Text by Bill Arning, Elissa Auther, Nick Flynn, K8 Hardy, Richard Hell, Colby Keller, Eileen Myles, Jenni Sorkin, Neville Wakefield. Interview by Catherine Morris, Linda Yablonsky.
Minter’s art skews glamour with consumerist critique
Marilyn Minter is famed for her glossy, hyper-realistic paintings, photographs and video works—seductive images that borrow the language of fashion and advertising photography, exploring the boundaries of desire, sensuality and body anxiety in the age of consumption. Close-up imagery of mouths, feet, splashes and puddles, rendered in high-gloss enamel on sheets of metal, subversively questions the pathology of glamour. Produced in conjunction with the first major museum retrospective on her work, Pretty/Dirty examines every period of the artist's 40-year career, from her beginnings with the controversial porn paintings, initially rejected by the critical establishment, to her later large-scale photorealistic works. Essays from the exhibition's curators examine the trajectory of Minter's development and her engagement with debates over the representation of the female body. Texts from musicians, artists, writers and curators speak to Minter's wide-ranging influence: reflections from the likes of artist K8 Hardy, musician and author Richard Hell, and poet Eileen Myles, as well as an artist interview with writer Linda Yablonsky. Illustrated with hundreds of full-color reproductions, and with a complete biography and bibliography, Pretty/Dirty charts a new perspective on the career of this exciting and continually evolving artist.
Marilyn Minter (born 1948) has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, at venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, the Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, in 2009 and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, in 2010. Her video "Green Pink Caviar" was exhibited in the lobby of MoMA for over a year, and was also shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard in LA, and the Creative Time MTV billboard in Times Square, New York.
"Wangechi Gold 4" (2009) is reproduced from Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
American Suburb X
Owen Campbell
unsettling depictions of a lustful, exuberant, unselfconscious id that rejoices in a feminine sexuality that is at once pleasurable and repellent.... if there’s mistrust or unease around Minter’s images, it’s that they offer too much, and perhaps too easily, visual pleasure.
The New York Times Book Reivew
Parul Sehgal
Like her images, “Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty” is seductive and glittery, an ?object of desire. It highlights what appears to be almost innate talent (Diane Arbus was a fan of her student work) and an equally preternatural ability to attract censure — as well as some faithful obsessions.
ARTnews
Hannah Ghorashi
In these works, the images are seemingly captured in medias res of erotic motion, a voluptuously suspended moment in time.
Edition
Yasha Wallin
The art world has finally caught up with this forward thinker
New York Magazine
Anna Furman
Scintillating photo-realistic paintings reveal rainbow-colored nails lined with dirt and diamond jewelry that drips with body fluids. Video works capture tattooed feet shoved into muddied heels and glossy lips that curl into a snarl. In the show, titled "Pretty/Dirty," the subversive underbelly of Minter's work is revealed in all its shimmery, gritty glory.
The Village Voice
Lilly Lampe
"Pretty/Dirty" is the rare retrospective that also acts as an engrossing biography, skillfully revealing the key shifts in Minter's career, the points where the green artist transformed into skilled provocateur, the path that made her a star.
in stock $50.00
Free Shipping
UPS GROUND IN THE CONTINENTAL U.S. FOR CONSUMER ONLINE ORDERS
Gregory R. Miller & Co.'s outstanding survey, Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty, is a star—and one of our top Holiday Gift Books of 2015. Featuring work from every period of the artist's forty-year career, this copiously illustrated volume features contributions by Bill Arning, Elissa Auther, Eileen Myles, Nick Flynn, Jenni Sorkin, Colby Keller, Neville Wakefield, K8 Hardy, Richard Hell, Catherine Morris and Linda Yablonsky, who asks Minter about the grotesque in her work. Minter responds, "The way I was thinking about it was that if you get in close enough, you get rid of narrative. I was going for the least amount of information that can still have lots of power. Multiple readings. Like when you pull your socks down and there are those lines in your legs. Things like that really interest me. Everyone knows about it, but no one’s ever made an image of it. I notice these things. I notice graffiti. I notice what the ads look like underneath it. I notice that sweat makes people look sexier. I’ve always been fascinated by details, so I’m not telling people what to think, but I still have content. Multiple meanings, multiple reads. That’s all I’m interested in—metaphor and paradox." Featured image is "Glazed" (2006). continue to blog
Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty is on view at the Brooklyn Museum, accompanied by this awesome monograph. Essayist Neville Wakefield writes, "The mascara, heels, sequins and eyelashes in Minter’s images might be understood to take license from Baudelaire’s vision of modernity, poised between the fleeting transience of appearance and a more durable idea of the human condition, were it not that the artist’s interest in surface is always partial and fractured. Her vision is cosmetic, but not in the sense of beautifying or covering up. The freckles, pores, smudges and blemishes are both superficial and abundant. And yet the idea that her subjects would exist aside from this radiant topography is as preposterous to me as the idea that sex could ever be defined by the moralities that have sought to contain it. We are, these works seem to be saying, the sum of our vanities and our imperfections." Featured image is "Blue Poles" (2007). continue to blog
AT LAST. Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty has come to the Brooklyn Museum, and we've got the book! American Suburb X describes the work as "unsettling depictions of a lustful, exuberant, unselfconscious id that rejoices in a feminine sexuality that is at once pleasurable and repellent..." The New York Times Book Review calls it "playful and nasty and full of surprise…seductive and glittery." And the Brooklyn Museum gamely warns of sexually explicit content that "may not be suitable for all audiences, including minors. Viewer discretion is advised." If you're ok with all that, see the show, and definitely buy the dazzling, star-studded accompanying monograph from Gregory R. Miller & Co. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 11 in. / 176 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $67.5 GBP £45.00 ISBN: 9781941366042 PUBLISHER: Gregory R. Miller & Co. AVAILABLE: 5/26/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co.. Text by Bill Arning, Elissa Auther, Nick Flynn, K8 Hardy, Richard Hell, Colby Keller, Eileen Myles, Jenni Sorkin, Neville Wakefield. Interview by Catherine Morris, Linda Yablonsky.
Minter’s art skews glamour with consumerist critique
Marilyn Minter is famed for her glossy, hyper-realistic paintings, photographs and video works—seductive images that borrow the language of fashion and advertising photography, exploring the boundaries of desire, sensuality and body anxiety in the age of consumption. Close-up imagery of mouths, feet, splashes and puddles, rendered in high-gloss enamel on sheets of metal, subversively questions the pathology of glamour. Produced in conjunction with the first major museum retrospective on her work, Pretty/Dirty examines every period of the artist's 40-year career, from her beginnings with the controversial porn paintings, initially rejected by the critical establishment, to her later large-scale photorealistic works. Essays from the exhibition's curators examine the trajectory of Minter's development and her engagement with debates over the representation of the female body. Texts from musicians, artists, writers and curators speak to Minter's wide-ranging influence: reflections from the likes of artist K8 Hardy, musician and author Richard Hell, and poet Eileen Myles, as well as an artist interview with writer Linda Yablonsky. Illustrated with hundreds of full-color reproductions, and with a complete biography and bibliography, Pretty/Dirty charts a new perspective on the career of this exciting and continually evolving artist.
Marilyn Minter (born 1948) has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, at venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, the Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, in 2009 and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, in 2010. Her video "Green Pink Caviar" was exhibited in the lobby of MoMA for over a year, and was also shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard in LA, and the Creative Time MTV billboard in Times Square, New York.
