Jenny Berry's Art Blog

Marilyn Monroe as consumable product?

© 2011 Jenny Berry Art "Supply and Demand No. 2"

These are the first two finished paintings in a new series titled "Supply & Demand". Quite a different take on the term than Shepard Fairey's I think. But maybe there's some similar logic now that I think about it.

© 2011 Jenny Berry Art "Supply and Demand No. 1"

I've always thought of Marilyn Monroe as arguably the first human consumer product. She was picked up, re-constructed and mass marketed and we ate her up. The whole thing always kind of freaked me out.

Norman Mailer's biography probably inspired this series more than Andy Warhol's portraits did. But I wonder sometimes if Andy didn't see her the same way. 

He certainly had a fascination with product marketing and celebrity is people marketed as products meant for consumer consumption. I thought about adding these to the "Consumo" series but they feel different to me. 

So now if I'm to take my own advice of a few nights ago seriously and find something uplifting or inspirational here... at risk of being sappy... it is kind of interesting how Marilyn Monroe was man made but now Lady Gaga has been able to make herself.

Marilyn undoubtedly brought celebrity to new heights, which are now being leveraged (exploited?) to their seemingly fullest extent... just not sure if that's good or bad though.

But then without celebrities who would write cook books and sell us appliances and drugs?! And feed starving kids in third world countries... Okay, that was my best stab at being uplifting. screw it.

Art as mirror of a culture? Andy Warhol might agree.

I've heard it said that art is the mirror of a culture. That sentence often grounds me and helps me make sense out of what I do.

As artists we take in information all around us and then filter it through our own set of fun house mirrors and what comes out we call art. For me, Warhol's paintings, his Cambell's Soup Cans or Brillo Boxes are perfect examples. 

 
Warhol in New York's Stable gallery, 1964, amid the Brillo box sculptures at the centre of the scandal. Photograph: Getty Images

Campbell's Soup 1 Screen Print 1968 Photo: Wikipedia

In a way they're like petroglyphs for some future society to decode. In essence —We were a society that worshiped products and celebrities the way the good people of the renaissance revered their saints and martyrs— Not pretty but pretty accurate if you think about it.

Photo: deniffelook.weebly.com

I LOVE this photo. It really sums up the public reaction to his early work. There was quite a scandal when this sculpture hit galleries in '64. Recently I saw a poster of his famous Marilyn hanging in a Friday's. Everything gets assimilated eventually. 

My background, like Warhol's is in advertising. Having been an art director/copywriter for a decade probably has a lot to do with the cynicism and irony in not just my work but how I've chosen to sell it.

The irony is unconscious, mostly. But the one conscious, necessary component of the process for me, the one thing I know I need, is the struggle between me and the painting. It's a love/hate relationship. I hate the endless battle but it's necessary for me to fight with it to develop a relationship with it.

I seem to always be struggling with either the media itself or with an idea and sometimes I seem to almost intentionally massacre a section of the canvas just so I have to battle with it to regain some perceived sense of control. And in the process destroy another area. And then it starts all over again... until it's done. And this I've noticed could be a metaphor for my entire life. 

©2011 Jenny Berry "Eye Candy No. 4"

This is the first in a series of new paintings that I'm finishing now for a show the end of June in Santa Fe. Warhol's influence was unconscious. I was focused on the irony of ad messages, the bright colors and scantily clad women used to push products. And candy cigarettes? Did that actually even happen!?!? I only realized when it was finished that it's kind of a little Warholy. 

New Work: February 2011

I'm now back in the studio full time after a long, unintentional and unavoidable hiatus. It has been a difficult two years since my husband's death and it's taken me a long time to really be able to muster up the creative energy it takes to break new ground with my work. But I'm happy with the new stuff I've been working on this month. I moved back to Albuquerque and the near constant sunshine has got to be helping, too.

But I've got to give credit to my friend Todd, who I've written about before, one of my oldest friends. He's moved out here to help me out, he needed a break from NYC too but either way he's a god send right now for sure, handling all of my shipping, computer work, inventory and all the stuff that has been taking up more than half my time so now I can focus on what I do best. Paint.

Todd in his Badass Rubber Chicken Viking Helmet. He can't work without it. Rest assured that he'll be donning it as he packs up your painting. It's the studio rule.

So now that he's got my back, painting is about all I've done for weeks now. Usually 16-18 hours a day or until I pass out, most of the time not even stopping to eat. I think it's been worth it so far and I'm not showing any sign of slowing down. It feels great to be back in ABQ and working again. 

I just finished this one today. Ironic, for sure. Some sort of commentary on our culture and hypocrisy, I suppose. I try not to think too much about things when I work or I think the end product can be ham-fisted. If I keep the process as unconscious as possible my cynical nature seems to find it's way to the surface without even trying.

© Jenny Berry 2011 "Eye Candy No. 4" - 31 x 41

These images are vintage candy and other ads that I've found odd or ridiculous and for whatever reason I've collected them over the years. I've made a large digital collage and then printed it out and hand transfered it to the canvas... a painstaking process that takes longer than it would to just paint the things from scratch... but I really like the distressed, worn, ghostly effect that the transfer backdrop has behind more vivid effect of the painted bottle caps and candy cigarette packs (the ultimate symbol of irony). If I'd painted the entire backdrop it would just feel like another iconic 70's pop art piece to me. The transfer changes everything.

I've worked the paintings below simultaneously over the last two weeks. Starting with a basic black and white transfer of a nude and then working back into them with various mediums until they felt "done". In art school my concentration was figure studies and I always seem to end up back here. I like starting with the transfer sometimes because it feels more like a sculpture than a painting to me. 

© Jenny Berry 2011 "Urban Nude No. 1" - 36 x 50

I've read about how Michelangelo was so meticulous in choosing his marble because if he got into it and then found a flaw it would take him so much longer because he'd have to work around the flaw... or scrap the whole thing. That's what it feels like to me. I lay in texture randomly first and lay down the transfer and then, of course, because the transfer always fights and the texture never seems to be where I want it, I'm forced to fight it out until it works. 

© Jenny Berry 2011 "Urban Nude No. 2" - 50 x 36

Of course, it would be so much simpler to just plan out the piece in advance and lay everything down so it works like it should and doesn't fight me... but where's the fun in that? For me, art is in the struggle. Problems arise. The artist solves them. I think it's how I improve. So I make sure and make extra problems for myself. I've always been an over achiever. But I really believe that if I stay in my comfort zone I won't grow or get better. 

© Jenny Berry "Urban Nude No. 3" - 36 x 50

Yes, I know, my signature bird paintings are well within my comfort zone. I basically repeat them over and over and I sell a lot of them. But as I push the envelope with my other work the birds will follow and evolve as well.

© Jenny Berry 2011 "Urban Nude No. 4" - 31 x 32

Urban Nude 4 (above) was the first painting where I've started to push away from the solid black silhouettes and bring in the very Banksy and Shepard Fairey inspired high contrast, black and white images, something I've been wanting to explore for a while. I've now started exploring this with the birds as well and I'm happy with the result... so fair warning, you'll be seeing a lot of these in the future :)

© Jenny Berry 2011 "Birds On Wires No. 433" detail

Last year I started exploring a series of nudes based on some mildly provocative images of women. Below is the latest in that series. I don't know why I find these images so compelling. Could be the implicit cultural taboo and the series of emotional responses we have to these images that I find interesting. I don't know. They pull a completely different emotional response from people than the more serene nudes. Even though the poses are not provocative at all, more evocative if anything, they seem to hit a different cord than the other nudes.

© Jenny Berry 2011 "Dark Nude No. 3" - 50 x 27

This one pushes the envelope with the addition of the red drips and the zippers for sure. I've always had this thing for zippers in my work. They seem to imply something hidden. Whenever I feel myself having an automatic response to something I see (graffiti, facial piercings, provocative images, whatever) I try to stop and analyze it. Instinct can protect us but letting our culture think for us can be dangerous. I think that questioning process is what draws me to these images and to street art as well.

Some New Work

 
I went to NYC a couple of months ago and spent a lot of time just checking out the street art. Other than music it's probably the biggest influence on my work. I haven't been able to paint much this year, since Mark (my husband) was killed. It'll be a year this Christmas.

I feel lately though like I'm coming through it and in the last couple of weeks I've really come out with some work that I'm happy with for the first time in nearly a year. 

These new paintings are very urban and street art inspired. I've always been fascinated with urban graffiti art and it's been a strong influence in my work.

There's something I find compelling about street art, when it's good. Some kind of vital rawness that shuns the provincial, mainstream aesthetic.

Like a dandelion forcing it's way through the concrete mentality of the art world, street art is rebellion. Arguably a necessary component to art itself. 

So now, several decades after Pollock pissed in Guggenheim's fireplace and it's just a contest every year to see which art school enfant can be more terrible. It's all gotten so boring and predictable. And it doesn't have a thing to do with art. Or it shouldn't anyway.

Sometimes I wonder if it's the only audible heartbeat of an art world choking to death on it's own poshlost is the art coming from the so-called criminals like Banksy that would rather remain anonymous and give it away for free than risk being labelled a sell-out hack. It makes you think, don't it? :)

 
:: About this Series :: The SAV-MOR Series really only has one common link which is that after I lay down the initial textures I do an image transfer of the weekly Sav-Mor circular (think of it as recycling if you want) that these people insist on leaving wedged in my door every Tuesday.

 
I guess there's probably some common corporate drone imagery in many of them and also some kind of ironic thread that they share as well.

  Okay, so sav(e) mor(e) of what, exactly? Money? Not so's you'd notice. Trees? Apparently not that either. But in their defense: They do seem to like to use the letter 'e' sparingly... so there's that.