Tag Archives: rosalyn drexler

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Marjorie Strider, Girl With Radish

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girl with radish photo by gail worley
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. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Marjorie Strider, Girl With Radish →

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Rosalyn Drexler, Love and Violence

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love and violence by rosalyn drexler photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

Rosalyn Drexler’s work often explores the dark backstories of postwar media culture and gender roles through imagery taken from mass-produced printed materials. For Love and Violence (1965), she enlarged a poster from the 1963 Hollywood film, Toys in the Attic, collaged it onto canvas and then painted over it within a flattened visual field. In this image, the movie’s main character, played by Dean Martin, embraces the female lead, Yvette Mimieux, with his hands at her chin. By setting the image against a red background, above cinematic scenes of brutality, Drexler highlights the threat implied by the male character’s seemingly intimate gesture. In the artist’s words, these popular images were “hidden but present, like a disturbing memory.”

Photographed in the Whitney Museum in NYC.

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Rosalyn Drexler, Marilyn Pursued By Death

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Marilyn Pursued By Death
Marilyn Pursued by Death, 1963 (Photo By Gail)

Roslyn Drexler (b. 1926) is usually associated with Pop art, but her work often explores the darker backstories and seedier manifestations of postwar media culture and gender roles. She clipped her subjects from printed materials — here, a news photograph of Marilyn Monroe fleeing the paparazzi with her bodyguard in tow — then enlarged and collaged them onto canvas, and painted over the image. In the artist’s words, her source images were “hidden but present, like a disturbing memory.” On the day that this source photograph was taken in 1956, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller were to announce their upcoming marriage; in the frenzy to cover the event, a car carrying reporters crashed, killing at least one member of the press. Drexler’s painting is an eerie evocation of the sometimes tragic results of our society’s insatiable desire for celebrity news.

Photographed at the Whitney Museum in NYC.