Writing and Photos by Rachele Terranova
The Trustees Theatre was filled to the brim Wednesday night in anticipation for Marilyn Minter’s honoree speech for deFINE ART. Minter has explored multimedia art through unconventional practices and experimental techniques.
In her college years, she earned her B.F.A. in Photography from the University of Florida. During her time at UF, she presented images of her mother to her class which are the first stepping stones to her career. She notes these images were widely criticized by her peers, and following her showing of these images, she refrained from doing so again for many years. She continued her education at Syracuse University achieving a M.F.A. in Painting.
Though her painting is known for its hyper realistic nature as a photorealist, she instead prefers the term “photo re-creator” as mentioned in her talk. Minter moved on to working with enamel as opposed to oil paint which lends heavily to much of her work made since this point.
Minter describes her struggles with the rejection of her work especially the pieces of art she truly believed in. The artist goes on to explain that in response to this rejection she started beating up her work as she felt the art world did to her. In her enamel on metal painting, “Rouge Baiser,” now showing at the SCAD Museum of Art is an example of this visceral response to her treatment as an artist. She acid washed and sanded down a metal sheet as the base of her enamel photorealist painting of a lipstick tube.
In her work as a “photo realist” she wants to make images that exist in the real world but from a vantage point or way of seeing that hasn’t been shown before. For example, “socks being pulled down after being worn all day, armpit hair growing out, someone dying their hair,” Minter said— these are all seemingly mundane and boring everyday occurrences, but can make for completely original and engaging imagery if looked at in a new way.
Some of her more controversial series include her porn series that she deemed as comical in her eyes, but others didn’t react the same. Her initial reasoning for these pieces of art was to, as a feminist, reclaim images that stem from an abusive history. Later she went on to create “100 Food Porn” which the SCAD Museum of Art is also showing 12 images from. The audience at this deFINE ART talk watched several videos of work by Minter, including one that included her 100 Food Porn images she paid to have play during late night TV commercials of Letterman and other programs in 1990.
Another video presented was created during Marilyn Minters collaboration with MAC Cosmetics. She elaborated on the video with some crucial insight for budding artists. She noted that on the commercial set she took a lot of liberty and played on the set with the work she was making. MAC was at first furious with the nature of the video produced, but then the MOMA bought the video to play in the lobby. Minter stated that MAC loves her now. Taking risks such as these are crucial for artists. “Piggy back on these commercial shoots and play with them,” Minter said.
She ended her talk with a final video of hers called “Smash” for the Killer Heels Exhibition. In this exhibition, she came to the conclusion she would be putting her work up with other artists who would produce what she concluded to be extremely “slick” images. When she realized she couldn’t compete with this, she did the opposite of what everyone else was doing. Out of this epiphany was born the “Smash” video for the exhibition, and as she gleefully noted, was her once in a lifetime opportunity to work with Grammy and Academy award winning Swedish producer Ludwig Göransson for free as her sound designer. Nonetheless, her message of originality and breaking free of any societally or patriarchally rooted rules shine through in the success of her work.
Minter’s exhibition, “Nasty Woman,” comprised of her heavily feminist work from the 80’s and early 90’s will be at the SCAD Museum of Art through August 2.
