At 92, Audrey Flack Has a Juicy Memoir, a New Art Show, and a Lot to Say
In the early 1970s, the artist Audrey Flack traveled to the Basílica de la Macarena in Seville, Spain, to see a carved-wood statue called Macarena Esperanza, a polychrome depiction of a weeping Virgin Mary adorned with jewels, crystal tears, and false eyelashes. Flack is Jewish, but she was no less overcome by the Macarena’s sorrowful splendor: Here was a mother shedding tears for her child—Flack could relate—but she was also regal, grand, beautiful. Flack photographed the statue and, once back home in New York, made several paintings based on her pictures, capturing each resplendent detail in high definition.