The Woodmans and the alluring shores
Betty Woodman, Francesca Woodman, and George Woodman also succumbed to the lure of beaches and seashores in their work, each artist reimagining the beachscape with a distinct sensibility and overlapping visual languages.
Francesca and Betty present the female form on the beach in a variety of ways. Francesca sets figures against rugged New England and New York coasts, framing woman in and as nature as in the work of Ana Mendieta while Betty’s exuberant bathers stretch across Mediterranean shores distinguished by pattern and color. Each takes a unique approach to setting a scene, staging female figures in relation to one another on the shore, engaging through reflection or gestural interaction. Meanwhile, George and Betty draw upon architectural motifs to create spatial illusions that complicate the viewer’s sense of place—his photo of a photo of a seaside bather affixed to a balustrade echoes her triptych with painterly surfaces recalling Bonnard’s still lifes.
These works reveal a shared interest in the figure and the shore—in which the beach transforms from backdrop to active terrain, where body and environment coalesce in layered acts of seeing and being seen.