Lizzo and Lady Gaga Star in Marilyn Minter’s New Steamed-Up Portraits

Wetness abounds at Marilyn Minter’s eponymous new exhibition, on view at LGDR’s multistory Beaux Arts building on East 89th Street in New York, through June 3rd. The work veritably drips with moisture, with sweat, with lushness and lustiness. In this new show, Minter intimately explores bodies, especially the female body in moments of intimacy, as she’s done throughout her long career.

In these large paintings, such as Word of Mouth (2020–22), the shimmer and sheen comes from Minter’s process of applying multiple coats of enamel paint to metal. She often begins by photographing her subjects, sometimes through a steamed-up shower door, and then adds layer after layer in Photoshop. Once satisfied, she starts to paint, using thin coats of industrial outdoor enamel in tropical pastels and jewel tones, a process that can take a year or more. The results glisten in the gallery light.

But the shine comes from the subject matter, too: pure, unabashed joy. It would be easy to point to a post-pandemic world, in which we’re eager for contact so long denied by circumstance, except that Minter has been creating sex-positive art for decades. In fact, her paintings of stills from hardcore porn essentially got her canceled during the culture wars of the 1980s and early 1990s. “I was an early pro-sex feminist,” she told an interviewer some 30 years later. “I thought it was time for women to make images for their own amusement and pleasure.”

And so, she does. Delta (2018) turns a tangly triangle of pubic hair almost abstract, while both Hush (2022–23) and Sweet Nothings (2020–22) zero in on an open, lipsticked mouth. That particular orifice—whether it’s gaping, sucking candy, being moistened, or tonguing strands of pearls—appears frequently in Minter’s videos, which play on the upper surface of water fountains; the installation is titled, appropriately, Thirsty (Drinking Fountain) (2022–23).

Although her critics once labeled her a misogynist, Minter’s interrogation of the viewer’s gaze has gained widespread acclaim in recent years. Above all, it’s clear that her subjects are in on it. Paintings like Star Tattoo (2019–21) expand her “Odalisque” series, which seeks to update the artistic tradition it’s named after. Historically, these works centered on a nude or semi-nude female caught unaware as she gets ready for a bath. In one of Minter’s works, Lizzo poses in lingerie, holding a cell phone, perhaps mid-selfie. Meanwhile, the subject of Jasmine Odalisque (2021–23) stares down the viewer with a “Yeah, so?” nonchalance, one kitten heel coming to a sharp, glittery point. There’s no shame in looking or being looked at, the work implies.

Near Minter’s odalisques are portraits, cropped in on the face of such cultural icons as Gloria Steinem, Monica Lewinsky, and Mickalene Thomas—and everyone looks beyond happy to be sitting for her. There’s that joy again, wrapped in the electric blue shirt and eyeglasses of Glenn Ligon, or Roxane Gay’s shiny, smirking, magenta lips. The portrait of Lady Gaga, meanwhile, shows off the singer’s freckles, her glossy mouth the same color as her earrings.