Glamour and Grit in a Gilded Age | Marilyn Minter

In the golden haze of our ever-tilting modernity, where lipstick meets lens and sweat kisses sequins, there emerges from the lacquered shadows a siren of spectacle and spectacle’s critique — none other than the illustrious Miss Marilyn Minter.

Blowing the top off our list of June reviews is this steamy sexy collection of paintings and photographs. 

Vibrant colours whipped out in the delicious world of fashion and glamour, Minter's art oozes with attraction and taste. A pioneer in the world of magnetism and make-up, her work blends the feint texture of beauty and style in the art world. In a way that leaves our mouths watering for more.

THE DAZZLING WORLD OF MISS MARILYN MINTER

Born beneath a Southern sun in the year of our jazzed-up Lord, 1948, and reared on Florida’s breezy promise, Miss Minter has sashayed her way through the hallowed halls of fine art, cocktail in one hand, camera in the other, all while thumbing her nose at the dainty ideals of powdered prettiness.

From the outset, our gal wasn’t content to just powder her nose  no, she took that mirror, fogged it with a breath, and painted over it with smudged mascara and diamond-flecked dreams. Through panes of glass glistening with dew and desire, she captures, nay immortalizes, luscious close-ups of lips, lashes, and lacquered toes, bathed in glimmer and grime. The result? A kind of lush modern jazz of the eyes. A visual Charleston with attitude.

Her canvases — rendered not in oils but in enamel on metal, darlings! Glisten! Like the back room of a speakeasy just before the cops crash the joint. Each piece is labored over with such obsessive finesse, one might imagine Miss Minter with a monocle, squinting through the steam like a glamourous detective of sensuality.

But don’t be fooled by the shimmer, this is no ode to idle vanity. Oh no! Miss Minter dares to confront us with the grit beneath the gloss. 

In a society drunk on filters and fantasy, she shows us chipped polish, rogue curls, and the kind of gorgeous perspiration that only truth can produce.

Why, her “Pretty/Dirty” retrospective was a regular who’s-who of the art world — darling, even the walls were blushing! And when she teamed up with M.A.C. Cosmetics? The whole affair was a swanky marriage of lipstick and liberation, shaking up Madison Avenue like a gin martini with a feminist twist.

Some say she paints like Man Ray in a feather boa; others say her photographs are the lovechild of Vogue and vice. We say: she’s the queen bee of bedazzled defiance, painting the 21st century with a vintage wink and a devil-may-care grin.

So next time you see a glistening lip, an eyelash drowned in diamonds, or a heel stomped through sugar and mud — tip your cloche hat to Miss Minter. She’s not just painting women, dear hearts.

She’s painting the truth in rouge, sweat, and stardust.

🎷

For your viewing pleasure, peep her dazzling oeuvre at www.marilynminter.net, or tiptoe into the refined halls of Lehmann Maupin Gallery for a close encounter of the fabulous kind.

Let the jazz play on, and let Miss Minter shine.

Marilyn Minter - Selected Artworks

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, Les Rencontres d’Arles festival in 2007, France, 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. She has been included in numerous group exhibitions. 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 2009, she had solo exhibits at Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Salon 94, New York. In 2011 Minter had a solo exhibition at Team Gallery, New York. She was featured in Commercial Break, at the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture and POST, for the 2011 Venice Biennale. Her work is currently featured in “ Riotous Baroque”, a group exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zurich which will travel to the Guggenheim Bilbao in June 2013.

Salon 94
www.marilynminter.net
12 East 94th Street 
New York, NY 10128
T. 646.672.9212
Regen Projects
633 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, California 90069
T. 310.276.7430