Appropriating the aesthetics of fashion editorials and advertising, New York-based Marilyn Minter’s photorealist paintings examine banal realities, such as frozen peas or kitchen floors, often relegated to a hyper-feminized realm in popular culture and marketing, as well as contemporary notions of beauty and sensuality. Adding sweat, spit, hair, and dirt to the high-gloss veneer of advertising campaigns, Minter juxtaposes in-your-face beauty with the down-and-dirty reality of being human. Minter first gained popularity in the early 1990s, and has been featured in major solo exhibitions nationally and internationally including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, La Conservera Centro de Arte Contemporáneo in Spain, and the Deichtorhallen in Germany. Her video Green Pink Caviar was exhibited in the lobby of the MoMA, and was also shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard and in Times Square. Most recently, her retrospective Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver; the Orange County Museum of Art; and the Brooklyn Museum.

Supported by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA).