that seem to be bursting at their vinyl-nylon seams poke fun at female stereotypes depicted on the silver screen and America's "super-sized" culture.
Cowgirl includes texts by Jessica Brier, former Curatorial Assistant, Photography, SFMOMA, and American West historians Renee M. Laegreid, Associate Professor, History of the American West, University of Wyoming; and Leisl Carr-Childers, Assistant Professor, University of Northern Iowa, who make reference to Rhinestone cowgirls and the emergence of the cowgirl in American popular culture at the turn of the 20th century.
Nancy Davidson is an interdisciplinary artist, working primarily in sculpture and installation. Davidson grew up in Chicago and received a B.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1975 where she began her professional career, exhibiting in solo and group shows in 1977 and '78 including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Walker Art Center. In 1979 Davidson relocated to New York. During the mid-to-late eighties, she began a series of sculptural investigations into the feminized body as theater. After 1992 Davidson refocused her work with sculpture, installation and photography, using inflated weather balloons to challenge the notions of contemporary monumental sculpture while simultaneously repurposing comedic tropes of bodily mass, fleshiness and beauty. In 1999-2000 The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia exhibited Davidson's installations and sculptures in the exhibition Breathless. The artist's first video, named Breathless, was made as part of the immersive media for this show. Davidson continued to exhibit widely, including at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio in 2001, and the Robert Miller Gallery in New York in 2001. Creative Capital funded Davidson's Cowgirl research and project. "Dustup" was exhibited at the Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, in the fall of 2012 and an expanded version was exhibited at the Boca Museum of Art in Boca Raton, FL. in 2013.
Davidson's honors include the Guggenheim Fellowship (2014); Creative Capital (2005); Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2001); Anonymous Was a Woman Award (1997); Yaddo Residency (1980, 2003); Massachusetts Council of Arts, Individual Artists Fellowship (1981); and NEA (1979).
