Dorothy Iannone, (American, born 1933), The Queen Of The Amazons And Achilles, 2007, framed gouache on board, 54,8 x 64,9 cm.
Dorothy Iannone, My Downtown New York of the 60s (2007), American expatriate, Dorothy Iannone has been living in Berlin since the 70s. Her map recalls her Downtown in the 60s listing her favorite galleries, cinemas and bars. More importantly she tells the story of a kinky meeting with Allen Ginsberg who bit her belly on their first encounter. Iannone was also responsible for smuggling Henry Miller's books across the border when they were still illegal in the US. Her experience with the police is recalled in her psychedelic map.
Dorothy Iannone in Her Home in Berlin, November 2007, Photograph Oliver Helbig.
Dorothy Iannone (American, born 1933), I Have Got Such a Marvelous Cock [I Have Got Such a (Red Hat)], 1969/70, Foto: Dieter Roth & Dorothy Iannone, holzwarth-publications.com. Courtesy die Künstlerin/the artist. |
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New Museum
of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
212-219-1222
Dorothy Iannone: Lioness
July 22-October 18, 2009
Boston-born, Berlin-based artist Dorothy Iannone, now, at the age of seventy-five, will have her first solo show in a US institution at the New Museum. This long-overdue exhibition will feature Iannone’s signature early work, made between 1966 and 1986, including sculptures, paintings, drawings, and a video box. Since the 1960s, Iannone has continued to portray the female sexual experience as one of transcendence, union, and spirituality. Iannone works from the first-person perspective, charting her life and lovemaking onto wood, canvas, paper, and cloth, as well as through video and sound. Iannone’s stylized, intricate, and colorful depictions of herself and her longtime lover, artist Dieter Roth, synthesize elements of Egyptian frescoes, Byzantine mosaics, and ancient fertility statues. Inverting the gender paradigm of artistic inspiration, Iannone often painted Roth, her self-declared muse, depicting both him and herself as active lovers, comfortable with their desire and pleasure.
The exhibition will include Iannone’s An Icelandic Saga (1978-86), a series of forty-eight drawings depicting how Iannone and Roth met, as well a selection of large-scale paintings, small statuettes from the People series (1966-68), and I Was Thinking of You III (1975/2006), a painted video box that captures the artist’s face as she has an orgasm. By removing self-consciousness from her work, she dispels the taboo that so often surrounds sexuality, elevating it to an act of both bodily and spiritual union.
Since she started painting in 1959, Iannone has challenged contemporary culture through her singular artistic voice as well as her radical sensibility. In 1961, Iannone attempted to bring her copy of Henry Miller’s sexually explicit book Tropic of Cancer to the United States. After it was confiscated at the airport, she filed suit against the government to have it returned to her, which concluded with the US raising their importation ban on Miller’s books. In another incident, Iannone was to be featured in a group exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1969. The morning before it opened, the board of directors demanded that the genitals in Iannone’s paintings be covered; in protest, Dieter Roth removed his work from the show and director Harald Szeemann resigned from his position. Lioness, the title of this exhibition, is taken from Roth’s pet name for Iannone.
Dorothy Iannone: Lioness is curated by Jarrett Gregory, Curatorial Assistant.
Dorothy Iannone was born in 1933 in Boston; she currently lives and works in Berlin. Iannone began painting in 1959 and since then has been featured in numerous exhibitions, mostly in Europe. Her solo shows include Follow me, September, Berlin (2008), She’s a freedom fighter, Air de Paris, Paris (2007), Seek the Extremes …, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2006), and Dorothy lannone, The Wrong Gallery at Tate Modern, London (2005). Group shows include Bodypoliticx, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2007), Domino, Air de Paris, Paris (2006), Day For Night, Whitney Biennial, New York (2006), Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2005), and Dieter Roth & Dorothy Iannone, Sprengel Museum, Hanover (2005).
The New Museum featured Iannone in the Get Lost artist map of New York City in 2007. “Dorothy Iannone: Lioness” will be the artist’s first solo show in a US institution. An exhibition of Iannone’s recent work will be on view at the Anton Kern Gallery in New York, from June 25 through August 7, 2009.
Dorothy Iannone (American, born 1933), Let Me Squeeze Your Fat Cunt, 1970-1971, Acrylic and collage on canvas, 74.8 x w: 59.1", Courtesy Air de Paris.
Dorothy Iannone (American, born 1933), An Icelandic Saga, 1978, 1983, 1986, Courtesy the artist, Berlin.
Dorothy Iannone (American, born 1933), I Was Thinking of You III, 1975/2006, DVD, hand-painted box, 190 x 100 x 37 cm, courtesy of the artist. |
