Dotty Attie
Dotty Attie is an acclaimed feminist painter, and the co-founder of the first all-female cooperative art gallery in America, A.I.R. Gallery. Her work has been widely exhibited and is in many major museum collections, including the Whitney, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery in London. She also has the rare distinction of having an all-female punk rock band named after her. Attie currently resides in New York, New York.
Early life and work
Attie was born in Pennsauken, New Jersey, and discovered her interest in art at an early age, as she found that she was interested in drawing. She was heavily influenced by her father, who brought her to art classes in Philadelphia and provided her with art books, most notably ones with illustrations of works by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Although her favorite living artist happens to be Gerhard Richter.Attie continued her education at the Philadelphia College of Art, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1959. While in college, Attie was primarily an Abstract Expressionist painter, but often realistically recreated the likeness of photographs on her canvases. Following her time at the Philadelphia College of Art, Attie continued her education through fellowships at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School in 1960, and the Art Students League in 1967.
Awards and recognition
Dotty Attie received multiple grants for her artwork, one being the Creative Artist Public Service Grant in 1976-77 and another being the National Endowment for the Arts Grant, which she won in 1976-77 and 1983–84.Later career
Her most recent exhibitions have been at the P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York City. What Would Mother Say featured children engaging in actions which, while innocent, may be construed by adults as provocative or shameful; each work is accompanied by two panels of text. More recently, The Lone Ranger served as a follow-up to What Would Mother Say and included a photo of a boy kissing a horse. According to Attie, that little boy grew up to be the Lone Ranger. Attie expresses that “All of my work is about our hidden selves, the part of us we don’t want to share with others”, and this was her inspiration for “The Lone Ranger”. The overarching idea of the show is that "If a little boy does something, he will grow up to be a hero. But the little girls, doing the same thing, they all become whores." In 2013 she was working on a series of painting called the “Worst Case Scenarios”.Attie's paintings are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery in London, and many others.
In addition to numerous honors in the art world, such as her induction into the National Academy in 2013, Attie has the unusual distinction of having a punk rock band named after her; the female-led indie quartet Dottie Attie, based in Portland, Oregon, formed in 2013. Attie has been photographed wearing the band's t-shirts.