Nude US painter, sculptor and photographer Hannah Wilke (RIP)

Hannah Wilke (born Arlene Hannah Butter; (March 7, 1940 in New York City, New York – January 28, 1993 Houston, Texas) was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, video artist and performance artist. Her work is known for exploring issues of feminism, sexuality and femininity. Hannah was born to Jewish parents; her grandparents were Eastern European immigrants. She graduated from Great Neck North High School, on Long Island, in 1957. In 1962, she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Science in Education from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia. She taught art in several high schools for approximately 30 years and joined the faculty of the School of Visual Arts. After her graduation the same year she taught art at two high schools. First, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania (1961-1965), between 1965 and 1970 she worked in White Plains, New York. After leaving White Plains, she joined the School of Visual Arts, in New York (1972-1991). Wilke first gained renown with her "vulval" terra-cotta sculptures in the 1960s. In 1974, Wilke began work on her photographic body art piece S.O.S — Starification Object Series, in which she merged her minimalist sculpture and her own body by creating tiny vulval sculptures out of chewing gum and sticking them to herself. Wilke coined the term "performalist self-portraits" to credit photographers who assisted her, including her father (First Performalist Self-Portrait, 1942–77) and her sister, Marsie (Butter) Scharlatt (Arlene Hannah Butter and Cover of Appearances, 1954–77). The title of Wilke's photographic and performance work, So Help Me Hannah, 1979, was taken from a vernacular phrase from the 1930s and '40s and has been interpreted as playing off of the Jewish mother stereotype and referencing Wilke's relationship with her mother. Hannah Wilke died in Houston, Texas, in 1993 from lymphoma. Her last work, Intra-Venus (1992–1993), is a posthumously published photographic record of her physical transformation and deterioration resulting from chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant. The photographs, which were taken by her husband Donald Goddard whom she had lived with since 1982 and married in 1992 shortly before her death, confront the viewer with personal images of Wilke progressing from midlife happiness to bald, damaged, and resigned.