Kathleen Gilje (born 1945) is an American art restorer and artist. She is best known for her appropriations of Old Master Paintings which combine their historical provenance with contemporary ideas and perspective.

Early life and education

Gilje was born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. She received her BFA from the City College of New York and trained as a conservator from 1967 to 1971 at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy. Gilje apprenticed in Rome with the restorer of antique paintings, Antonio deMata, from 1966 to 1968. Gilje continued her apprenticeship from 1968 to 1972 at the Museum of Capodimonte in Naples.

Career

Restoration

In 1973, she returned to New York and worked in the conservation studio of Marco Grassi, where she restored Old Master paintings for private and museum clients, including Stanley Moss, E.V. Thaw, Robert Dance, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Norton Simon Collection in Pasadena, and the Thyssen Bornemizsa Collection. In 1976, she opened her own studio. During this period, she also created artistic works, initially relief sculpture and then painting which was exhibited in various

SoHo Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develo ...

galleries. Gilje began to combine her knowledge of conservation with her own paintings in the early 1990s.

Revised and Restored

''La Donna Velata'' In 1995, Kathleen Gilje created La Donna Velata, Restored oil on canvas.“ART IN REVIEW; Kathleen Gilje: ART IN REVIEW.” New York Times (Online), New York Times Company, 2001. The painting formed from Raphael's La Donna Veleta (1516) is one of three portraits of his lifelong Roman mistress Margarita Luti. Contrary to Raphael's painting which captivates its well-balanced composition, through the opulent white and gold gown, and sheer veil framing the woman's face, Gilje's version is staggeringly different by adding a black eye to the woman's gentle face as a bold representation of the timelessness of gender, power, and, violence against women. Gilje explains with La Donna Velata, Restored she was moved by a story from her daughter telling her how a classmate was killed by her father and then later a book which showed a picture of the victim. Most of the time when she addresses important issues in her art they are individual incidents. Each of the pieces Gilje creates is prompted by an individual story, not an agenda.

Alternative readings

In her paintings, drawings and installations, Gilje applies an art historical analysis and uses methodologies of conservation to create altered versions of familiar paintings which suggest alternative interpretations of the original artworks. In this way, she encourages her audience to think about a work of art on several levels: its material and historical narrative. An example of this is Rembrandt's ''Danaë'' defaced by a vandal with acid in the Hermitage, its contemporary symbolism translated into up-to-date equivalents; another is Caravaggio's ''

Boy Bitten by a Lizard ''Boy Bitten by a Lizard'' (Italian: ''Ragazzo morso da un ramarro'') is a painting by the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio. It exists in two versions, both believed to be authentic works of Caravaggio, one in the Fondazione Roberto Longhi ...

, Restored,'' 1992, where the lizard is replaced by a syringe, suggesting a link to the risk of AIDS. Many of her paintings engage with feminist issues, although they are sometimes controversial (as in her series of "Sargent's Women," portraying 48 women visually excised from paintings by John Singer Sargent, all rendered without their luxurious clothing). In ''Susanna and the Elders, Restored,'' 1998, Gilje exhibits a recreation of Artemisia Gentileschi's '' Susanna and the Elders'' (a story of sexual abuse) hanging next to an

x-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

of the painting. When Gilje recreated Gentileschi's painting, she made an underpainting in

lead white White lead is the basic lead carbonate 2PbCO3·Pb(OH)2. It is a complex salt, containing both carbonate and hydroxide ions. White lead occurs naturally as a mineral, in which context it is known as hydrocerussite, a hydrate of cerussite. It was ...

(lead white x-rays well) of Gentileschi's own rape by

Agostino Tassi Agostino Tassi (born Agostino Buonamici; 1578 – 1644) was an Italian landscape and seascape painter, who was convicted of raping Artemisia Gentileschi in 1612. Because he aspired to nobility he modified the details of his early life. Though h ...

. In the x-ray we see Gentileschi's arm extended holding a knife in self-defense and her face contorted and screaming. The image can faintly be seen in the

pentimento A pentimento (plural pentimenti), in painting, is "the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over". The word is , from the verb , meaning 'to repent'. Significance Pentimenti may show that ...

as well. Her references are provocative as she addresses timely social, political and personal concerns.

Portraits

Gilje created a number of portraits in which her subjects were placed in the context of an historic painting of their choice; these were displayed in her exhibition ''Curators and Connoisseur'' at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York, in 2006. For example, art historian

Linda Nochlin Linda Nochlin (''née'' Weinberg; January 30, 1931 – October 29, 2017) was an American art historian, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor Emerita of Modern Art at New York University Institute of Fine Arts, and writer. As a prominent feminist art ...

chose

Édouard Manet Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. Bo ...

's 1882 '' Bar at the Folies Bergère'' for Gilje's ''Linda Nochlin at the Bar at the Folies Bergere'', 2006, and art historian

Robert Rosenblum Robert Rosenblum (July 24, 1927 – December 6, 2006) was an American art historian and curator known for his influential and often irreverent scholarship on European and American art of the mid-eighteenth to 20th centuries. Biography Rosenblum wa ...

chose Ingres’ 1823/26 '' Comte de Pastoret'' for his Gilje portrait of 2005.

Exhibitions and recognition

Over the course of the past twenty years, her work has been shown in various exhibitions throughout the United States and in Europe. Several critics and art historians have written about her work, including Robert Rosenblum, Linda Nochlin and John Yau. Gilje's work is in the collection of several museums, including the Weatherspoon Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Musée Ingres, Louvre Museum, Montauban, France, Bass Museum, Miami, Florida, the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Addison Gallery of American Art and Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts.

References

External links

*Kathleen Gilje website: http://www.kathleengilje.com *
Susanna and the Elders, Restored
'' 1998, Oil on canvas, 67” x 47” YouTube. *
Kathleen Gilje: 48 Portraits: Sargent's Women, Restored
' (New York: Francis Naumann Fine Art (February 26 – April 10, 2009). *
Revised and Restored: The Art of Kathleen Gilje
'. Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT (May 11 – September 8, 2013). YouTube. *

', Flint Institute of Arts, 1120 East Kearsley Street, Flint, MI (May 3 – July 20, 2014). {{DEFAULTSORT:Gilje, Kathleen 1945 births People from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn City College of New York alumni 20th-century American painters American women artists Living people Radiographers 21st-century American painters 20th-century American women 21st-century American women