CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/5/2016

Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty

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).