Marilyn Minter

Marilyn Minter (born 1948) is an American artist currently living and working in New York City. Marilyn Minter has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, the Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, OH in 2009, La Conservera, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Ceutí/Murcia, Spain in 2009, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH in 2010 and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany in 2011. Her video Green Pink Caviar was exhibited in the lobby of the MoMA for over a year, and was also shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard in LA, and the Creative Time MTV billboard in Times Square, New York.

She has been included in numerous group exhibitions in museums all over the world. In 2006, Marilyn Minter was included in the Whitney Biennial, and in a collaboration with Creative Time she installed billboards all over Chelsea in New York city. In the spring of 2011 Minter had a solo exhibition at Team Gallery, New York. In 2009, she had a solo exhibit at Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Minter currently teaches in the MFA department at the School of Visual Arts in New York and has an upcoming solo show at Salon 94, New York, opening October 28, 2011.

Early life

Minter was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, and raised in Florida.

While still a student in Florida, Minter created a series of photographic studies that involved her drug-addicted mother, which is now praised. Through the 1980s, she explored Pop-derived pictures often incorporating sexuality, setting the tone for many of her works.^[1] Marilyn Minter moved to New York City in 1976, after earning a master of fine arts degree at Syracuse University. She became involved in the nightclub scene in Manhattan of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and began to incorporate borrowed imagery from advertising and the porn industry into her art.

Style

Her photographs and works often include sexuality and erotic imagery. Minter begins her process by staging photo shoots with film. She uses conventional darkroom processes. She does not crop or digitally manipulate her photographs. Her paintings, on the other hand, are made by combining negatives in photoshop to make a whole new image. This new image is then turned into paintings created through the layering of enamel paint on aluminum. Minter and her assistants work directly from this newly created digital image. The last layer is applied with fingertips to create a modeling or softening of the paintbrush lines.^[1]

Works

1989: Minter created a series of works based on images from hardcore pornography, she believes that nobody has politically correct fantasies. Minter thinks that women should have sexual imagery for their own pleasure. She reclaimed images from an abusive history asking the question, does it change the meaning if a woman uses these kinds of images. At the time this was a very complicated issue, and there were no simple answers. The timing was terrible as this was the pinnacle of political correctness.

1990: Minter produced her first video "100 Food Porn" This video was used as a television advertisement to promote her exhibition at the Simon Watson Gallery in New York. Minter used the gallery's art advertising budget to buy 30 seconds on late night television in lieu of traditional print ad's. This was the very first commercial to advertise an artists' show on late night television. She bought time slots on David Letterman, Arsenio Hall, and Nightline. (It cost $1,800 to buy a 30 second slot on David Letterman at that time.) "100 Food Porn" was shot and directed by NY documentary filmmaker Ted Haimes.

Through the 1990s she refined her works, which despite still having pornographic undertones, exuded a sense of glamour and high-fashion.

2005: Minter had a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. This exhibition focused on hyperrealistic close-ups of seemingly glamorous images, including makeup-laden lips, eyes, and toes.

2006: Minter was featured in the Whitney Bienniale, and in a partnership with Creative Time, Minter was given ad space on four billboards in Manhattan's Chelsea district. The billboards presented photographs of high heels kicking around in dirty water, and stayed up in Chelsea for a month. [4]

2007: Minter's first retrospective monograph was published Minter had shows in Sweden, the U.K., Spain, and France. A series of photographs she took of Pamela Anderson, commissioned by the art quarterly Parkett, were later featured on the cover of Zoetrope: All-Story. Her book involved a heavy gloss, multi-colored paper making it feel almost wet, setting the book apart.[3]

2008: Minter collaborated with international skate/street wear brand Supreme to produce three limited edition skate decks.

2009: Minter produced her second video "Green Pink Caviar" Variations of "Green Pink Caviar" video were shown on billboards in Times Square, New York city and in Los Angeles. Excerpts of the same video were used as the backdrop for the opening song in Madonna's Sticky & Sweet Tour. The full length version of the video was played in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art for more than a year.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Robert Ayers (July 26, 2007), Marilyn Minter, ARTINFO, http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/25398/marilyn-minter/, retrieved 2008-04-23 

Marilyn Minter, Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2007 ISBN 9780974364865

External links

• Green Pink Caviar Marilyn Minter: Green Pink Caviar
• Salon 94 Marilyn Minter's Gallery: Salon 94
• CREATIVETIME: Marilyn Minter Billboard Project
• Parkett (Issue #79) by Andrea K. Scott, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz and Katy Siegel
• Time out New York: A Matter of Time (Issue 669: Jul 22-30, 2008) by Howard Halle
• ARTnews: Slides and Prejudice (April 2006) by Linda Yablonsky
• Profile of Marilyn Minter at Smyles & Fish
• What it Feels Like to Look: A Studio Visit with Marilyn Minter by Emily Davidow

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Name	Minter, Marilyn
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Date of birth	1948
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