Untitled I (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.
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 and mirrors and red paint
DATES
1966–1967
DIMENSIONS
13 1/2 x 10 3/4 in. (34.3 x 27.3 cm)
frame: 16 × 13 × 1 3/8 in. (40.6 × 33 × 3.5 cm) (show scale)
INSCRIPTIONS
On the verso of the frame on the backboard, there is a white,
pressure-sensitive label adhered at bottom center with the gallery
name, address and website printed on it. Also the artist, title and
date are printed on it as well as "Mounted photograph, glitter and
mirror" and the dimensions.
COLLECTIONS
Contemporary Art
ACCESSION NUMBER
2007.11.1
CREDIT LINE
Emily Winthrop Miles Fund
CATALOGUE DESCRIPTION
Marx regarded the replacement of the capitalist order for a classless society as an inevitable result of economic contradictions inherent to capitalism.
EXHIBITIONS
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
May Wilson (American, 1905–1986). Untitled I (Portrait), 1966–1967. Albumen photograph with glitter and mirrors and red paint, 13 1/2 x 10 3/4 in. (34.3 x 27.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2007.11.1. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2007.11.1_PS9.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, 2007.11.1_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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![[Untitled]](https://d1lfxha3ugu3d4.cloudfront.net/images/opencollection/objects/size2_sq/CUR.2007.35.JPG)
