The Monokini (1964) was Rudi Gernreich’s swimsuit of the future. The topless design was controversial, making it difficult to find a model willing to be photographed wearing it. Ultimately, only one image of the suit (taken from behind) was published, in Look magazine. At the urging of look editor, Suzanne Kirtland, a wider selection of images appeared in Women’s Wear Daily and later, in Life, where many American readers took note. Continue reading Eye On Design: Monokini Topless Swimsuit By Rudi Gernreich→
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. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Marjorie Strider, Girl With Radish→
March 2010 Cover of Time Out London Designed By Banksy (All Photos By Gail)
My first exposure to Banksy — the pseudonymous British street artist (some say consortium) whose irreverent works of socio-political satire have appeared in site-specific locations across the globe — was a visit to his October, 2008 immersive Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill. Located in a Greenwich Village, NYC storefront and filled with surreal creations both familiar and exotic, the installation was designed to look like a typical pet store, but with a twist. While there was no actual Charcoal Grill serving food, rather than selling live animals, the store featured a variety of animatronic pets, including fish sticks swimming in a fish bowl, ‘chicken nugget’ baby chicks and a rabbit applying makeup before a mirrored vanity.
The only painting in which Edward Hopper depicts a cinema screen, New York Movie (1939) is one of the artist’s most compelling and spatially complex theater pictures. This work depicts three distinct features within the movie house: the screen, the moviegoers watching it, and the usher tasked with watching them. The space itself is an amalgam of hoppers on-site research from four New York theaters: the Globe, Palace, Republic, and Strand. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Edward Hopper, New York Movie→
James Rosenquist (1933 – 2017) began his career as a commercial sign painter. Working for the Artkraft Strauss Sign Corporation, he produced vibrant representations of consumer goods until committing to a career as an artist in 1960. Renting a studio in Coenties Slip on the waterfront of the Financial District, he began to make paintings that combined a well-known, slick advertising vocabulary with a wry ambivalence about the rampant consumerism he saw all around him. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: James Rosenquist, Sightseeing→
