Gender and art

Women who built careers as illustrators in “Mad Men”-era New York were few and far between, and one is Barbara Nessim. In the early 1960s she became known for brightly colored pop portraits of women, made with fluid, expressive lines, which appeared in Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar and girlie magazines. During feminism’s rise in the early ’70s her focus on women and gender roles drew the interest of publications covering women’s issues, like Ms. (Gloria Steinem was once her roommate), New York and Time. In the ’80s Ms. Nessim became one of the first illustrators to work with computers, which may be how she is best known today.

“Barbara Nessim: An Artful Life,” Victoria and Albert Museum, London,  through May 19.

"Barbara Nessim's images begin with a line, and in their finality capture something at once elegant and wild, feminine and androgynous, precise and remarkably simple.

The iconic illustrator, raised in the Bronx, began studying at Pratt in 1956 where she majored in graphic art and illustration. In a time dominated by Abstract Expressionist machismo, Nessim created artworks of a different breed. Minimalist graphics that combine elegance and grit, featuring gender-bending, street smart superheroes who were as traditionally fashionable as they were badass. This methodology of simultaneously working inside and outside the lines characterized Nessim's artistic career, like her simultaneous postures as a commercial illustrator and countercultural fine artist.

Over the next 50 years Nessim worked with psychedelic graphics, rebellious cut-up collages and glam rock pastels. Her work has appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, Time, Ms, New York Magazine, The Boston Globe and was combined in a retrospective at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London."