Jane Kaufman | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1938-05-26)May 26, 1938 New York, New York |
| Died | June 2, 2021(2021-06-02) (aged 83) Andes, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Artist |
Jane Kaufman was an American artist who was affiliated with thePattern and Decoration movement. She was also a member of the art groupGuerrilla Girls.
Jane Kaufman was born in New York City to Herbert Kaufman, an advertising executive, and Roslyn Kaufman. She got her B.S. in art education fromNew York University (1960) and her M.F.A. fromHunter College (1965).[1][2]
In 1972, Kaufman got a job teaching atBard College, making her one of their first women professors.[1][2] Later in her career (1983–91) she was an adjunct instructor atCooper Union.
During the last years of her life, she lived in theCatskills.[2]
Kaufman began her career in the early 1970s as a minimalist painter of large canvases.[1][2] She had a solo show at the Whitney museum in 1971[2] and took part in the 1973 Whitney Biennial, drawing praise from critic Hilton Kramer.[3] She went on to work with decorative motifs in her work as well as decorative materials such as embroidery and other forms of sewing, feathers, and beads.[1] As part of this process, she shifted to making screens, wall hangings, and quilts. Her pattern vocabulary drew inspiration from American quilting traditions as well as from Persian and Japanese textiles and North African mosaics.[1][4]
Unlike some artists in what became known as thePattern and Decoration movement, Kaufman's pioneering work in this genre often had a feminist edginess.[1] In 2010 she created an embroidery that galleries did not choose to exhibit - its central message was "Abstinence makes the church grow fondlers".[1] She was a member of the Second Wave feminist art groupGuerrilla Girls and was one of the few members of that group to use her own name rather than remain anonymous.[1][2]
In 1978, Kaufman curated the first Pattern and Decoration group exhibition at Alessandra Gallery in New York.[1] Although the work fell out of prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, theHudson River Museum held a retrospective in 2008, and another retrospective was mounted by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2019.[1][4]
Kaufman was awarded both the prestigiousGuggenheim fellowship (1974) and grant from theNational Endowment for the Arts (1989).
Among Kaufman's public commissions is the sculptureCrystal Hanging in theTip O’Neill Federal Building in Boston.
Kaufman's work is in the permanent collections of theMuseum of Modern Art,[5] theWhitney Museum,[6] and theSmithsonian Institution,[7] among others.
Her image is included in the iconic 1972 posterSome Living American Women Artists byMary Beth Edelson.[8]
Kaufman married the painterDoug Ohlson in 1966. They divorced in the 1970s.
