Tag: feminist art

Bride’s Cake ~ Bride’s Book, 1973

Penny Slinger :: From ‘Bride’s Book’, pages 1 & 2, 1973. | src Penny Slinger

Bride’s Cake series

Working on the body of work on food and eroticism that was shown in my 1973 Opening exhibition at the Angela Flowers Gallery, I wanted to create myself as a wedding cake/bride as an art piece presented as a photographic series. I designed and made a construction/costume which I could wear/sit in. It had a removable slice so I could mimic the ceremonial cutting of the cake. It was both parody of a wedding ritual, and recreation from a woman’s point of view.

I posed alone and with a man friend of mine playing the part of the groom, and then my girlfriend acting the part, dressed in a suit. A knife and a life cast of a penis (dildo) were used interchangeably.

From the series I created a Bride’s Book as a facsimile of the traditional wedding album, but much more radical and outrageous in its use of imagery. I collaged various elements, both onto and into the photographs and on the surrounding album page. I printed up a number of the photographs at different sizes and made collages with selected images on various related themes. (quoted from Penny Slinger)

Penny Slinger :: The First Slice. From ‘Bride’s Cake’ series, 1973. | src Penny Slinger
Penny Slinger :: Rosebud. From ‘Bride’s Cake’ series, 1973. | src Penny Slinger
Penny Slinger :: Promised a Bed of Roses. From ‘Bride’s Cake’ series, 1973. | src Penny Slinger
Penny Slinger :: ICU. From ‘Bride’s Cake’ series, 1973. | src Penny Slinger
Penny Slinger :: All Seeing I. From ‘Bride’s Cake’ series, 1973. | src Penny Slinger
Penny Slinger :: Book cover. From ‘Bride’s Book’, 1973. | src Penny Slinger
Penny Slinger :: From ‘Bride’s Book’, page 23, 1973. | src Penny Slinger

Zärtliche Pantomimen, 1977

Renate Bertlmann :: Zärtliche Pantomimen. Pantomime Schnuller-Tanz | Tender Pantomimes: Pantomime Pacifier-Dance, 1977. | src Philomena Epps | Renate Bertlmann began using rubber teats, rubber baby bottle nipples and condoms as substitutions for genitalia. These were also grafted onto wearable items, such as the crown or wig of udder-like nipples seen here.

Sherman as Cahun (1975)

cindy sherman as claude cahun
Cindy Sherman :: Untitled, 1975. Chromogenic photograph. © Cindy Sherman | src Brooklyn Museum
Cindy Sherman :: Untitled, 1975. Chromogenic photograph. © Cindy Sherman | src Brooklyn Museum
Cindy Sherman :: Untitled, 1975. Chromogenic photograph. © Cindy Sherman | src Brooklyn Museum
Cindy Sherman :: Untitled, 1975. Chromogenic photograph. © Cindy Sherman | src Brooklyn Museum

“This photograph from early in Cindy Sherman’s artistic career indicates a burgeoning interest in what has become a lifelong investigation into using herself as subject. Produced in 1975, during her time as an art student at the State University of New York, Buffalo, the work prefigures her famous Untitled Film Stills series by two years. In it, the artist references Claude Cahun, an early Surrealist photographer whose androgynous self-portraits inspired a later generation of feminist theorists to think about gender as a social role that is performed rather than innate—ideas that would become central to Sherman’s oeuvre from the mid-1970s onward.” (quoted from source)

Cindy Sherman :: Untitled, 1975. Silver print with Sherman's signature, dates, and edition notation in ink, on verso. Printed 2004. | src Classic & Contemporary Photographs · Swann Galleries
Cindy Sherman :: Untitled, 1975. Silver print with Sherman’s signature, dates, and edition notation in ink, on verso. Printed 2004. | src Classic & Contemporary Photographs · Swann Galleries