Barbara Nessim: An Artful Life

Date: 11 April - 19 May 2013
Museum: Victoria & Albert Museum (SW7 2RL)
Opening Hours: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Sat, Sun: 10am - 5.45pm, Fri: 10am - 10pm
Free Entry

To get a deeper insight on her career, work, and life we asked Barbara Nessim a few questions.




About the artist: 
Barbara Nessim is an international known illustrator and educator. Her successful career is undoubtedly due to the creativity, the freshness and the uniqueness of her works. One of the few female freelance illustrators of her time, that designed everything from shoes and apparel to textiles. Ultimately the artist became more selective in her creations and amazed the audience by using the computer in the execution of illustration's art.


About the exhibition: 
About the exhibition: "An artful life" presents some of the best works of Barbara Nessim from her experience as designer for shoes to her collage applied on some photograph of the models.

INTERVIEW WITH BARBARA NESSIM

How did you discover your passion for the art design?

I knew I wanted to be an artist when I was 10. My mother was a clothing designer and I loved watching her work. We would do projects together like making necklaces or fixing a dress she bought for me and add bits of lace to it. She made her own hats with veils and flowers – simple and elegant – This was the 1940’s so picture a movie star from that era and you have an idea of her style.

In grade school we had a special art class. I started school an hour earlier to attend it from the 7^th grade on. Later I went to the High School of Industrial Art, renamed Art and Design. My college years were spent at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn NY. It was a constant immersion in art that fuelled my passion. If you love to work at something it never feels like work. I loved school!


Your art is often described as graceful and elegant, with a “flowing” line. Do you agree with that statement? To which extent does it really represent your works?

I can see how one would describe my art as that but when I draw a line I am not aware of the flow and grace of it – it just happens – I love to do Latin dancing, Salsa to be exact, and for me the music moves my body and makes me dance. If I had to think about the steps or what I look like while I’m dancing it would be intrusive to the pleasure of dancing. That’s how I feel about drawing – I just create what makes me feel good and I appreciate that I can enjoy the process as I do it. Sometimes I look at what I’ve done and wonder how I did it. Sometimes I think I could never do that again – and then the page turns and I’m on the next one – doing it all over again but this time different. It is all so mysterious in a way. I look at the 92 sketch books I’ve amassed since the early 70’s and think it is amazing that I did all that – and that is only my sketch books – and in each one they all have ‘flowing lines’ and I wonder how they look so finished – it’s only a sketch book – it was never my intent for them to feel ‘finished’ and when you look at the aggregate that is what you come away with.


You have always been a dynamic artist, interested in many different aspect of your field. How important is it for an artist to always be ready to face new challenges?

Challenges – now that is an interesting word – one of the meanings is “A test of one's abilities or resources in a demanding but stimulating undertaking” which is the way you meant it - but it also has some negative aspects to it. When I think of a ‘challenge’ I think of invention. How can I find a way to accomplish what I’m thinking of creating? I have always said to my assistants that every project I think of doing I have to invent the process of how to achieve it. We are talking about a time period of over 50 years. That is what keeps me interested in it.

Curiosity is what drove me to learn how to use a computer. In 1982, Time inc. invited me to be an Artist in Residence at their Time Video Information Services (TVIS).  It was a pilot program that was using computers to deliver news and information to a select audience. Evenings were the only time I was allowed to work there. In this case I didn’t think of ‘invention’ but how to organize the learning process. It was an entirely new way to think about how to create something using tools I was completely unfamiliar with. I devised a system that worked. Even though I had a loose-leaf binder tutorial to follow I had to make my own ‘book of learning’. To this day I am still learning about the computer and how to use it. Now everyone knows every time you get a new computing device, such as a phone, one has to learn how to use it all over again, so the device becomes seamlessly integrated with your life.

I think it is important in every profession, not only art, or the arts in general, that you are always looking for new ways to interest yourself. That’s why when asked to design shoes in 1972 I said ‘yes’ even though I had little idea of how to do it. Designing textiles and clothes in the 60’s was fun. I had to make a living why not make it fun!


You started your career in a period in which women, as you said in an interview, could just be “secretaries, teachers, nurses, or wives”. How difficult was for you to go on with your work and to achieve your role of famous artist?

Firstly when I hear ‘famous artist’ I find it hard to relate to. I don’t feel ‘famous’. I do my work and am happy when people respond positively to it. When I was working as an illustrator and someone actually said they knew my work, it always delighted and surprised me.

Now getting back to the first part of the question. Think 1955, I was 16. I knew I was going to be an artist. I was attending art school. I also knew what was expected of me, and most every other young woman of that time. It was to get married and have children. I didn’t think I wanted children but then how do you know that? At 16 I figured I would not be married until I was 25. At that time 25 seemed so old when the accepted average age for marriage was 18 to 22. I calculated, 4 years of high school, 4 years of college and 4 years of work at the very least. I didn’t know what kind of artist I would be exactly and I thought it would reveal itself in time.

Most young woman I was growing up with in my Bronx, middle class, neighbourhood were planning to be a teacher or a secretary, of course only until she married and didn’t have to ‘work’ anymore.

In middle school we were being groomed for marriage. In the 6^th grade, at 12, we had sewing, where we made aprons and in Home Economics we learned how to cook and wash dishes. In the 8^th grade, at 14, we had a typing course. The boys had Shop where they did woodworking.

Fast forward to college – I had to plead with my mom to ask my father to ‘allow’ me to go to college. He thought if I was schooled I would be ‘too smart’ and no man would want to marry me. My parents were immigrants from the Middle East and that was their culture. It was doubly hard for my mother to work being the only woman to work outside the house in our large apartment building. But that is another story.

When I finally finished Pratt Institute my father truly expected I would marry my then boyfriend of the past 3 years. That’s what everyone expected.

Fortunately, living at home with my parents and younger brother and sister after college, I could save $5000 and have a ‘cushion’ before I left home. I achieved my goal after two years and only thought of that money to be used in case I didn’t received enough freelance work to pay my expenses.

I started freelancing by sending out woodcut mailers to companies I wanted to do book jacket art for and got a job right away. I was doing some freelance work when I was in collage for small agencies and a printing company. I also worked as a textile designer 3 days a week at $25 dollars a day.

My parents saw I was happy, and I was focused on a career, I was trying to find my way in the world so they began to encourage me. I comforted my dad that I would marry but not then. That was my life at home in 1962. I was 22. In that same year I moved out of our house to a one-room apartment with my sister, who was a secretary. She moved back home after four months and I became roommates with the journalist, Gloria Steinem. We roomed together for six years until I moved out to my own apartment in 1968.

Meeting art directors and showing my portfolio was interesting. Most art directors in advertising agencies were men. There were some women editors and art directors in publishing houses but not many. I was not aware of gender issues. When you are a single artist showing your portfolio to one to three art directors a day, on the two days you were not working as a textile designer, and you are busy trying to get work you are not thinking about the social implications of gender. I was just trying to have a social life as well as a work life and still keep my independence.

Gradually I stopped doing textile and clothing design when I started teaching at the School of Visual Arts in 1967. I was the second woman hired there. I taught one illustration-based class in the Advertising and Illustration department. I always wanted some source of steady dependable income that is one of the reasons I taught. I was also becoming aware I was a role model for women in the class. That was the late 60’s. !n the very early 70’s my both parents passed away within a year of each other.


To what extent is the gender issue represented in your works?

In the early 70’s the women’s movement started. Ms Magazine appeared in 1972 and one of the main founders was my friend and ex-roommate, Gloria Steinem. I illustrated a feature story, Women and Madness by Phyllis Chesler, in the first issue. Since my work was always about women I started to get more illustration work about woman’s issues, such as balancing careers and family life and articles empowering women.

Of course with the advent of Ms Magazine and other women centric periodicals women, including myself, became more aware of the gender divide. I started my WomanGirl series at that period which continued for a few years. In the 60’s I was drawing women and their issues without fully realizing it. Today I know it was a way of releasing subconscious feelings and recognizing there were a lot of unanswered questions.

My sketchbooks were where I did all my questioning – I just drew anything that came to mind and didn’t edit my thoughts or tear out any pages. My sketchbooks are where I went to ‘mine’ ideas for illustration jobs that kept flowing in. Most of the illustration jobs were about women and their lives, how they were changing and what they were doing. It was a time when reproductive issues were rising and in-vitro fertilizing was taking hold. The world was changing and I was swimming along with it, doing work and living everyday as best I could. I became fully aware of how gender was reflected in my work.

During the middle 70’s my personal life became clearer and I re-met a man in 1975 that I dated when I was 16. We were married in 1980 when I was 41. 

In the later part of the 70’s I started on my Genetic Synthesis series. These large pastel heads were meant to convey a total integration of every race walking the earth. This investigation started my thinking about global issues that led me to doing my Flag series in the late 80’s.

At the same time I was introduced to the computer as a tool for making art and in 1982 I taught myself how to use it to make art, as I explained earlier. The Flag series addressed issues of migration, immigration, integration and population growth. Besides exploring gender as an issue, my focus for the flag series turned to exploring cultural similarities between countries and people that live in them. All people are engaged in everyday activities, working, sleeping, eating, families, communicating and the like.

Today, new media and the somewhat sudden introduction of the internet, has heightened the awareness of cultural differences. One could say the Smart Phone is the Pandora’s box of this time we are living in now. In my opinion we are in the midst of cultural confusion.

As in the words of Gloria Steinem, she has said, “it takes 200 years to bring about a change”. Only time will tell.

Studies for The Model Project  
2008-2009 
Barbara Nessim & Karl Rudisill (Photographer)  
1. Ancient Beauty  
2. Historical Glance  
3. InVision
4. Young Icon  
5. Runway Runner