Audrey Flack

American artist (born 1931)

Audrey Flack (born May 30, 1931) is an American artist. Her work pioneered the art genre of photorealism and encompasses painting, printmaking, sculpture, and photography. Flack has numerous academic degrees, including both a graduate and an honorary doctorate degree from Cooper Union in New York City. Additionally she has a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from Yale University and attended New York University Institute of Fine Arts where she studied art history. In May 2015, Flack received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Clark University, where she also gave a commencement address. Flack's work is displayed in several major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Flack's photorealistic paintings were the first such paintings to be purchased for the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection, and her legacy as a photorealist lives on to influence many American and International artists today. J. B. Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, organized a retrospective of her work, and Flack's pioneering efforts into the world of photorealism popularized the genre to the extent that it remains today. Audrey Flack is an Honorary Vice President of the National Association of Women Artists.

Flack attended New York's High School of Music & Art. She studied fine arts in New York from 1948 to 1953, studying under Josef Albers among others. She earned a graduate degree and received an honorary doctorate from Cooper Union in New York City, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Yale University. She studied art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

Audrey Flack is best known for her photo realist paintings and was one of the first artists to use photographs as the basis for painting. Flack discusses the fact that she is self taught in sculpture. She incorporates religion and mythology into her sculpture rather than the historical or everyday subjects of her paintings. Her sculptures often demonstrate a connection to the female form, including a series of diverse, heroic women and goddess figures. These depictions of women differ from those of traditional femininity, but rather are athletic, older, and strong. As Flack describes them: "they are real yet idealized the 'goddesses in everywoman.'" The project was never fully realized, however, as protestors in the mid late 1990s objected to Queen Catherine's ties to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. (Others objected to the statue of a monarch overlooking a Revolutionary War battleground.) Flack nevertheless remained dedicated to the project, and notes that she endeavored to depict Catherine as biracial, reflecting her Portuguese background and paying homage to the ethnic diversity of the borough of Queens.