‘I wanted my work to be shameless’: 93-year-old artist Joan Semmel on her trailblazing nudes

In the 1970s, the painter shocked the art world with paintings modeled on her own nude body. Now in her 10th decade, she’s celebrated as a feminist pioneer On a life-revivingly sunny day in New York, light pours into the SoHo studio of the 93-year-old painter Joan Semmel. She’s lived in the floor-through railroad apartment since 1970, and she works out of a high-ceilinged room overlooking Spring Street, dominated by a decades-old snake plant. A loft stuffed with canvases occupies one side of the