May Wilson

May Wilson (b. 1905-d. 1986) was an American artist. A pioneer of the feminist and mail art movement, she is best known for her Surrealist junk assemblages and her "Ridiculous Portrait" photocollages.

Biography

Wilson was born in Baltimore, Maryland into a poor family. Her father died when she was young. She was raised by her Irish Catholic mother, who sewed piece-work at home. Wilson left school after ninth grade to become a stenographer/secretary to help support her family. When she turned twenty she married a young lawyer, William S. Wilson, Jr. She continued to work until the birth of her second child, after which she devoted her energies primarily to mothering and homemaking. In 1942 the couple had prospered enough to move to Towson, Maryland. She began to take correspondence courses in art and art history from several schools, including the University of Chicago. In 1948, after the marriage of her daughter, the couple moved to a gentleman's farm north of Towson where she pursued painting and gave private art lessons to some of her neighbors. She exhibited her paintings, scenes of everyday life painted in a flat, purposefully primitive manner, in local galleries and restaurants.^[1] In 1952 and 1958 she won awards for her submissions to juried exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art.^[2]

In 1956 her son, the writer Williams S. Wilson, gave Ray Johnson, founder of the New York Correspondence School, his mother's address. Thus began a friendship and artistic collaboration between Johnson and Wilson which would last the remainder of Wilson's life. Wilson became an integral part of Johnson's mail art circle and was initiated into the New York avant-garde through letters and small works that she exchanged with Robert Watts, George Brecht, Ad Reinhardt, Leonard Cohen, Arman, and many others.^[3]

When her marriage dissolved, she moved to New York City in the spring of 1966, taking up residence in the Chelsea Hotel where she threw legendary soirées and became known as the "Grandma Moses of the Underground" (Wilson was then 61.). By the time she arrived, Wilson was already working with photomontage techniques. Encouraged by Johnson, who had sent her magazines through the mail, Wilson scissored patterns into images of pin-up girls and muscle men until they resembled doilies or snowflakes, as Wilson called them. Wilson decorated her hotel room, and later her studio on West 23rd Street, with these and other manipulated, found art images.^[4] Around this time she also began her series of "Ridiculous Portraits." For these she would take the subway to Times Square where she would make faces in photo booths. She then would cut and paste her own face into postcards, old master reproductions, fashion shoots, and soft-core magazine pornography. Long before artists such as Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura would embark on similar critical projects, Wilson's "Ridiculous Portraits" sent up the ubiquitous sexism and ageism that exists in popular and fine art images of women.^[5] At the age of 70, she had a nude photograph of herself converted into a stamp that she pasted on envelopes.^[6] These collages and humorous self-portraits were made as gifts and mail art items for her friends and were not widely known until after her death.^[7]

Wilson also experimented with junk art assemblages that were intended for exhibition. These incorporated high heels, bed sheets, sauce pans, toasters, liquor bottles, ice trays, and wrapped baby dolls. Wilson's sculptures were inspired by Surrealist and Dada practices and are similar in spirit to Yayoi Kusama's contemporary accumulations.^[8]

After her death in 1986, her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and retrospectives at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Gracie Mansion Gallery, New York; the Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ; Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York; and the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

Selected Exhibitions

• 2010 "Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968" University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA (traveling exhibition)
• 2008 "1968/2008: The Culture of Collage" Pavel Zoubok Gallery, NY
• 2008 "Ridiculous Portrait: The Art of May Wilson" Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ
• 2008 "Woo Who? May Wilson" Pavel Zoubok Gallery, NY
• 1995 [Retrospective], Baltimore Museum of Art, MD
• 2001 "May Wilson: Ridiculous Portraits and Snowflakes" Grace Mansion Gallery, NY
• 2001 "Inside Out: Outside In-The Correspondence of Ray Johnson and May Wilson," Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, CA
• 1991 "May Wilson: The New York Years" Grace Mansion Gallery, NY
• 1973 "Sneakers" Kornblee Gallery, NY
• 1973 "Small Works: Selections from the Richard Brown Baker Collection of Contemporary Art," RISD Museum, Providence, RI
• 1971 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
• 1970 "Sculpture Annual 1970," Whitney Museum of American Art NY
• 1965 Baltimore Museum of Art, MD
• 1962 Johns Hopkins University
• 1957 Bookshop Gallery, Baltimore, MD

Public collections

• Whitney Museum of American Art, NY
• Baltimore Museum of Art, MD
• Brooklyn Museum, NY

References

1. ^ William S. Wilson, "May Wilson: Constructing Woman (1905-1986)," in Ridiculous Portrait: The Art of May Wilson, ed. Ann Aptaker, (Morris Museum, 2008), p. 4.
2. ^ Sachs and Minioudaki, eds. (2010).
3. ^ Wilson, in Aptaker (2008); Sachs and Minioudaki, eds. (2010).
4. ^ Wilson, "Art is a Jealous Lover: May Wilson: 1905-1986" November 18, 2001.
5. ^ Camhi (2001)
6. ^ Wilson, in Aptaker (2008)
7. ^ Sachs and Minioudaki, eds. (2010).
8. ^ Sachs and Minioudaki (2010)

Bibliography

• Aptaker, Ann. ed. Ridiculous Portrait: The Art of May Wilson [exh. cat.] NJ: Morris Museum, 2008.
• Camhi, Leslie. "Late Bloomer," Village Voice, December 18, 2001.
• Giles, Gretchen. "Cosmic Litterers: Artists Ray Johnson and May Wilson: Taking the Cake" Northern California Bohemian (June 14–20, 2001).
• McCarthy, Gerard. "May Wilson: Homespun Rebel," Art in America vol. 96, no. 8 (September 2008), pp. 142–147.
• Sachs, Sid and Kalliopi Minioudaki, Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968. Philadelphia, PA: University of the Arts, Philadelphia, 2010.
• Wilson, William S. "Art is a Jealous Lover: May Wilson: 1905-1986" November 18, 2001.
• "May Wilson, 81, Artist Noted for Her 'Junk' Assemblages," New York Times, October 22, 1986, p. A29.

External links

• Estate of May Wilson at http://www.pavelzoubok.com/
• Woo Who? May Wilson, a documentary by Amalie R. Rothschild
• May Wilson on artnet

Persondata
Name	Wilson, May
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Date of birth	1905
Place of birth
Date of death	1986
Place of death