2015 – Page 25 – TransverseAlchemy

“I’d noticed that pubic hair has disappeared from public discourse. There are just no images of it, so I wanted to put images out there that don’t really exist at all. It’s promotional almost: the glamor industry has created such distortion in young girls. I know young girls who are lasering all the hair off their bodies. And for pubic hair to look disgusting to young boys, that’s not healthy. I wanted to make beautiful images of pubic hair so that women have more choices.“

Marilyn Minter has long been creating hyperrealistic paintings of the female body, from lipsticked lips to high-heeled feet, in tight, cropped compositions full of decadent color and provocative sexual implications. Now, her focus is turned toward a part of the female body that remains somewhat taboo for the 21st-century: female pubic hair.

The New York artist has teamed up with Fulton Ryder, the book shop and publishing company helmed by artist Richard Prince. Ms. Minter’s book, titled Plush, is an up-close examination of the au naturel, unshaved crotch—think an updated take on Courbet’s L’Origine du monde, and with a distinctly female gaze—through a series of new photographs and paintings.

The book will be released in a limited run of 500 copies, with 10 deluxe editions, this week in Miami to coincide with the festivities for Art Basel Miami Beach.

“I started shooting pubic hair for a project initiated by Neville Wakefield who at one point was editing a new magazine that for various reasons never came to fruition, the idea was to create beautiful images of pubic hair, a subject matter that seems to be disappearing from popular discourse. We asked model’s of all races, all colors to grow out their pubic hair and I got inspired to make photos and paintings from
some of those images… I paid all of these models to grow out their pubic hair. There were redheads, there were Swedish girls. Everything’s real. Nothing’s dyed.”