ELEANOR STREHL | DATE 11/12/2010

Marilyn Minter and Wangechi Mutu at the New Museum

On the night of Nov. 11, the New Museum Store and publisher Gregory R. Miller & Co. invited artists Marilyn Minter and Wangechi Mutu to discuss their work, their recent books and their stunning recent collaboration, in conversation with New Museum Chief Curator Richard Flood.

Richard Flood, Marilyn Minter and Wangechi Mutu below a projection of one of Minter's paintings.

The artists gave brief slide presentations and each discussed her own experience of the collaboration, in which Minter photographed Mutu in her eighth month of pregnancy. A typical Minter shoot involves bringing in professional makeup artists and designer clothes, and this was no exception. Mutu was given long false fingernails, put in high-heeled shoes, and coated with Minter’s special trick: vodka and metallic food coloring. “The cheapest we could find… we used gallons of it!” said Minter. As she was pregnant, Mutu was careful not to swallow any of the vodka, but Minter did get some extraordinary closeups of the liquid streaming out of Mutu’s blue-lipsticked mouth. Although neither was sure what would come out the shoot, they both used the resulting prints in their work; Minter recreated the closeups in large-scale enamel paintings, and Mutu cut up and collaged the prints in her characteristic style.

Audience members lining up for signed books.

Flood and Minter behind Mutu's latest book, This You Call Civilization?