Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co.. Edited by Katy Siegel. Text by Hilton Als, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Lobel, Kalliopi Minoudaki, Caitlin Rubin, Allison Unruh.
Rosalyn Drexler has always moved between worlds. In the late 1950s and early ’60s, she showed sculpture at New York’s Reuben Gallery, a gathering place for artists like Allan Kaprow and Claes Oldenburg who combined installation and performance with traditional media. Drexler took part in Happenings at Reuben Gallery and at Judson Church (years after her own quasi-performance as a female wrestler, memorialized by Andy Warhol in the 1962 series Album of a Mat Queen). Drexler’s collages and large-format paintings of the 1960s open the category of Pop art to technology and politics in a way that feels contemporary today, crossing hard-edge painting with depictions of sex, violence, race and gender role-playing in film and media.
Her writing also crosses high and low genres, comprising novels both experimental and popular, avant-garde theater and writing for television (including an Emmy-winning Lily Tomlin special). In addition to a comprehensive selection of Drexler’s major paintings, Who Does She Think She Is? also recovers the artist’s early sculptures, recently rediscovered and not exhibited since 1960. Documentation of Drexler’s performances and theatrical work, photographs evoking her role in the downtown New York scene and a selection of her books and other archival materials present her work across multiple mediums, offering a comprehensive look at Drexler’s varied career.
Rosalyn Drexler was born in 1926 in the Bronx, New York. In 1951 Drexler pursued a brief career as a professional wrestler under the name "Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire." In January 1964 her work was included in the First International Girlie Exhibit at Pace Gallery, New York. In 1968, Drexler signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
Vulgar Lives includes 38 paintings and a series of preparatory drawings created between 1960 and 2014 by legendary Pop artist Rosalyn Drexler (born 1926). A novelist, Obie-winning playwright, sculptor, wrestler, and film and television writer, Drexler is a one-of-a-kind polymath whose 1960s paintings have enjoyed a recent resurgence. Using vibrant, often primary colors, the artist creates collage-paintings incorporating societal or media imagery with her own fantastical twist; figures from Western cultural history such as Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol and the Beatles are a few of her iconic subjects. This publication is unique in its move beyond Drexler’s 1960s work, compiling a selection of the forceful—and sometimes jarring—imagery she has continued to create since that time, taking more liberties in form and content. Arranged chronologically, the works offer an insightful distillation of contemporary life in all its humorous and frightening contradictions.
PUBLISHER Garth Greenan Gallery
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 8.75 x 10.25 in. / 80 pgs / 38 color / 6 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/23/2016 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2016 p. 184
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780989890267FLAT40 List Price: $40.00 CDN $54.00 GBP £35.00
Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives