May Stevens: Paintings and Works on Paper 1968-1976
July 10, 2008- August 15, 2008
527 W 26th St
I
n 1967
May Stevens began painting “Big Daddy,” a smug, fleshy, middle-aged, bald, bespectacled
figure, often naked and accompanied by a bulldog, loosely based on an image of her father. Born
out of Steven’s passionate involvement in both the antiwar and feminist movements, Big Daddy
was to Stevens, “…a relative of mine who represented to me an authoritarian and closed attitude
towards the world. It was a middle-American attitude towards culture, towards politics, towards
Black people, and towards Jews. He was a person who stopped thinking when he was twenty and
hadn’t opened his mind to anything since.”
Big Daddy appears in a number of major works created between 1967-76 including Big Daddy Paper
Doll (Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY) and Dark Flag (Whitney Museum of American Art, NY). Referred
to by some critics as “Political Pop,” these social protest paintings made a powerful impact on
the art world when they were exhibited some 40 years ago, though they have yet to be exhibited in
a pop art context.
This exhibition shows the evolution of Big Daddy from the familiar figure in the artist’s life
to the pop caricature present in a decade of work. In Big Daddy in Vietnam, Stevens paints Big
Daddy against a background of a map of Vietnam that too closely resembles a piece of meat, and she
uses a photographic backdrop of endless American soldiers in a Big Daddy collage. Also on view
are original silkscreen prints featuring Big Daddy—the artist’s first prints—as well as several
drawings, two of which have never before been exhibited, and include a female counterpart to
“Big Daddy.” The woman, who is unnamed and who has no specific point of reference, shares “Big
Daddy’s” plump countenance and, aside from her blue hair, is virtually indistinguishable from him.
Today as Americans look forward to beginning a new political chapter, the works in this exhibition
provide us with an opportunity to look back on what has and hasn’t changed in the 40 years since
their creation.
Also on view are works by
Louise Bourgeois and
Kiki Smith. Tidal (“I see the moon and the moon
sees me”) is a monumental accordion print made out of 13 panels (referencing her studio name,
Thirteen Moons). The images of the moon and water, juxtaposed, reveal a passage of time and the
cyclical nature of life, a major theme in her work. Smith used a camera attached to a telescope to
capture the moon along with a panoramic camera specially designed to photograph ocean waves off
Coney Island.
Louise Bourgeois’ lithographs from the 1999 portfolio, What is the Shape of This Problem?
juxtapose enigmatic phrases with her classic images of spirals and webs. Also included is The
Night, a color lithograph related to the Insomnia Drawings--220 doodles, scribbles, drawings and
notes she made on the occasions when she couldn’t sleep from November 1994 to June 1995. This
blue/red color combination is the color of choice for Bourgeois, and is used as a symbol for male/
female.
May Stevens currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work has been acquired by major national
and international museums and she has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim fellowship,
a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. The
College Art Association honored Stevens in March 2001 with the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime
Achievement as an artist, poet, social activist and teacher. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo
exhibitions--most recently Women, Words, and Water: Works on Paper by
May Stevens at Rutgers University, where
she was the 2006 Estelle Lebowitz Visiting Artist in Residence, and The Water Remembers: Recent Paintings by
May Stevens 1990-2004, which traveled to the Minneapolis Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the
Arts, and the Springfield Art Museum, 2005-2006.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show| Location | map | | Gallery | Mary Ryan Gallery | | Address | 527 W 26th St
New York (Chelsea)
NY, 10001
United States | | Phone | 212-397-0669 | | Fax | 212-397-0766 | |
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