Feuerman’s Fragments (1976): In Search of Wholeness

By Victoria Noel-Johnson

In 1976, the year in which Carole A. Feuerman embarked on her earliest sculptural series of work entitled Fragments, Lucy R. Lippard published her book From the Center. Feminist Essays on Women’s Art. Bringing together a collection of Lippard’s recent written work, it includes a chapter containing passages of articles and letters entitled “Fragments”. As a feminist art historian and critic focused on the work of female artists, the choice behind the word “Fragments” (rather than “Extracts” or “Excerpts”) is as intentional as Feuerman’s reference to her early sculptures, a choice that surpasses mere physical description of truncated bodily forms. The concept of stratification, particularly pertinent to the different hats that are habitually worn during a woman’s lifetime (daughter, mother, wife, lover, friend, professional worker) and the residue or “fragment” of one narrative giving rise to another constitutes an integral part of what it means to be a woman. Conceived as layered experiences, feelings, and knowledge, these “fragments” embrace female sensibility and collectively provide an image of female self-integrity founded on a sense of inner peace.

Following on from the growing momentum of the feminist movement in the 1960s that insisted on answers to basic issues regarding sexual inequality and discrimination, as well as greater sexual freedom with women insisting on controlling their own bodies, female art historians began to ask questions about the history of art and how the dominant male gaze of the art world (as art historian, artist, patron and collector) had affected art history literature and criticism. The groundbreaking essay by Linda Nochlin “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” (ARTnews, New York, January 1971) challenged her (female and male) peers to investigate the systemic biases and institutional barriers that had consistently excluded or marginalised women from the art world, including the acknowledgement of the male-centric opinion of art history and the art world.[1] Emboldened by the creation of new pathways about once taboo subjects involving the female body and sex, Nochlin’s article triggered a wave of female art criticism that confronted such issues head on. In 1973, for example, a group of women art historians, critics and artists took part in the seminal discussion “What is Female Imagery?”. Participating in the talk, Lippard queried her preference for the term “female sensibility” over “female sexual imagery”. Clarifying her reasoning, she explained: “There is a lot of sexual imagery in women’s art – circles, domes, eggs, spheres, boxes, biomorphic shapes, maybe a certain striation of layering. But that’s too specific. It’s more interesting to think about fragments, which imply a certain antilogical, antilinear approach also common to many women’s work. I like fragments, networks, everything about everything […] women also care more about variety than men, and variety connects to fragmentation and to the autobiographical aspect, too – as a sort of defiance. We play so many roles in our lives, while most men play only one or two.”[2] The artist Joan Snyder agreed with Lippard, convincingly arguing that women’s art tends to be more autobiographical, sensuous and layered compared to that of male artists.[3]

As evinced above, the use of the word “Fragment” by Feuerman, Lippard and other feminist artists, art historians, critics and curators refer to far more than just a physical description; it also belongs to the (auto)biographical stratification or layering of a woman’s life. Over the past fifty years, Feuerman has dedicated her career to figurative sculpture with an overwhelming interest in solitary young women. Most of these female sitters (whether portrayed in her Fragments series of 1976 or later busts, three-quarter or full body sculptures) contain elements or “fragments” about Feuerman’s autobiographical self. As the sculptor has acknowledged “every sculpture is somewhat of a self-portrait.”[4] Whilst her sculptures are partly autobiographical, they simultaneously – as consciously wanted by Feuerman – seek to represent a strong and proud universal woman. Feuerman’s Fragments series (1976) consists of thirteen sculptures. Sculpted in hard resin from life casts and painted with meticulous detail, these works are highly intimate and sensuous in terms of subject matter and detail, featuring fragments of torsos, groins, fingers, crotches, bottoms, folds of flesh and pubic hair. The superrealist technical precision of a fragment such as Breast, with its delicate white lace and crease of the bra cup, or Lace Pantie with the pantie’s lace detail next to a gentle flesh fold of the upper thigh, highlights Feuerman’s technical skill at this early point in her career. It should be noted, however, that her superrealist practice differs from the hyperrealist tradition, with which she has been previously associated. While her work shares a dedication to meticulous surface detail with hyperrealists like Duane Hanson and John de Andrea, Feuerman’s Fragments contain fundamental differences in terms of concept and purpose. She is not interested in convincing the viewer that these are living beings, but rather in producing work that allows reality, memory and sensibility to intersect. Exploring “what happened when people touched each other”, Feuerman’s Fragments work as visual narratives of “women, men and couples and their relationships with each other.”[5] For Feuerman, these early explorations of the female form consciously seek to “subvert the traditional depictions of women in art”, with an attempt to bring female “strength, beauty and sensuality” to the fore.[6] As Feuerman acknowledges, these fragments deliberately invite the viewer to engage imaginatively with the sculpture by completing the narrative themselves: “A fragment was much more interesting to me than showing the entire body. It told a huge story and yet much was left to the imagination.”[7] As such, the onlooker assumes an important role through their contemplation of what is absent as much as what is visible.

Each work of the Fragments series transmits a feeling of sensuality born from an honest investigation into relationships between individuals, the body and mind, and the self and society rather than any conscious attempt at creating overtly erotic work. Originally forming part of an assignment at the School of Visual Arts, Feuerman chose to question what eroticism actually meant as a woman and as a man, and what that entailed as a female sculptor with a female versus a male gaze. This gave rise to a level of understanding in which she “realised that I didn't want to do anything erotic, I wanted to do things I understood or things that were about me like relationships.”[8] She has recently explained how “I am a woman, and I see things differently as a woman. When you look at it, a woman had that sensitivity, men did not have that sensitivity. They absolutely see things from a male’s eye. I wasn’t making pieces to turn men on, never.”[9] This viewpoint finds common ground with Judy Chicago’s artwork of the late 1960s and early 1970s with Lippard insisting that “We [as women] have a different experience of sexuality, as everyone does, and [Chicago] is trying to make her own sexuality act as a metaphor for the metaphysical condition of an entire act, an entire social potential. That is quite an undertaking” (1974).[10] That same year, the pioneering feminist Georgia O’Keefe commented “Eroticism! That’s something people themselves put in the paintings. They’ve found things that never entered my mind. That doesn’t mean they weren’t there, but the things they said astonished me” (1974).[11] Artworks produced by artists such as O’Keefe, Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, and Feuerman (particularly with her Fragments series) are united by their willingness to make something very private public - as a woman and by a woman - an act that requires great vulnerability and courage.

Even if not intentional, the heightened sensuality and sensibility of some of the Fragments works does contain a certain element of eroticism based on the viewer’s (male or female) gaze. “Some of them are very erotic, like the Three Hands” - Feuerman reflects - “because it was three separate men […]. There was a part of me that wanted to do something that was taboo.”[12] This could also be applied to Fragments works such as Red Tie that portrays a three-quarter female semi-nude. Here, Feuerman depicts the anonymous (headless) woman with an anonymous man’s hands that appear from behind her torso and tightly tug down on a red tie that falls between her breasts. The colour of the tie and the way in which the man grips the tie contain erotic overtones, with her erect nipples an indication of her sexual arousal. Feuerman would later return to this 1976 sculpture with colour variations of the tie and panties as seen in Red Tie (1976-2011) and Not For Sale (2012).

Alternatively, Jean Shorts dialogues with Rape of Proserpina (1621-1622, figs. 1-2) by the Italian Baroque sculptor Bernini, with Feuerman long drawn to his exceptional mastery of ultra-realistic figurative marble sculptures. The unwitting dialogue between Pluto grasping Proserpina’s thigh and an anonymous male hand pinching a woman’s bottom cheek in Jean Shorts is striking. As Feuerman explains, “I was particularly fascinated by what happened when people touched each other. I loved to see the indents made when fingers pressed the flesh. I noticed that the hands and fingers changed colors.”[13] There are, however, important differences, principally regarding the traditional dynamics of power and objectification. In Bernini’s work, Pluto possessively grips Proserpina’s thigh while he abducts her, thereby underscoring male dominance and female vulnerability. Bernini makes the act of violence clear when the entire sculptural composition is viewed. Feuerman’s use of the detail – the curated ‘fragment’ – in Jean Shorts (similarly to other Fragments sculptures by Feuerman, like Hand on Rear, The Hand and Panda, the first in the series), however, provides a scene that has various potential narratives. With a hand seen lingering on a thigh, a buttock, or a breast, should we interpret it as a moment of passion or are we witness to some kind of violent act about to happen? Feuerman’s sculptures like Hand on Bra and Salutation to the Flowers, which capture intimate moments of an anonymous woman touching herself do not contain such ambiguous and uneasy suggestions. Deprived of all possibility of potential coercion, submission or victimhood, they portray fragmented images of women caressing their own bodies: they speak of choice and strength, two themes of the 1970s feminist movement at the time.

The notion of eroticism has been (somewhat exaggeratedly) imposed by external interpretation rather than any conscious artistic intention. In Feuerman’s own words, her Fragments series of 1976 is ultimately about “sensuous awakening and acceptance” - an exploration of embodiment in its raw, honest, and unidealised form. At the time, these fragments resonated powerfully within the cultural context of the 1970s, when the feminist movement was actively reclaiming the representation of the female body. Such progress afforded Feuerman the artistic freedom to address once taboo subjects. This historical context is key to our acceptance that her fractured forms refute passive objectification as well as idealised and patriarchal expectations. The fractured surfaces of the aforementioned Lace Panties and Hand on Bra of 1976 evoke both archaeological relics and contemporary (self) portraiture, positioning the female form as timeless

The thirteen works produced from life castings of the Fragments series were exhibited two years later in Feuerman’s first solo show entitled Rated X (MJS International, Fort Worth, Texas, 1978), a gallery run by a female friend of Feuerman’s. It was, however, met negatively, and closed the following day. Crestfallen by such public and critical rejection, Feuerman was forced to ask herself why such work that sought to control the female narrative alongside an emphatic feminist movement of the 1970s had stirred such a reaction? Was it too realist in subject matter and technique to digest? Had the poetic content failed to connect with the onlooker? Why was it censored when such intimate subject matter was no longer taboo? Why the rejection of Fragments in an American society that was finally beginning to address and explore the deep imbalances present in female art and female art history? One may recall that Modigliani’s first solo exhibition (Galerie B. Weill, Paris, December 1917) organised by one of the very few female gallerists at the time, featured provocative full-length female nudes with pubic hair. It caused public outcry and was swiftly censored by the police, who removed the paintings the next day. Feuerman’s first exhibition does not mean the work was not good enough, but rather that the public was not ready for it, as underscored by the fact that a male collector bought the entire Fragments series just three years later in 1981.

The sting of rejection and various months of subsequent reflection prompted the birth of Feuerman’ seminal work Catalina (1978) later that year, which marked a natural yet pivotal change in her work. Recounting how the idea of Catalina came to mind, Feuerman explains that she was at the beach with her children and was suddenly struck by the powerful image of a strong and proud woman coming out of the sea: “I took my hands and I went like this and I fragmented her with my hands. And I said, that moment I knew I was going to do a sculpture of a universal woman.” [14] Sculpted as a high-relief bust of a swimmer wearing a red swimsuit, swim cap, and goggles, the figure emerges from the wall as though from water. Fragmented at the arms and torso, the bather Catalina radiates a serene, self-contained strength. As Demetrio Paparoni has observed, Catalina’s “facial features are relaxed, though the absence of her arms and the lower portion of her body, as well as the jagged line of the cut, suggest that the shape of the sculpture was the result of a fracture”, with the absence of the arms and legs provoking “a sense of loss”.[15] Given the fragmentation of Catalina and the Fragments series, the feeling of loss does not reference “missing” but rather Feuerman’s desire that the onlooker partake in the work and fill in the “missing” parts, completing the work’s narrative which changes with each onlooker caused by the difference in personal experience, education, and gender. Here, Feuerman’s focus on Catalina’s torso and strong and proud facial expression of “coming through” – as if breaking through the wall upon which she is hung – transmits a message that is far more powerful than if she had been portrayed with limbs. It is Feuerman’s decision to adopt this type of fragmentation – which naturally recalls the fragments of classical antiquity and the Western tradition of sculpture that constitute statements of power and durability – that heightens her quest to capture the moment of female inner peace. This is particularly clear in the reclining near-full length sculpture of Madame X (1981) with a toga-like drape wrapped around her waist. Depicted headless (thereby ensuring her anonymity) and with gloves, adds a more contemporary and erotic feel to the sculpture.

An apt comparison for Feuerman’s embrace of bodily fragmentation can be found in the work of American photographer Lee Miller, who died in 1977. Although Miller did not form part of the American feminist revolution of the 1960s and 1970s (having settled in the British countryside in the late 1930s), her Surrealist and war reportage photography of the 1930s – 1950s is acutely feminist. Fiercely rejecting any sense of male objectification or marginalisation in her own photography (having been a model for Vogue and frequently classified as Man Ray’s lover and muse rather than his assistant), she helped redefine the portrayal of women as vessels of complexity, sensuality, and defiance. Her photograph entitled Corsetry. Solarised Photographs (1942, Vogue Studios, London, fig. 2) features a model wearing silk undergarments with outstretched arms. Here Miller has cropped the model’s hands and ankles out of the shot, placing her in front of a central metal pole. This is a direct reference to Man Ray’s well-known photograph Porte manteau (The Coat-stand, 1920, fig. 3), which portrays the female model as an object-mannequin, a mere coat-stand. Refuting Man Ray’s sexual objectification (a prevalent trend amongst male surrealists), Miller rejects and reconditions Man Ray’s Porte manteau narrative, transforming the image into an intimate portrait of a living, breathing woman, the embodiment of female strength, beauty, and release capable of carrying herself and others. Taken for British Vogue in 1942 – the height of the Second World War - Miller’s Corsetry. Solarised Photograph’s fragmented forms and context resonate closely with Feuerman’s three-quarter sculpture Shower (1981). With eyes closed, and shower cap on, Feuerman captures the beauty of female sensuality and intimacy as a young woman takes a shower. Unaware of the beads of water that trickle down her body, the woman is depicted in a moment of total abandonment and freedom, her arms reaching up and wrapped around herself, as if in a self-embrace. Her eyes are closed, lost in a transient state of contemplation, an embodiment of what Feuerman frequently refers to as a woman “coming through” life’s challenges.

Her Fragments series and Catalina (1978) would soon lead Feuerman to produce En 2-0278 (1981) and Innertube (1984), which cemented her preference for portraying swimmers, her signature subject matter. Inspired by the plight of Cuban immigrants risking their lives to cross the waters between Cuba and Florida in search of freedom and therefore a better life, En 2-0278 portrays a young woman afloat on an inflated rubber ring. She is exhausted, disheveled, yet persevering in her objective. As Feuerman has reflected, En 2-0278 and later Innertube visually encapsulate the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity. The interplay between fragmentation and sensuality that was first explored by Feuerman in her early Fragments high reliefs could be interpreted as providing the conceptual backbone for all her subsequent artwork.

As well as producing En 2-0278 in 1981, the year also marked her introduction of the ballet dancer – or rather a fragment of a ballet dancer – into her work, with the theme of the dancer becoming a staple subject matter parallel to Feuerman’s bathers. Seamlessly evolving on from her 1976 Fragments series of limbs with jagged edges, Feuerman produced approximately seven works relating to the ballet dancer in 1981 alone. Simple titles (Audition, Dress Rehearsal, Leg Iron, A Little Workout, Carole’s Toe Shoes, Relevé, and Hands Breaking in the Toes Shoes) superficially conceal the heightened poetic sensuality of these ballet dancer fragments. These meticulously painted resin casts convey the strength, resilience and beauty of the ballet dancer, a visual metaphor for the universal woman. The delicate pink of the satin toe shoe, together with the paleness of the flesh, and the elegance of the pose, as seen in Relevé or the tying up of laces in Dress Rehearsal and Audition, is placed in sharp contrast with the energy and force, persistent effort and struggle tied up in the excellence of dance. By extension, it feels natural to extend this to a woman’s struggle in general. The fragment of the dancer’s foot or legs provides the suggestion of suspension yet also imminent movement at any moment. Acknowledging this element of weightlessness in her work (whether as ballet dancers, bathers or divers), Feuerman recalled the difficulty of being lifted in the air when she was a ballet dancer as a child.[16] The clear contradiction between the subject matter – the softness and intimacy of both the Fragments series (1976) and the fragments of ballet dancers (1981) – and Feuerman’s decision to use hard resin to depict them jars with the feeling that they transmit: “I love the contradictions in this kind of work, between soft flesh and hard material, or half-abstract, half-real. I want to have something of a contraction.”[17] This uncomfortable pull and push between subject matter and technique heightens our reaction to the work. This is particularly evident in Hands Breaking in the Toe Shoes. In this work, the delicate pink of the hands and the toe shoes juxtaposes with the powerful, near-violent gesture of breaking the shoe in, its form and colour near phallic-like in appearance. The hands belong to Feuerman, as do the toe shoes, with the final sculpture working almost as if “a self-portrait of getting ready, you know, breaking the shoes and breaking the idea not to be broken.”[18] The struggle of her divorce at a young age and the responsibility of bringing up her children alongside establishing herself as an artist is real. The resultant image is particularly powerful.

This idea of contrast and contradiction can be detected in the work of her female peers with Chicago, for example, choosing to consistently confront the challenge of fitting “a soft shape into a hard framework […]. It had to do with feminine and masculine, open and closed, vulnerable and rigid […] being a superwoman in male society” (1974).[19] It can also be found in the soft sculptures of female-like forms of the early 1970s by Dorothea Tanning, who used her work to counterbalance the prevalent objectification of women by fellow male surrealists, as previously seen with Lee Miller. Best known for her surrealist paintings that explore dark and fantastical scenes populated by female protagonists, Tanning produced soft sculptures between 1969-1974 parallel to the feminist movement. Select soft sculptures provide important points of comparison with Feuerman’s own Fragments sculptures (1976) and Catalina (1981), specifically her decision to truncate her “female” torsos and hang them on walls as if paintings. For Tanning, these strangely humanoid and organic shapes and forms of contorted nude “female” figures represented “living sculptures”. By choosing unconventional soft materials (cloth, tweed and wool) with which to make her sculptures, they “embody the power that can lay behind softness” (Ferren Gipson, 2022).[20] Both Emma (1970, fig. 4) and Hôtel du Pavot, Chambre 202 (1970-1973, fig. 5) illustrate these similarities with Feuerman’s work. The later Tanning soft-sculpture dialogues closely with her earlier surrealist painting Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1943): here two of the soft sculptures look as if they are either being pulled into the wall or are bursting out of them. Their movement is ambivalent and the uneasy intimacy at times present in Feuerman’s work is also detected here.

Over time, Feuerman’s early core themes of strength, beauty and sensuality present in the Fragments series (1976) have transitioned into strength, survival and balance, such resilience partly earned by the public rebuttal of Fragments in the 1978 exhibition. Reflecting on this metamorphosis, Feuerman admits that “originally, in the 70s, I didn't think about strength, survival and balance, because I just was exploring relationships, people to each other. And my thoughts were that my relationship with my husband was failing. My relationship with galleries was non-existent” whereas her relationship with the public, the people with whom she collaborated, and her family was “very strong. So I was really exploring these relationships. Then came survival, survival, to be able to continue doing it after I got divorced, when I have enough money, when people buy my work […].”[21] The Fragments of 1976 must, therefore, be interpreted as an essential part of Feuerman’s journey, both as woman and artist.

[1] See Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”, ARTnews, New York, January 1971, republished in Maura Reilly (edited by), Women Artists. The Linda Nochlin Reader, Thames & Hudson, New York, 2015, pp. 42-68.
[2] Lucy R. Lippard, From the Center. Feminist Essays on Women’s Art, Dutton, New York, 1976, pp. 81-83, p. 88.
[3] See Joan Snyder in Lippard, 1976, p. 86.
[4] Parts of the present essay are based on a recorded conversation between the artist Carole A. Feuerman and the author Victoria Noel-Johnson, Rome-New York, 3 June 2025.
[5] Carole A. Feuerman, Early Fragments from the 1970s, xxx, p. 3.
[6] Ivi.
[7] Ivi.
[8] Feuerman, 3 June 2025.
[9] Ivi.
[10] Judy Chicago cited in “Judy Chicago, Talking to Lucy Lippard”, Artforum, New York, 13, n. 1, September 1974, in Lippard 1976, p. 222.
[11] Georgia O’Keefe, quoted in Dorothy Seiberling, “The Female View of Erotica”, New York Magazine, New York, 11 February 1974, cited in Lippard 1976, p. 71.
[12] Feuerman, Early Fragments from the 1970s, xxx, p. 3.
[13] Ivi.
[14] Feuerman, 3 June 2025.
[15] Demetrio Paparoni, “Carole A. Feuerman: Pop Superrealism”, in Feuerman’s Superrealist Sculptures, Rizzoli, New York, 2025, p. xx.
[16] Feuerman, 3 June 2025.
[17] Feuerman cited in Eleanor Munro, “The Sculpture of Carole A. Feuerman”, in Carole A. Feuerman. Sculpture, Hudson Hills Press, New York, 1999, p. 20.
[18] Feuerman, 3 June 2025.
[19] Chicago cited in “Judy Chicago, Talking to Lucy Lippard”, Artforum, New York, 13, n. 1, September 1974, in Lippard 1976, p. 217.
[20] Ferren Gipson, Women’s Work. From feminine arts to feminist art, Frances Lincoln Publishers, London, 2022, p. 45.
[21] Feuerman, 3 June 2025.