Susan Hauptman (1947–2015) was an American artist who worked exclusively on paper with charcoal, pastel and, later, other elements, such as gold leaf, wire mesh and thread. She is best known for her stark, enigmatic, often expressionless self-portraits in which she depicted herself with precise and candid detail in ways critics described as strikingly androgynous and that confronted cultural notions of beauty, reality, femininity and masculinity. She has had one-person shows in several museums including the Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, FL, the

Oakland Museum The Oakland Museum of California or OMCA (formerly the Oakland Museum) is an interdisciplinary museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California, located adjacent to Oak Street, 10th Street, and 11th Street in Oakland, Ca ...

, Oakland, CA and the

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Desi ...

, Washington, D.C. Her later

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

s were of porcelain figures and fruit-box-type labels, fanciful and often romantic. They are thought to be narrative. Susan Hauptman's self is drawn both life-scale and larger-than-life. She draws close to a traditional definition of drawing, where the drawing fundamentals of value, tone, shading, composition and, to a lesser extent, line, are formal elements within each work, modulations of elemental light and shadow. These fundamentals are transformed by her— the artist as

alchemist Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...

. Her work transcends its materiality in and as drawing, offering us both the noun and verb of drawing, until we are presented with seemingly autonomous, illusionistic imaginative drawings, moments in an overarching narrative.Boettger, Suzann, "Face to Face," (exh. cat), Forum Gallery, 2002; Meskimmon, Marsha and Sawdon, Phil, "Drawing Difference: Connections Between Gender and Drawing," 2016 Her work is in the collections of numerous of major galleries and museums, including the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 100 ...

in New York City, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, the

Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery The National Portrait Gallery is a historic art museum between 7th, 9th, F, and G Streets NW in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Founded in 1962 and opened to the public in 1968, it is part of the Smithsonian Institution. Its collections ...

, Washington D.C., Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Fl.,

Arkansas Art Center The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts (AMFA), formerly known as the Arkansas Arts Center, is an art museum located in MacArthur Park, Little Rock, Arkansas. The museum is undergoing an expansion and renovation. During this time, it is closed to the ...

, Little Rock, AR,

Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts Achenbach is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Andreas Achenbach (1815–1910), German painter * Ernst Achenbach (1909–1991), German diplomat and politician * Gerd B. Achenbach (born 1947), German philosopher * Heinri ...

, San Francisco, CA, California

Palace of the Legion of Honor The Legion of Honor, formally known as the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, is an art museum in San Francisco, California. Located in Lincoln Park, the Legion of Honor is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which also ...

, San Francisco, CA;

, Oakland, CA, and the

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

, Richard Brown Baker Collection, New Haven, CT. She held numerous teaching positions, including the Lamar Dodd Professorial Chair at the University of Georgia from 1997 to 2000. She was married to Leonard Post, whom she often drew.

Gallery

File:Self Portrait with Feathers.jpg, ''Portrait (with feathers)'', portrait of the artist (on the left) with her husband, Leonard Post, on the right. 2007. File:Selfportrait La Perla 2.jpg, ''Self portrait (La Perla #2). 2006.'' File:Still Life Pear.jpg File:Susan Hauptman.jpg

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hauptman, Susan 1947 births 2015 deaths University of Michigan alumni 20th-century American artists 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American artists 21st-century American women artists Artists from Michigan Wayne State University alumni University of Georgia faculty National Endowment for the Arts Fellows American women academics