Hauptman, Susan

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. Critics described her works as strikingly androgynous and confrontational toward cultural notions of beauty, reality, femininity, and masculinity. Hauptman's exhibitions were held at several esteemed institutions, including the Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; the Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Jeremy Stone Gallery. Her works at the Jeremy Stone Gallery further cemented her reputation for challenging traditional gender representations through art. Her later still lifes 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...