New feminist portraiture from Marilyn Minter, in dialogue with ancient
Greek art and Impressionism
American visual artist Marilyn Minter (born 1948) has long cultivated a
space between the classical and the commercial for her photorealistic
paintings and visceral photographs. Minter's art is characterized by an
emphasis on natural textures in all of their extremes--whether that of
the turquoise eyeshadow on a young woman's face or the glittery grit on
the underside of a high-heeled shoe. This monograph dedicated to her
recent works presents her 2009 film Green Pink Caviar and a dozen
monumental paintings as well as the processes behind such works.
In her most recent painting series, Minter is inspired by classical
representations of the female bather as an artistic subject from ancient
Greece to early Impressionism. She offers a contemporary version of this
figure: her female subjects relax and wash themselves in modern showers,
their faces and bodies partially obscured by a film of condensation on
the glass separating them from the viewer. In some images the women
appear as a mere blur behind the glass; in others, the rivulets of water
that course down the glass plane reveal enough to identify a face or
body part. The effect is a sensuousness that defies the male voyeuristic
gaze seen throughout art history.
