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Untitled II (Portrait)

May Wilson

Contemporary Art

At the age of 71, determined to become an artist, May Wilson left rural Maryland and a decades-long marriage for New York City, where, on the advice of her pen pal, mail artist Ray Johnson, she took up residence at the Chelsea Hotel. Generations older than the avant-garde artists she was drawn to, and largely self-taught, Wilson acquired the nickname “Grandma Moses of the Underground.”

Wilson typically embellished and bedazzled found objects with some relationship to her early life, such as nineteenth-century portraits of women and old-fashioned button-up boots. In her Ridiculous Portraits, Wilson collaged ludicrous photo-booth self-portraits onto images she collected from picture postcards, reproductions of famous paintings, mainstream magazines, and soft-core pornography. Produced as personal mementos and often exchanged through the mail with other artists as gifts, her Ridiculous Portraits attacked sexism, ageism, and the cult of beauty with a wry sense of absurdity. A feminist long before the term was commonly used, Wilson relished her years in New York, becoming a beloved if anomalous fixture of the downtown art scene.
MEDIUM Albumen photograph with glitter, round mirrors and red paint.
DATES 1966–1967
DIMENSIONS mount: 10 3/4 × 13 7/8 in. (27.3 × 35.2 cm) image: 12 3/4 × 10 5/16 in. (32.4 × 26.2 cm) frame: 16 × 13 × 1 3/8 in. (40.6 × 33 × 3.5 cm)  (show scale)
COLLECTIONS Contemporary Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 2007.11.2
CREDIT LINE Emily Winthrop Miles Fund
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION May Wilson (American, 1905–1986). Untitled II (Portrait), 1966–1967. Albumen photograph with glitter, round mirrors and red paint., mount: 10 3/4 × 13 7/8 in. (27.3 × 35.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2007.11.2. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2007.11.2_PS9.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 2007.11.2_PS9.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2019
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
RIGHTS STATEMENT © Estate of May Wilson
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May Wilson (American, 1905–1986). <em>Untitled II (Portrait)</em>, 1966–1967. Albumen photograph with glitter, round mirrors and red paint., mount: 10 3/4 × 13 7/8 in. (27.3 × 35.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2007.11.2. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2007.11.2_PS9.jpg)