SchoolArts - April 2007

Audrey Flack has been represented by the Louis K. Meisel Gallery since 1972.

Discussion Questions

1. How does scale or size affect the message sent by a work of art?

2. List the objects in one of Flack’s artworks. What do they seem to symbolize? What do you think the artist’s message is?

3. Stare at the colors in one of Flack’s paintings. How do they affect you?

“The mark o teacher is h ability to re individuality encourage i

4. Discuss the space and composi-
tion in one of Flack’s photoreal-
ist paintings. Does
it seem crowded or
empty? Could objects
actually sit like this
in real life? How does
Flack suggest depth
in this painting?

— Audrey
in Art &

5. Flack prefers her paintings to be known as super-realist rather than photorealist art. In what ways is her art super real?

6. Compare Marilyn (Vanitas) to a seventeenth-cen-tury Dutch vanitas still life. What do they have in common?

7. Where might be an appropriate place to display this art? Explain why you selected this place.

Nude clay maquette for Recording Angel in Flack’s studio.

Resources

Flack, Audrey. Personal interview. 4

Oct., 2006.

Flack, Audrey, “Notes on Creating” from Art & Soul. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1986.

have wings, arms, and drapes
and some don’t. Many of these
are maquettes or small models
for much larger sculptures
that will be cast in bronze.
She has completed a num-
ber of colossal civic sculp-
tures aided by an assistant
who scales and enlarges her
maquettes using a pantograph, the
same tool that Michelangelo used to
enlarge his statues. She also paints
watercolor pictures of scenes around
East Hampton, New York where her
second studio is located.

In December 2006, her more than ten-foot-tall Recording Angel was installed at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville. Like each of Flack’s strong-bodied feminine statues, Recording Angel is rich in symbolism and reminiscent of classical sculpture. This winged angel holds a disk and a plumed quill. The biblical angel who records the deeds of all in the book of life is usually male, but Flack’s angel is female and holds objects referencing musical recording.