Phyllida Barlow: a life we need to know about
Artist Phyllida Barlow died this past week at the age of 78. She was on the periphery of my art knowledge but social media dropped crumbs of information to mark her passing and I followed them. So worth it, as the fuller story of Barlow’s life is a tonic for the frustration I’ve been experiencing about the gender inequity of the art world.
Plus, I took her story personally.
When Barlow was at art school in the 1960s, one professor said to her that he was not going to pay her much attention in class as in less than a decade she would be “having babies and making jam.” She replied, “What's wrong with that?“
And went on to have babies. Five of them, in fact, with a fellow artist.
Her practice shared time with her parenting. Barlow became a master of creating work within small bubbles of time: “I had instigated this rule for myself that there had to be something in the studio when the time was up- It didn’t matter what, good or bad, just something had to be there to prove I had been there.” (Artforum). An entire body of work is called “Nightworks” because time was found while her children were sleeping.
Her work is concurrently monumental and domestic. She has a language of repeated forms and one recognizes tables, toy towers and bridges, balls, ironing boards, windows and walls, a sort of living room language. Her materials are also household scraps: styrofoam, cardboard, plaster and drippy paint, bits of wood and sticks.
But the works are all larger than life. Once she blows these forms up and puts them in a space that is inconsistent with our prior knowledge of them, we are forced to regard them differently. There’s a dialogue between her massive sculptures and the space that contains them; Barlow herself says that the space is as important as the works themselves. She wants us to navigate where we are in the space in relation to the pieces – in her show at the Royal Academy, London, she closed off the exit door so that you had to go back and see all the works again from a different angle.
I am smitten with the multiple dichotomies in her work, the jugglings of so many pairs.
But her career story also strikes a chord with me. She parented while maintaining a practice. She took up teaching to support her family – and by all accounts was an incredibly inspirational instructor. In fact, she taught Rachel Whiteread, a powerful fave of mine. She taught for 40 years and then left to focus on her practice.
Her practice as her full-time job and her children fully cooked, she is now 65 years old. Thirteen years left in her life and what she manages to achieve by building on her well laid foundations of maintaining a practice while parenting and teaching - doing the work when she could- is nothing short of mind blowing.
Because Phyllida Barlow goes on to accomplish the following: her work is recognized and represented by the international gallery Hauser & Wirth, she has numerous solo shows both in the UK and internationally, she represents the UK at the Venice Biennale in 2017, she is elected Academician at the Royal Academy, made a member of the Order of the British Empire in 2015 and is knighted a “Dame” by Queen Elizabeth in 2021.
The title “emerging artist” is generally a sexy mid twenties/early 30s designation where eager, raw potential is readily recognized and art institutions- the galleries, fellowships, residencies and awards - want to be near its heady glow. I often lament the unrecognized category of artists, likely women, whose practice fully emerges when full throttle parenting is finished. The drive of an “emerging artist” is there, accompanied by an accumulated wisdom, but art institutions often cannot see it clearly, their vision blurred when it presents as a 40 or 50 year old parent (tougher accreditation: “mother”).
Phyllida Barlow’s story is a beautiful exception and a balm to that lament.
I am grateful for the dichotomies of her work, the consistency of her practice and the art world’s momentary clarity of vision in recognizing and supporting Barlow's intention to emerge.
And because we live in a video culture and because it’s important the artist talks about their work in their own words, here is Barlow taking us through her 2017 installation at the British Pavillion at the Venice Biennale.
