Marilyn Minter Beaver, 2013, Salon 94
If glamporn would be an art genre, Marilyn Minter would be the doyen of it. Her flashy, flamboyant paintings, photographs, and video works explore the tensions between the body, sublimal solicitudes about sexuality and desire, and fashion imagery. Minter is best known for glossy, hyperrealistic paintings in enamel on metal that depict closeups of makeup-laden lips, eyes, and high-heeled feet splashing in metallic fluid. She photographs body parts seen through panes of wet glass, captured from characteristically dynamic and provocative angles that suggest the seductive, disturbing nature of glamour.
MuseeMagazine just published a talk between Steve Miller and the lady that dubbed the term Food Porn ages before pinterest. Fittingly entitled: “GlamourPuss”
Some snippets
I’ve always been into the newest technology. I’ve never been somebody who says, ‘Ok this is where I’m going to stop learning things,’ you know? A lot of people in my age group, they’re not technically savvy at all. Technology doesn’t scare me at all. I actually taught myself as soon as Tetris came out, I started playing video games. ..Whenever anyone comes around and says, ‘Do you want to try to make a 3D print?’ I say yeah, let’s go for it.
The paintings are what we make out of the different snatches of information from the raw footage. So the paintings never exist as a photo, since I started really. When I started they did. They were just replications of a photo, but now, why would I ruin the photo if it’s perfect? I just use it as a photo. I don’t want to fuck it up.
The photos are just these beautiful, perfect photos. The paintings are like Frankenstein. I used the necklace from one negative, and the lips from another, and a drip from another. None of that exists as a photo.
I love sexual imagery. It turns me on. Why can’t we own the production of these images? Nobody has politically correct fantasies. So I was just asking these questions what does it mean? And it was at a time when everybody just assumed. First of all, the Internet was in its nascent stages. First, pornography is the only reason there is an Internet, I should mention that because that’s another reason I’m interested in it. It seems like it’s this shallow, debased subject matter but it rules the whole fucking country the world, really. You’re never going to be able to block the Internet because of that, because of sexual appetites.
I remember when Tracey Emin was using sexual imagery in her own work; she was trashed by everybody. .. I see the same thing happening with Lauren Nakadate, or anybody. There’s a real glass ceiling. Miley Cyrus perfect example slut shamed all over the world. I don’t think these questions have even been explored. This is such a big subject. Now that I’m an old lady, I can do anything and everybody loves it.
The love of fashion and glamor, it’s really complicated. It has a lot to do with love and hate, self-loathing, and pleasure at the exact same time. It’s a constant paradox. That’s what I’m interested in the paradoxes.
It’s corny, but the corny things are… clichés are real. Sunsets are beautiful, and kittens are adorable!
read the full talk with Marilyn Minter at MuseeMagazine
