They give people a lot of pleasure, but at the same time, they distort everything.” “To say that they’re superficial is too easy. “I work with things that are considered debased and shallow, but the reality is…fashion and beauty are multi-billion dollar industries,” Minter said to Sameer Reddy of W Magazine.
Beads of water drenching the skin mimic sweat, a visual metaphor for the hard work that goes into the daily process of artificial beautification. The models appear to literally choke on and vomit gleaming strings of precious stones, a not so subtle reference to eating disorders developed by women desperate to mirror beauty idols and ideals. These images convey a sense of violence and self-mutilation absent from Minter’s earlier works. In 2000, Minter created Soiled, the first standout image of many to follow that juxtaposed glamour and grit to convey the “dirty realism” of the human body (Fig. Reexamining this early body of work inspired Minter to use photography to explore “the distance between representations of glamour in popular culture and the realities of the flesh.” “The aesthetic of wig governs everything,” said Bruce Hainley of Artforum magazine, “suggesting that beauty, like existence, is artificial, askew, and concealing.” The haunting yet beautiful portraits of Minter’s mother featured a woman fighting her faded beauty resiliently by covering her patchy, torn-out hair with styled wigs and her sallow, sagging skin with make-up and eyebrow dye (Fig. After 25 years, Minter printed her Coral Ridge Towers series, originally taken in 1969, and exhibited prints in New York and Los Angeles.įinally, Minter received critical acclaim and the art world’s attention. In the 1990s, Marilyn Minter began to revisit her old photographic work, and reconsider using photography as an art medium. “I’m always trying to remove morals from art otherwise, it doesn’t make sense because over time morality changes.” “I was really this pro-sex feminist,” she said. However, Minter sought to encourage women to make images for their own pleasure and amusement. 2).Īrt critics and feminists alike scorned her work, denouncing the subjects as demeaning depictions of women sexually serving men. In her Porn Grids, Minter replicated scenes from pornographic magazines in an effort to “reclaim these images from an abusive history,” and explore the idea that “nobody has politically correct fantasies,” (Fig.
Three major bodies of work emerged during this period that dealt with pop culture and female sexuality: Big Girls/Little Girls, 100 Food Porn, and Porn Grids.įig.
Minter spent the next several years borrowing imagery from magazines, advertisements, and pornography to create large-scale enamel on metal paintings that emulate Ben-Day dot printing techniques. For the first time in years, she was confronted with the challenge of creating art not influenced by drug use. In 1985, Minter’s decision to go to rehab and get clean broke up the collaboration.
Heavily influenced by Pop art aesthetics and excess, Minter dove headfirst into East Village culture of the 1980s, which included “lots of substance abuse, going to clubs at midnight, staying up all night and then going to teach art at a Catholic boys’ school.”ĭuring this time, Minter collaborated with fellow painter Chris Kohlhofer to create a series of works shown at the Gracie Mansion gallery in East Village. Black and white photograph.Īfter graduate school, Minter moved to New York City where Pop artists like Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roy Lichtenstein dominated the gallery scene. 1 “ Coral Ridge Towers (Mom Smoking)”, 1969.