Marilyn Minter
Paints glamour at close range, wet, smeared and slightly repellent.
Marilyn Minter was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1948 and grew up in Florida; the photographs she took of her mother in 1969, addicted and made up in bed, went unseen for two decades and now open most accounts of her work. She spent years painting the imagery of fashion and food advertising at a moment when that was critically unfashionable, and was widely attacked for it. The mature paintings are made in enamel on metal, worked with fingertips, from her own photographs: a mouth, a bejewelled foot, condensation on glass, at extreme magnification and always slightly wrong.
The enamel-on-aluminium paintings lead the market and are technically demanding objects — many thin layers of enamel on metal, glossy, worked by hand, and effectively impossible to retouch invisibly, so condition is decisive and surface damage is permanent. Photographs exist in editions, usually small, at several sizes, and edition and print date must be established. There is a print output in screenprint and photogravure. Because the imagery circulates widely through fashion collaboration and editorial work, unauthorised reproductions and posters are frequently offered as editions.
If you own a work by Marilyn Minter
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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