Marilyn Minter: Pretty / Dirty

Publisher Marketing: Marilyn Minter is famed for her glossy, hyper-realistic paintings, photographs and video works-seductive images that borrow the language of fashion and advertising photography, exploring the boundaries of desire, sensuality and body anxiety in the age of consumption. Close-up imagery of mouths, feet, splashes and puddles, rendered in high-gloss enamel on sheets of metal, subversively questions the pathology of glamour. Produced in conjunction with the first major museum retrospective on her work, Pretty/Dirty" examines every period of the artist's 40-year career, from her beginnings with the controversial porn paintings, initially rejected by the critical establishment, to her later large-scale photorealistic works. Essays from the exhibition's curators examine the trajectory of Minter's development and her engagement with debates over the representation of the female body. Texts from musicians, artists, writers and curators speak to Minter's wide-ranging influence: reflections from the likes of artist K8 Hardy, musician and author Richard Hell, and poet Eileen Myles, as well as an artist interview with writer Linda Yablonsky. Illustrated with hundreds of full-color reproductions, and with a complete biography and bibliography, "Pretty/Dirty" charts a new perspective on the career of this exciting and continually evolving artist. Marilyn Minter (born 1948) has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, at venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, the Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, in 2009 and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, in 2010. Her video "Green Pink Caviar" was exhibited in the lobby of MoMA for over a year, and was also shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard in LA, and the Creative Time MTV billboard in Times Square, New York. Contributor Bio:  Arning, Bill is the Director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston who has organized numerous exhibitions. Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom (2011), which Arning co-curated with Joao Ribas, Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center, received the prestigious award of Best Show Involving Digital Media, Video, Film, or Performance from the United States section of the International Art Critics Association (AICA/USA). Contributor Bio:  Minter, Marilyn Marilyn Minter was born in 1948 in Shreveport, Louisiana, and lives and works in New York. Her work has appeared at The Museum of Modern Art, P. S. 1 and the Dia Foundation for the Arts in New York, among others, and has been covered in the New York Times the New Yorker, Artforum and Vogue, and is included in the collections of many leading museums. Contributor Bio:  Flynn, Nick Nick Flynn has worked as a ship's captain, an electrician, and a case-worker with homeless adults. His most recent book is The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands (2011), is a collection of poems that are linked to his latest memoir, The Ticking is the Bomb (2010). His previous memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, was shortlisted for France's Prix Femina, and has been translated into fourteen languages. He is also the author of a play, Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins (2008), as well as two other books of poetry, Some Ether (2000), and Blind Huber (2002). Flynn's first memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, has been adapted into a full feature film called Being Flynn, which is scheduled for release in 2012 from Focus Features. Being Flynn is directed by Paul Weitz and starring Robert De Niro, Paul Dano, and Julianne Moore. Flynn himself is executive producer and artistic collaborator on the film. Flynn is a professor in the creative writing program at the University of Houston.