Art Review "The Prime of Your Life" examines what recognition and market success mean for 18 women artists over 75.

October 22, 2026 — 5 min read

Rose Wylie, "Opera Singer and Teapot" (2024), oil on canvas

“What is an ‘old-age style’? Is it the same as a ‘late style’?” asks Linda Nochlin at the start of her 2008 essay, “Old-Age Style: Late Louise Bourgeois.” As our understanding of an artwork evolves with the artist’s age, the essay examines Bourgeois’s enduring aesthetics and interests throughout her seven-decade career, focusing particularly on the soft and hard qualities of her work. Nochlin, the esteemed feminist art historian, meditates on the relationship between a work made early in an artist’s career and one made at the end of their life, asking how the latter changes our understanding or interpretation of the former.…