NAWA Luminaries – Audrey Flack (1931 – 2024)

NAWA Luminaries is the intersection of NAWA’s Historical Research and current events around the United States, highlighting celebrated NAWA members.

Audrey Flack at the Southampton Arts Center on November 12, 2023. Photo by James F Dawson

We at NAWA mourn the passing of Audrey Flack, a NAWA Honorary VP and vocal advocate for women artists. Flack, a critically acclaimed painter and sculptor who may be best known for her contribution to the Photorealism movement and remarkable spirit, was a working artist for some 70 years. In several media events in the last years of her life and a memoir, With Darkness Came Stars, published three months ago, Flack reflected on the art world. Drawing on her experiences as part of the New York School of artists in the 1950s and 60s, her singular achievements as a female Photorealist, her leaving the canvas for sculpture and public art in the 1980s and 90s, and her ultimate return to painting, she encourages us to follow our passions and our unique interests.

Flack had engaging stories to share: her uncomfortable experience with renowned modernist Joseph Albers, who recruited her into his BFA program at Yale; a more direct and explicit sexual advance by the super-star Jackson Pollack; how she managed to raise two children, one of whom is autistic while establishing her career, and what it’s like to make significant changes in your art and risk losing the support of the art world.

A 2021 podcast conducted by Hyperallergic’s Hrag Vartanian, including artist Sharon Louden, gave us Flack’s thoughts about why she made art: “Art takes you out of this veil of tears, out of this profane time we live in, and great art brings you to another place. It really does. And that … look, we’re all going to die. I’m facing it. You know, you gotta face it. We try very hard not to. But art can do something that can cut across time, cut across centuries. I stand in front of a late Rembrandt self-portrait and I just … 500 years are gone, but he’s right there for me…. But I think you have to keep in mind maybe there are different kinds of art. Maybe I’m just talking about one specific kind of art that I can’t live without.”

Flack elaborated on her thinking: “Art is not a commodity,” she added. “You shouldn’t be afraid to like what you like, and it’s just … I don’t know how we could live without it in this world. I think we’re better for it.” She referenced the Pandemic in her comments, but her words feel appropriate today, too: “There’s time for protest, and there’s time for anger, and there’s time to present all of that stuff. But there’s also a need for other kinds of images, for images in the collective unconscious that bring you some kind of peace or healing in the other part of your brain. And art can do that too.… And so there’s something that art can offer us through imagery and beauty and peace or something for what, for whoever responds to whatever is presented. That’s what I think is very important now. That’s the wisdom of being my age. You got to have it. You don’t want to go through all that and get sick….It helps us live. It helps us deal with our mortality.”

Importantly for NAWA, Flack also left us with renewed energy for our cause. In the 2021 podcast, Louden had asked Flack what she had to say to women artists today, who, in her opinion, still need more community and sharing among those identifying as women. Flack’s answer: “ I’d say I love you all. Keep doing it and keep together and be kind to each other. And kind to the men too, because they need it more than we do even. And you know, more power to us.”

Flack embodied her advocacy when she joined Mary Ahern, Roz Dimon, and me for a photograph of NAWA women at her 2023 talk at the Southampton Arts Center.

As we mourn the loss of Audrey Flack, it is an opportunity to redouble our efforts as a women’s art organization, which long ago determined we could be strong advocates for each other.

May you rest in peace, Audrey, and may your name be for a blessing and a reminder of what we can achieve.