May 3, 2016

"Critics were puzzled. Was Marisol a Pop artist or not?"

"The critic Lucy Lippard, in 'Pop Art' (1966), said no, calling her work 'a sophisticated and theatrical folk art' that had nothing to do with Pop. It was often overtly political and funny — 'clever as the very devil and catty as can be,' John Canaday wrote in The New York Times of her 1967 exhibition featuring sculpture caricatures of the British royal family, President Lyndon B. Johnson and other eminent figures. She drew on celebrity images, as well, creating sculptures of John Wayne and Bob Hope.... Like Warhol and his disciple Jeff Koons, Marisol was aloof and opaque, a master of the gnomic pronouncement. 'I don’t think much myself,' she told the critic Brian O’Doherty in The Times in 1964. 'When I don’t think, all sorts of things come to me.'"

From "Marisol, an Artist Known for Blithely Shattering Boundaries, Dies at 85."

Here's the Marisol LBJ:



Full sculpture, in a museum setting, with some actual humans — not part of the sculpture, just interestingly in the shot — here. Closeup of the women in his hand: here.

3 comments:

David said...

So Ladybird was the first Black First Lady? Who knew? Not her for sure.

tim in vermont said...

Taxonomy is politics.

befinne said...

In the modern era, most "artists" are just charlatans. As that photo demonstrates.