Marilyn Minter
THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, I interview\xa0the renowned painter, photographer and filmmaker, Marylin Minter!\xa0\n\nA legend on the New York art scene for over 50 years, Marylin Minter is a pioneer of electrically graphic, photorealist paintings which take the form of some of the most criticised elements of culture \u2013\xa0from high fashion to female desire \u2013 and explore how advertising and the the media have set the stereotypes of beauty, behaviour and sexuality\u2026\nCropping her images, and zooming in on highly charged \u2013\xa0at time erotic \u2013\xa0images, Minter\u2019s brightly saturated paintings of a tongue or high-heel are highly ambiguous in both subject and aesthetic value. From the contradictory questions around, is it beautiful? Is it abject, is it pretty or is it dirty? The work almost forms into an abstraction \u2013\xa0with acidic tones and hazy finishes \u2013 making it unclear as to whether we are looking at a photograph or painting\u2026\n\nMinter doesn\u2019t stop at traditional art: she has taken to the mainstream and made works to appear on Times Square billboards or the backdrop of a Madonna concert. She is invested in all forms of culture, assessing wherever art has become disregarded and interpreted as low culture, opening up the question even wider\u2026\xa0\n\nBorn in Louisiana, Minter Grew up in and attended university in Florida, and it was when studying when she embarked on her first well known photographic series of her mother \u2013\xa0swept up in the impossible fantasy of glamour \u2013\xa0that she was praised by the late Diane Arbus, who at the time was a visiting tutor.\xa0\n\nIn the 70s, Minter moved to NYC. Settling in the East Village scene, she challenged how both popular media and pop art treated women as unrealistic \u2013 as subjects of comparison rather than real people, in subjects often considered \u201cdebased\u201d. She has since exhibited across the globe, and this Spring will open a new exhibition at LGDR featuring portraits of the likes of Lizzo to Lady Gaga, Gloria Steinem to Monica Lewinsky. And I can\u2019t wait to find out more.\xa0\n\nFollow us:\nKaty Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel\nSound editing by Mikaela Carmichael\nArtwork by @thisisaliceskinner\nMusic by Ben Wetherfield\n\nhttps://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/\n\nTHIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY OCULA: https://ocula.com/