Marilyn Minter Exhale, 2023

Marilyn Minter (b. Shreveport, LA, 1948) is best known for her hyperrealistic paintings and richly-colored photographs, which feature close-up views of the human body in examinations of what constitutes “glamour” and “beauty.” Her earliest work includes a series of black-and-white photographs she took of her mother, documenting the constant making and remaking of her mother’s appearance while bedridden and suffering from drug addiction. Minter’s later works examine the grotesque and the beautiful sides of fashion and glamour, often in uncomfortably close-up images of androgynous bodies covered in glitter, beads, or pearls. Many of her paintings derive from combinations of views she creates through her photographs. She has received both positive and negative critical attention for her works, particularly those with a more pornographic edge. Her recent work has included short films, as well as a series of photographs of Pamela Anderson.

In 2015, Minter’s retrospective Pretty/Dirty opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, TX. Pretty/Dirty traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, the Orange Country Museum of Art, and finally the Brooklyn Museum in November 2016. Minter is represented by Salon 94, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Baldwin Gallery, Aspen.