New York City based photographer, painter, and videographer Marilyn Minter began her art career in 1989 with an unflinching series of paintings based on still images from hardcore pornography. Since then, the artist’s work has evolved through various mediums, while still examining the presentation of sexuality within the confines of fashion, art, and media. Despite, or perhaps because of, her no-nonsense approach to often delicate subject matters, Minter’s work seems to effortlessly draw commercial appeal. Her art has been a feature in the Whitney Biennial, her videos have been displayed in Times Square, and her images have graced Supreme skateboard decks.

I sat down with Marilyn at the opening of a show at Freeman’s to discuss the sexualization of her work as a female artist, her political leanings, and how she feels about the process of becoming successful.

Sway Benns: I don’t want to delve too far back in your previous work but I’ve noticed something that comes up a lot when people look at your work with women – they immediately start discussing the sexualization of it. However, when faced with similar paintings that you’ve done of men, there’s rarely any mention of sex.

Marilyn Minter: Isn’t that interesting?

Sway: It seems to say something about the audience…

Marilyn: It’s always been that way. When I did the food porn and I had a hundred paintings of hands taking food apart, I’d say at least a third of them were male hands. No one wrote anything, ever, except about women with long nails. Those images were from cookbooks. Half of the chefs were men, maybe more. I think that was so telling. And if a woman does anything at all sexual – I made those hardcore porn paintings twenty years ago, but everything I do is sexual. I could paint an apple and it’s “Marilyn, the erotic artist.”

Sway: Well, even in popular culture, male nudity is typically a joke, but female nudity is sexualized.

Marilyn: Yeah. Well everyone likes to look at young flesh. Girls and boys do. I remember the first time I saw a man photographed the way they shoot women. It was in Thelma and Louise, the way Ridley Scott shot Brad Pitt. And I thought “Oh, wow, it’s finally happening.” But of course anyone would do that with Brad Pitt.

Sway: A lot of contemporary art is less process based, less detailed, less pretty. As an artist that is known for having a hyper-realistic, visually appealing style, how do you feel about that in general?

Marilyn: Well, it’s a movement. The people that are really good, are also aesthetically pleasing with the back story, A really means B and I think the best of those artists are fantastic, but I think the eye starts to crave the opposite after being inundated with… I’ve seen shows that are so academic that it’s stunning. So there’s bound to be a huge backlash. I’m a teacher so all the practices are equal to me. I always look for the best of that practice. But that has been ubiquitous in the past five, ten years. But I don’t know, I think that that’s over.

Sway: Yeah?

Marilyn: Yeah, we’re already starting to see the backlash. People are writing about “Oh God, not that again.”

Marilyn Minter, Meltdown, 2011.

Sway: I’ve started to notice that too, outside of art criticism, even in casual conversation people mention they’re tired of it and how they want it to be….

Marilyn: Juicy! There’s something about, you can almost guarantee when it becomes the academy–like it is now, that there will be people in art school, where their entire job is to make the opposite. I tell my students that are doing abstract painting, “Keep doing this because when it turns around you’ll be good at it.” And up until now they would have stopped and started making work about identity. [laughs]

Sway: That seems to be the narrative to your success. Because it took you a long time to become….

Marilyn: Famous? You know it’s not like I was never making something interesting. I think what happened was I wasn’t communicating it. The same paintings that no one was interested in – or liked – look pretty good to people now.

Sway:What do you think changed?

Marilyn: When you’re in it you don’t know exactly what’s going on. I always thought I had something to say when I was told I didn’t. And now everyone tells me I’m the bomb and I don’t believe that. I’m trying to stay right sized about it all. When everyone wants the paintings as opposed to when I couldn’t give them away. Those experiences are anti- the creative process. You can’t believe either one. Somehow you have to put your pith helmet on and just forge through. You have to be a little delusional, when no one’s paying any attention to you. I read Steve Jobs said that you have to have passion. I guess that sounds like I’m comparing myself to Steve Jobs, but I think that to be an artist and to talk about the times you’re living in, if people object to what you’re doing–on moral grounds–then you probably have something interesting to say.

Sway: I think there’s something to be said about people who keep working through failure.

Marilyn: Oh yeah, I’ve been a failure, or mediocre, through most of my life.

Sway: When you look at most people who come out through the other side that have had long stretches of failure…

Marilyn: It’s probably a good cliché. I learned a long time ago, probably in college, never to write anybody off. I remember when Richard Prince said “painting is bankrupt.” [laughs] Those things come back to haunt you.

Sway: A lot of your work really translates to pop culture now.

Marilyn: I’ve always been interested in the times I live in. Movies, I’m fanatical about seeing. They inform me about everything, they tell me how people are seeing. I probably see three or four a week. I love this movie Bellflower. It was really well done, absolutely nothing I could have predicted.

Marilyn Minter, Glisterine, 2011.

Sway: There’s a lot going on politically in New York, particularly with the protests. To me it seems like more of a European endeavor.

Marilyn: We’ll see, I can’t say that because I’ve been in so many protests in my life.

Sway: I think it’s from my generation’s perspective.

Marilyn: Yeah, it’s your generation. Civil Rights, Act Out. I was one of the people that went through the system, followed people that got arrested through the system to make sure they got out alright. I’ve been doing this my whole life. I went to the one the other night, but now I feel like “Nah, it’s your turn.” [laughs] Just go do it, even if you are going to get arrested. It’s so exciting, it’s like getting high!

Sway: All of that is typically so far removed from my generation, I’m so used to the apathy, it seems surreal.

Marilyn: Well, it’s about fucking time! Before Occupy Wall Street I was so horrified by people like Eric Cantor and the Tea Party, and the job creators not being taxed. Nobody was saying anything about it. I literally said I was going to be an ostrich, I got so crazy. I felt so powerless. New York is not the rest of this country, it’s its own country. I have relatives from the south. The worst policy Barack Obama ever had is the fact that he’s black, but the Tea Party is so sophisticated they call it “everything else.” I want the protests to get bigger and bigger, and stay totally nonviolent. I hope the Democratic Party doesn’t co-op it either. I think it has to be an independent, non-violent thing. Because that’s where people are going to start listening.

Sway: I’m not sure that people even felt that anything was wrong.

Marilyn: It’s stunning to me. I just hope that it doesn’t become – because every movement that I’ve been in, sociopaths begin to take over. So that’s the one thing…

Sway: The charismatic leader? I think apathy is the reason why we don’t have as strong of a visual culture as other generations have, but maybe every generation feels that way.

Marilyn: It’s pluralism. It’s a cliché but you can guarantee what the next art movement is going to be: the exact opposite of the current movement. It’s best to be outside of the movement all together. They used to last hundreds of years, now they last 15 months.

Sway: It might have something to do with technology, shorter attention spans.

Marilyn: Well your generation is so much smarter, they have to be. They have so much access to information. I’m enjoying it. I played video games so I’d never be afraid of technology. I just go in and start pushing buttons. I haven’t read a manual in years.

Sway: When I hear criticism of your work it’s often about it being ‘glamorous’. Where do you think that comes from?

Marilyn: Well, I understand it. I work with really abject subject matter; fashion, glamour, pornography. These are things that people just despise and they’re shallow and vapid and easy. But the reality is, if it wasn’t for pornography there would be no internet. Fashion is a multi-million dollar industry and it tells you what tribe you’re from. People want to think it’s so insignificant but if you do think that you’re lying to yourself, it’s ludicrous. Academia has a hard time with my work because of the so-called superficiality of it, but that’s self hatred right there! Because you’re dressed in head to toe Prada. [laughs] I watch people with such suspicious projects going; they’re so vapid, but they’re about how A really means B, and they get so much praise because you can write about it. But visually it’s so non-compelling, I see that and I think it’s some level of self hatred just engaging them, somehow you have to not eat, and works just about ideas and not visuals because that’s more important than something about pleasure. If it looks too good it’s suspicious.

Sway: Wel,l when you think about it, the sole reason we exist on earth is to procreate. Sex…

Marilyn: Rules the world.

Sway: But I think as a culture we work to deny that in favor of intellectualism.

Marilyn: I know! It’s a joke. I just laugh at it. If that’s my only criticism, please, bring it on! I’ve seen curators hide their Italian Vogues and put out their Octobers. It’s ridiculous how people lie to themselves, all they do is see glamorous images all day long, and it gives you an enormous amount of pleasure, and it’s also going to make you feel like shit because you’re never going to look like that.

Marilyn Minter, Cheshire, 2011.

Sway: This work sort of touches on that. They’re babies, and the material is this precious metal, this gold, silver, and they take so much pleasure in playing with it. It seems to hint at it being ingrained.

Marilyn: Yeah, it’s great because when does it start? They’re blank slates.

Sway: A lot of your images use Photoshop, cutting from various photographs.

Marilyn: Only in the paintings, all of the photos are analog. I still use film. I use film because I get so much detail. I’m totally anti-Photoshop. I don’t use it. Even when I do commercial work. And I don’t use blonde haired, blue eyed models. These are all mixed raced models. I’m on a mission! Photoshop has become so ridiculous. I don’t even recognize the people on the cover of Vogue anymore. There’s no pores on the skin. I’ve actually had fights – I did editorial for Allure - and I wouldn’t let them Photoshop me. They took it all the way to the photo editor. I wouldn’t let them straighten the teeth, take the fur off the upper lip… I said, “ Why did you ask me to do this project if you’re going to Photoshop it?” No, I’m totally anti-Photoshop… I was just thinking though… When people take my picture I still think, “Could you take this wrinkle out?” [laughs] No, you know I just decided this is how you get old; Don’t get fat, get a good haircut. That’s it. Do not do anything to your face. I grew up in Miami. They didn’t have body surgery then, but it was de rigueur for older men to have young girlfriends. And that was really warped for me. Well… my father [laughs] when I was eighteen my father had a sixteen-year-old girlfriend. And his friends had twenty year old girlfriends. You know, I thought it was normal until I moved up north. Miami was really – I mean this is when it was flip flops and t-shirts and there was nothing cool about it. It warped me terribly.

Sway: I know you have a team of assistants that help with your paintings, I’ve noticed that is a source of criticism in art, but not necessarily in fashion, architecture, etc.

Marilyn: People get weird about it in art because they’re stupid. All of us do it. They just don’t see women do it. Jeff Koons does it. Murakami does it.

Sway: Damien Hirst.

Marilyn: I’m the only woman that does it. Yeah, Richard Serra is really going to bend that metal… I mean what am I going to do? I invented this technique, I did it all alone for a few years and then I got another person to do it, and then I hired someone else and she was better than both of us, so what am I suppose to do fire her? [laughs] I made a system. It’s my vision. And I’m making videos and I’m shooting photos. I still paint. I’m just not a finisher anymore, I don’t have time. It’s just stupid. I’ve never heard anyone sophisticated use that argument, it’s only people that don’t know any better. They believe the myth of the artist working alone in the studio and can’t even use a projector. That somehow more heroic! To draw it out by hand.

Sway: I read about some of the materials you use in the actual photographs and videos…

Marilyn: All of the stuff… vodka and cake decoration. Except for the work with baby, I used non-toxic paint with the babies. The cake decoration suspends in vodka, it cakes up in water. A make-up artist taught me that.

Sway: That’s a great choice for material.

Marilyn: Yeah, that’s the only way you can do it. So everyone is playing in this goo, kicking it up.

Marilyn Minter will be featured in The Riotous Baroque at the Kunsthalle in Zurich opening on May 31, which will travel to Bilbao next February. Marilyn’s next solo show will open the new Regen Projects space in Los Angeles next Spring.

All images courtesy of the artist.

When the Los Angeles-based photographer Lauren Ward headed down to the Austin, Texas music festival SXSW to bunk with Roy Harper, Jonathan Wilson and his band next door to Robert Plant‘s house, no less, we asked her to catalogue her adventure in images—from the endless live music to the eclectic attendees to the general weirdness that makes the city a Texan anomaly.

Click “Read More” for additional images.

Jonathan Wilson and Erin Lee Smith

Dr. John

Father John Misty

Delta Spirit

Left: Tex Smith

Fiona Apple

Left: Katrina Cahana

Right: Dr. John

Brooklyn Hustle Club

Right: Tashaki Miyaki

These are questions I feel like these people might ask me, but instead I ask myself, just in their voice, because it’s a good exercise in processing an experience you recently had. Here is my intro for myself: I take pictures of many things. Recently it has been notorious genre-busting musician Hank Williams III aka “Hank 3.”

Pretend I’m comedian Jerry Seinfeld: “What’s the DEAL with your recent photos of Hank Williams III?”

Tara Israel: Hank 3 is a musician I adore, who navigates a number of seemingly unrelated genres of music with great success. I contacted him earlier this year because I wanted to do a photo essay that both looked at the stage clothes of country music legends and also explored at what I feel makes Hank 3 so special. I contacted him with an email only he would be crazy enough to respond to: “I have this great idea. I don’t know exactly what I want to do or even what I’m going to do with it but its going to be great. I’ll show up and you just change your clothes a few times. Easy breezy. Where do you live?” Two weeks later I was in Nashville knocking on the door to the Haunted Ranch (his home.) At the time I had no idea what Hank had access to but he took the time to collect what I styled into nine different looks. He pulled suits that had been made for his grandfather (Hank Williams Sr) and father (Hank Williams Jr), as well as one made for him in his youth, in addition to assorted stage looks he has worn, ranging from heavy metal inspired leather to his everyday look of a workshirt and boots. I admire Hank’s ability to pay homage to his family lineage yet not be limited by it.

Pretend I’m photographer Joel Sternfeld during a crit when you were his photo student: “What is a good photograph? Why are any of these good photographs?”

Tara Israel: What I try to achieve with my photos is to challenge my understanding of intimacy. Its not about hiding behind gimmicks like sexuality or relying on complicated production to create a false connection between the camera and the subject. The pictures are very simple, sometimes awkward or creepy, but always honest. Its about connecting with another person, which is often terrifying, and having fun with someone new. Its basically living in that electric moment before a first kiss or telling someone you love them for the first time, but because there are no words or kisses, it just becomes limitless potential. No fear of unrequited love, or bad kisses or the dreadful “now what?” when it starts to get stale.

Pretend I’m the I CAN HAZ A CHEEZBURGER cat: “Wut lessuns haz you lernd from this prossis? Do you evur feer that what matterz to you 2day will knot bee kulturally relevint toomaro?”

Tara Israel: I reject the need to create a linear path between the past and present, and I feel that Hank does the same. These images illustrate how he is able to simultaneously occupy all of these identities with ease, showing that he does not have to be one or the other, that one should not be restricted to genre titles or convention. Purist fans of country music need to accept that he is honoring the genre and his grandfather the best way he can- he just sometimes does it while wearing crazy costumes on stage and with a lot of headbanging. He is a living library of music references and anecdotes, allowing it to organically manifest throughout his art. I went to Nashville to shoot these portraits in June, on a particularly hot and oppressively humid week. One afternoon we planned on walking the trails behind his house to shoot him wearing his own suit made by Manuel. I suggested we wait until later that afternoon because I felt it was too muggy for him to go outside in a wool suit and hat. He looked at me and said, “My grandfather would tour in the back of a Cadillac wearing wool suits in the summer without air conditioning and perform on stage every night. I can handle standing around for an hour in my backyard.”

Pretend I’m your dentist at the exact moment he starts drilling a cavity: “So what else have you been up to lately?”

Tara Israel: I recently returned from a stint on the road with Hank 3, photographing his shows and behind the scenes. Despite his lineage, Hank is very much a DIY success story- from how he interacts with his fans to the recent release of three albums on his own label. He lives and breathes his music, from loading the gear onto the tour bus to signing autographs for every fan after he performs 3+ hour shows. I had never shot a concert before or even been on a tour bus, so it was learning how to accomplish what I wanted while staying out of the way of the 13 other people on the bus (and how to hold a camera still when you are balancing on a moving bus/ vibrating speaker/ using a taller person as a tripod).

Pretend I’m your mother Bonnie Schnitta: “Why am I so proud of you even though you never remember take out the garbage/ empty the dishwasher when you come to visit?”

Tara Israel: I just don’t know, Mom. I just don’t know. Sometimes you want to know you can count on people… Unfortunately you can only count on me forgetting these things. I’m consistent. You can count on that.

Pretend I’m your high school math teacher: “Please show your work”

Some of Tara Israel’s photos of Hank Williams III will be on view December 8 – January 3 at Keyes Art Projects, 551 W 21st St, 4th Floor, NYC.

Dossier‘s most recent issue features T. Cole Rachel in conversation with the legendary Stevie Nicks. In the interview, among other things, Stevie talks about the long-running NYC event Night of a 1000 Stevies, a costume ball full of ethereal Stevie Nicks gypsies. To accompany the feature, Brooklyn-based illustrator Jess Rotter has collaborated with Dossier through Rotter and Friends to offer 50 limited-edition “Stevie” t-shirts, printed on a super soft, 100% power-washed cotton dyed a lush grey/purple hue. We can’t tell you how much we love these babies right here.

Dossier x Rotter & Friends Limited Edition Stevie Nicks T-shirt: $35 (plus $5 US shipping or $13 International shipping)

US (select size)

X-Small Small Medium

International (select size)

X-Small Small Medium

Photo by David Black

Dossier Issue 8 was released this week. It features contributions from Kiki Smith, Yoko Ono, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Michael Stipe, Stevie Nicks, George Saunders, Robert Longo, Tom Sachs, Cyprien Gallard, Aimee Mullins, Nate Lowman, Devendra Banhart, Sloane Crosley, Olympia Le-Tan, AF Vandevorst and many others. You can order the new issue here, or find it on a newsstand. For a very quick preview, you can also flip through the video below.

Check out all of our Fashion Week coverage here.

Photographs and text by Phillip Kalantzis-Cope

Being in flight is one of the most unnatural, extraordinary, ordinary experiences of modern life. When we climb to 30,000 feet, our perspective looking down at the world becomes that of a deity, and the rules of time and space are altered as we rush over the earth. In flight we are able to view the most remote corners of the natural world and the vast spread of the world we have constructed. It gives us the unique perspective to look at the interaction of the natural and constructed in a truly holistic way. In its totality, the unnatural or extraordinary experience produces great fear and excitement. We confront death a little every time the doors close – and this closeness to death intensifies the extraordinary experience of being in flight. On the other hand, our ‘in flight’ experience is filled with the most unremarkable daily activities: reading a comic book, finishing a crossword puzzle, eating, sleeping. The cabin becomes our shared world, temporally removed from the world that we’ve left back on land. What connects the ordinary and the extraordinary is a powerful trust in the human capacity to take us beyond the mundane. The plane becomes a temple of humanism, where we put faith in all that get us and keeps us up in the air – engineers, pilots, researchers, air traffic controllers – a web of people, underwritten by collective knowledge, keeping us alive, together.

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We are psyched to be a part of the massive roster for the pop-up shop Arts & Leisure. Curated by Chrissie Miller (of Sophomore NYC) and Erin Krause, the idea is to bring the best artists and designers from JFK to LAX. One look at the list below and we’d say they’ve succeeded. It opened this weekend but it is up until the 28th which gives plenty of time for New York fashion and culture to completely infect Los Angeles.

Arts & Leisure is at Space 1520 N. Cahuenga Boulevard, Los Angeles, from August 6-28. Opening hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 12-8pm.

Poet and performance artist John Giorno is many things to many people. It depends on who you talk to. To some, he’s simply lost in translation. The author of Suicide Sutra and Thanks for Nothing is fatalistic, shockingly blunt, incendiary, controversial, and pornographic – according to his critics. His defenders claim the iconic figure in Gotham’s counterculture since the 1960’s is woefully misunderstood, instead seeing him as an innovator, a visionary, fierce, passionate, prophetic and teased with erotic charm. Our intrepid photographer, after spending a solid late summer afternoon with Giorno, came away with this impression, “He’s very sweet and kind – John radiates a certain happiness and gratitude towards the world. You can tell he is still thrilled to wake up and produce work all day –  creating art and making this his reality.” Ultimately, all characterizations may be correct, leaving us with an individual possessing a peculiar and electric mix of contradictions.

A native New Yorker, John Giorno was born in 1936. Armed with an Ivy League education (from Columbia), the former stockbroker turned poet gained his street-cred in the 1960’s underground. He began hanging out with those brash young artists who were on the cusp of immense notoriety – characters like Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham and Roy Lichtenstein. Giorno eventually ended up the protagonist in Andy Warhol’s 1963 film Sleep, which featured him sleeping for five hours. That led to another by Warhol called Handjob - we will spare you the details of this never released film. In his book You Got to Burn to Shine: New and Selected Writings (Serpent’s Tail, 1993), Giorno details his fast and furiously promiscuous youth.

He talks about his relationships with Warhol and artist Keith Haring and goes on to share how he was able to redirect his energies toward acts of humanitarianism through AIDS activism. In an effort to fight, with compassion, the devastating impact of the AIDS epidemic, Giorno launched the AIDS Treatment Project in 1984, which provides direct financial support to people with AIDS.

John Giorno has also for more than four decades been innovating through poetry. It was in 1965 that his entrepreneurial spirit collided with his passion and he launched Giorno Poetry Systems. In short a record label, GPS allowed him to experiment with the use of technology in poetry, create new venues for delivery and introduce the art form to a broader audience. GPS has a catalogue of over fifty titles – LPs and CDs of poets working with performance and music, cassettes, poetry videos and film, poem paintings and books. Some of the poets and artists who recorded or collaborated with Giorno Poetry Systems were novelist (and his sometimes spoken word performance partner) William S. Burroughs, John Ashbery, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Mapplethorpe. Continuing to look for new opportunities, it’s said that following a phone conversation in 1968 with Burroughs, Giorno initiated the Dial-A-Poem service. It worked like this: several phone lines were connected to individual answering machines, and people could call GPS to listen to a poem offered from fragments of various live recordings by contemporary poets. As far as topics, a wealth of material was available to GPS given the times. Social, political and civil unrest, the sexual revolution and the Vietnam War stirred up at times feverish fits of public interest in the Dial-A-Poem service. And with this project, Giorno claims to have given impetus to the development of dial-for-stock market info and dial and for sports-info services that become so ubiquitous.

Although he’s firmly planted in the modern age, Giorno’s living and workspace recalls a New York of the 60’s and 70’s, when an artist could live in a huge loft on the Bowery and just create all day. He has three generously sized loft units in what was the first YMCA in New York. One is his apartment where he sleeps. Another is more like a studio for his words on canvas projects. The other, known as “the bunker”, is the apartment that he leased to Burroughs for several decades. All three units are a little dank but open and bright, with the exception of the Burroughs apartment: not much light there. Meanwhile, it would be an intriguing exercise to tag John Giorno before releasing him into the wild as his craft keeps him at a curious pace that takes him to multiple destinations. Brussels, Berlin, Paris, London are all recent stops. And there’s no indication that he plans to slow down.

Text by Erickson S. Blakney
Photography by Weston Wells

On Thursday, Dossier played in the COACD soccer tournament at South Street Seaport with a lineup that included teams from Bloomingdales, Oak, Milk Studios, Lil Frankies, ThreeNYC, Red Bucket Films and East Village Radio and a live performance by Jailbait. We lost to East Village Radio who went on to the finals and was beat by good old Bloomies. The whole gig was sponsored by PumaCity which has more fun events going on this month related to soccer, drinking and dancing in the middle of the day. Thanks to our team for coming out. Clockwise from top left- Micah Reed, Rob Schumann, Andrew Blazer, Erin Dixon, Alec Friedman and Tim Yu. (Not shown: Ithai Schori. ) For a video of the days action and additional images of the festivities click “Read More”.