Nicole Eisenman

A painter who came to prominence in the 1990s, Eisenman was awarded the prestigious McArthur Fellowship in 2015 for "restoring to the representation of the human form a cultural significance that had waned during the ascendancy of abstraction in the 20th century." Her work often deals with themes of sexuality, comedy, and community, and draws equally from art history and popular culture. Her subjects range from introspective portraits of friends and critical scenes of contemporary life to imagined superheroes, literary characters, and references to other eras of history. Depicting two nude figures in a romantic embrace, Saturnista evokes both the rawness and tenderness of human desire. Typical of Eisenman's figures, they do not conform to traditional notions of gender or anatomical convention. Instead their bodies appear malleable and ambiguous, rendering their identities open spaces of possibility.