
Marilyn Minter
Marilyn Minter’s new body of paintings, photographs, and videos seeks to subvert the classic image of the bather by shrouding it in steam. She succeeds, less by drawing our attention to the surface of the image—a strategy perfected by Degas—than by reaching back to Ingres and the tradition of Orientalist painting. It’s a leapfrog over the twentieth century that slaps sex back into the tableau.
Degas neutralized flesh in a series of unimpassioned notations, an economizing retort to centuries of voluptuousness; Minter answers by fogging the mirror. In Big Mouth, 2017, gigantic pink lips hover in