Knowing Yourself Through Art with Nicole Eisenman

July 7, 2020
People crowd into a room to watch a performer. In the foreground of the paiting a person wearing dark glasses and a bright shirt is seated in the doorway watching the act.
Nicole Eisenman, Ariana’s Salon, 2013, Carnegie Museum of Art. © Nicole Eisenman.

“In my work, it’s a yearning to be known–not for someone else to know me, but to know myself. It’s such a funny thing how work comes out of you and you look at it, and then you have this connection and distance at the same time. It’s an odd sensation of bringing yourself together.”—Nicole Eisenman, From “Nicole Eisenman at Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles Projects,” Mousse Magazine, 2018

Nicole Eisenman is one of the foremost figurative painters of our time. Combining a visual language of art history with personal allegory, Eisenman’s works offer a forthright, comedic, and critical mediation on contemporary life.