Susan Bee

Susan Bee is an artist, book artist, and editor living in NYC. She has had eleven solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery in NYC. In 2024, Susan Bee: Eye of the Storm, Selected Works, 1981–2023 was at the Provincetown Art Museum, MA. She has published many artist’s books including collaborations with Susan Howe, Johanna Drucker, Charles Bernstein, and Jerome Rothenberg. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts in 2014.

April 2026Critics Page

Susan Bee and Charles Bernstein

By and

Susan Bee is an artist, book artist, and editor living in NYC. She has had eleven solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery in NYC, and he has published many artist’s books. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts in 2014.

Charles Bernstein’s most recent books are The Kinds of Poetry I Want: Essays and Comedies and Topsy-Turvey (both from University of Chicago Press).

Susan Bee and Charles Bernstein

April 2025In Memoriam

A Tribute to Richard Foreman

By

RICHARD FOREMAN WANTS YOU TO WAKE UP

Portrait of Richard Foreman, pencil on paper by Phong H. Bui.

May 2015Critics Page

Threadsuns

By
I was born into trauma. My middle name, which I use as my last name and nom de peinture is Bee. I was named for my great-grandmother Bella, my father’s grandmother, who died in a concentration camp along with my great-grandfather and 17 other relatives, who also died in the Holocaust.
Susan Bee, "Threadsuns," 2015, oil and enamel on linen, 40˝ × 50˝

September 2014Critics Page

Frames

By
As the daughter of a woman artist, I saw, first-hand, the toll of discrimination based solely on gender. For my mother’s generation, the misogyny of the Mad Men-era of the 1950s and 1960s was well known. And while the style of suits has changed, the discrimination persists.

June 2014Critics Page

SUSAN BEE

By
I’m often inspired by poetry. “Lost Doll” was made in response to a poem by Rachel Levitsky that she wrote about my drawing, “The Island.”
Susan Bee, "Lost Doll," 2014, 9˝ × 12˝, gouache, watercolor, crayon, colored pencil, and collage on watercolor paper.

March 2013Critics Page

Breathing Room

By
Nancy Princenthal’s proposition lead me to think of the famous opening of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972): “Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.”
Susan Bee, "Face to Face," 2013. 20 x 24", oil and enamel on canvas.

February 2012Critics Page

KANDINSKY's "Painting with White Border"

By
I initially went to the Guggenheim Museum to see Cattelan’s spectacle All, however, I was drawn to the rooms off the main spiral, which focused on Kandinsky’s “Painting with White Border” (1913).
Vasily Kandinsky, Watercolor after Painting with White Border (Aquarell nach Bild mit weibem Rand), 1915. Watercolor, India ink, and pencil on paper, 12.9 x 33.7 cm. The Hilla von Rebay Foundation, on extended loan to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1970.37. © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris.

Dec/Jan 2011–12Film

George Kuchar's Otherworldly Humanity

By and
George Kuchar (1942–2011) was one of the most creative, original, and influential filmmakers of our time, straddling two generations of North American iconoclasts, from Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, Rudy Burckhardt, Kenneth Anger, and Michael Snow to Warren Sonbert, Ernie Gehr, Abigail Child, and Henry Hills.
George Kuchar. Photo credit: Felix Bernstein.

Close

Home