Photos By Gail

Marjorie Strider’s work draws on the vast image cache of popular culture, especially representations of women in men’s magazines and advertisements. She recasts these depictions with the subversive edge and an ironic bite, as exemplified by Girl With Radish (1963), which at first glance, looks like an image one would find in a pin up or on a billboard. Upon sustained viewing, however, the woman’s deadpan stare becomes increasingly confrontational. She looks deliberately out at the viewer, questioning the power dynamics of the conventional male gaze.

Strider achieved widespread notoriety in the early 1960s when her work inspired the 1964 first international Girlie Exhibit at the Pace Gallery on W. 57th St. The influential exhibition was dedicated to New York-based artists, whose work mind similar pin up iconography. Strider and Rosalyn Drexler were unfortunately the only two women included.

Photographed in the Jewish Museum in Manhattan