Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty

Marilyn Minter’s sensual paintings, photographs, and videos vividly explore complex and contradictory emotions around beauty and the feminine body in American culture. She trains a critical eye on the power of desire, questioning the fashion industry’s commercialization of sex and the body. “Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty” is the first retrospective of her work.

Spanning more than four decades, the exhibition begins with the artist’s earliest artworks, from 1969 through 1986, including rarely exhibited photographs as well as paintings incorporating photorealist and Pop art techniques. It continues with works from the late 1980s and 1990s that examine visual pleasure in visceral depictions of food and sex. The exhibition culminates in Minter’s ongoing investigation of how the beauty industry expertly creates and manipulates desire through images.

“Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty” is co-organized by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. The Brooklyn presentation is organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Family Curator, and Carmen Hermo, Assistant Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.