Rosemarie Beck (Rosemarie Beck Foundation)
Rosemarie Beck (1923 - 2003) emerged in the mid-50s as a figurative painter; she was a beloved teacher and mentor, and a gifted artist.
MessageCollection: Phaedra (1997-2003)
Painted by Beck when she was in her mid-70s, the “Phaedra" cycle was the last of her great mythological cycles. Beck had recently retired as a Professor of Art at Queens College, and was teaching at the New York Studio School. Prior to Phaedra, Beck had worked from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the myth of Orpheus, Sophocles’ Antigone, and several narratives drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
The tragedy of Phaedra, based on a play by Euripides, is the means by which Beck framed the series’ primary figures: Phaedra’s Nurse and the Attendants. These latter working women - perhaps a nod to Las Meninas by her venerated master, Velazquez - busily adorn the walls around their queen with large bolts of cloth, as if to mark out the space as female territory. These women are always on their feet, engaged in physical labor that seems incidental to the drama playing out in their midst. Yet their omnipresent labor cannot be ignored. The image of a woman handling cloth with professional skill inevitably leads us back to Beck herself, a woman who demonstrates assured mastery of the wrought canvas.
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