Alexandra Rubinstein

Last updated

Alexandra Rubinstein is a contemporary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. [1] She is known for her use of oil paints. [1] Rubinstein's artworks involve feminist narratives in relation to the third-wave feminism movement, and her works have gained attention through her depiction of celebrities including Drake, Barack Obama, Pope Francis, Jon Hamm, Justin Bieber, Tom Hanks, and Jay-Z performing oral sex on women. [2]

Contents

Early life

Rubinstein was born in 1988 in Sverdlovsk, USSR, now known as Yekaterinburg, Russia. Her mother is Russian, and her father is Jewish. [1] The family was given asylum after ten years. [1] They immigrated to the Unite Contentious material d States in 1997 and settled in Pittsburgh. [1] Rubinstein showed an interest in art when she was in high school, attending classes at Carnegie Mellon University. [1]

Education

Rubinstein earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Carnegie Mellon University [1] in 2010. [3] After graduating, she moved to New York City to pursue a career in art. [1]

Artistic career

Rubinstein currently works out of a studio in Brooklyn, New York. Rubinstein created a number of oil paintings following the realist tradition which were displayed in small-scale exhibitions across the United States.

Looking for Mr. Goodsex (2013)

This large series of oil paintings created by Rubinstein are images taken from vintage pornographic films from the '80s, predominantly those released around the time the pornographic film called "Deep Throat" was released. [4] The frames were particularly striking as they focused on women's faces during sex, which was historically uncommon. There was a focus in the videos on women. [4] The series of paintings then branched out into stills of men and women kissing to show vulnerability and the nature of sexual pleasure and romance. [4]

Celebrity Cunnilingus (2014)

This series of oil paintings includes a variety of male celebrities during coitus including Drake, Pope Francis, Jon Hamm, Justin Bieber, Tom Hanks, Jay-Z, Justin Bieber, [2] Ryan Gosling, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Franco and Barack Obama. Within this series, Rubinstein aims to empower women through the portrayal of pleasure from a female point of view. Rubinstein created this series after realizing there was a lack of focus on women in pornography. [5] Rubinstein also includes herself in most of her works, particularly prominently in this series, to tell her story. [6]

Thirsty (2015)

This series focused on the nature of heterosexual female sexuality through oil-on-panel images of '70s male porn stars. Rubinstein hoped to rattle the art world by representing women as the consumers of nude male imagery, rather than depicting women as objects being consumed. [7] The works use a bottle opener to mimic the common decorative use of the female form, highlighting the notion that men are made into objects of ‘thirst,’ similar to that which follows a beer. [8] The imagery promotes the idea that women are independent and can also have a beer, which is considered to be a male beverage. [7]

Hands off my Cuntry (January 11, 2017)

This exhibition was curated by Savannah Spirit and displayed at the Undercurrent Projects in New York City. [9] The show was featured in Spirit's HOTTER THAN JULY series and was displayed a week before Donald Trump's inauguration. [9] The collection focused on erotic imagery and was designed to poke fun at Trump's right wing cabinet. [9] 12 different artists contributed art pieces to the exhibition and 20 percent of the profits from the show went toward Planned Parenthood. [9] This exhibition focused on the celebration of female sexuality in a provocative manner.

This exhibition gained Rubinstein a lot of publicity, particularly due to the presence of the then well-known painting "Thanks Obama" (2016, oil on panel) used in promotional products such as posters and flyers. [9] The image is a photo-realistic painting of Barack Obama smiling, ready to perform cunnilingus on a faceless woman. The exhibition received a lot of backlash, especially Rubinstein's painting, because it was deemed "offensive and disrespectful." [9] One of Rubinstein's paintings from the Thirsty series was also featured in the exhibition. The show's focus on erotica captured people's attention and brought them into the exhibition. Rubinstein's works consist of erotic nature, and the imagery she created brings attention to her personal beliefs.

Style

Rubinstein is inspired by her adolescent trauma that continues to persist. Her work explores the relationships between gender, power, consumption, and culture. Through combining ordinary images with explicit ones, she creates a narrative that challenges traditional social constructs. Although she rarely depicts women, her work still includes both the cisgender and heterosexual female gaze of men's bodies depicted as passive and subject to scrutiny. With a focus on male genitalia, Rubinstein's art speaks about traditional masculinity and how it plays a role in intimidation and oppression in contemporary society. [3]

Rubinstein's style is hyper-realistic and contemporary with a particular focus on female sexuality.[ citation needed ]

The oil on panel medium helps create the authenticity of human figures in her paintings, and the metaphors in the titles help convey her message.[ citation needed ]

Reception

Some art critics have found Rubinstein's works offensive or revealing due to their overtly sexual content. Some news sources, such as BuzzFeed, have praised her works for the use of famous celebrities, not for the representation of female empowerment. [10] [11]

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Artist Profile". agdir.org. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  2. 1 2 Olson, Grady (June 29, 2018). "Artist Feature: Alexandra Rubinstein". GRØSS Magazine. Retrieved February 9, 2023.
  3. 1 2 "Alexandra Rubinstein". MOTHER. Retrieved February 9, 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 "Paintings by Alexandra Rubinstein". Juxtapoz Magazine. June 17, 2015. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  5. GQ (October 31, 2016). "Celebrity Cunnilingus: Drake, Justin Bieber and Leo DiCaprio as you've never seen them before" . Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  6. McVey, Kurt. "New York City Artist And Curator Savannah Spirit Unveil Salacious New Exhibit." Forbes. January 11, 2017. Retrieved October 20, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtmcvey/2017/01/11/nyc-artist-and-curator-savannah-spirit-wants-to-trigger-your-trump/#4d56386c328d.
  7. 1 2 Felix, Annie (October 24, 2016). "The Art of Thirst: Alexandra Rubinstein and Loud Female Sexuality". PAPER. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  8. Felix, Annie (October 24, 2016). "The Art of Thirst: Alexandra Rubinstein and Loud Female Sexuality". PAPER. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Sisley, Dominique (January 12, 2017). "The erotic art show taking on Donald Trump". Dazed. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  10. Gerstein, Julie (November 4, 2016). "An Artist Painted A Bunch of Famous Celeb Men Going Down on Women And It's Really Something". BuzzFeed. Retrieved November 20, 2018.
  11. Glassman, Thea (November 1, 2016). "What's Leonardo DiCaprio Like in Bed? Feminist Jewish Artist Imagines Answer". The Forward. Retrieved November 20, 2018.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judy Chicago</span> American artist (born 1939)

Judy Chicago is an American feminist artist, art educator, and writer known for her large collaborative art installation pieces about birth and creation images, which examine the role of women in history and culture. During the 1970s, Chicago founded the first feminist art program in the United States at California State University, Fresno which acted as a catalyst for feminist art and art education during the 1970s. Her inclusion in hundreds of publications in various areas of the world showcases her influence in the worldwide art community. Additionally, many of her books have been published in other countries, making her work more accessible to international readers. Chicago's work incorporates a variety of artistic skills, such as needlework, counterbalanced with skills such as welding and pyrotechnics. Chicago's most well known work is The Dinner Party, which is permanently installed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. The Dinner Party celebrates the accomplishments of women throughout history and is widely regarded as the first epic feminist artwork. Other notable art projects by Chicago include International Honor Quilt, Birth Project, Powerplay, and The Holocaust Project. She is represented by Jessica Silverman gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgia O'Keeffe</span> American modernist artist (1887–1986)

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American modernist painter and draftswoman whose career spanned seven decades and whose work remained largely independent of major art movements. Called the "Mother of American modernism", O'Keeffe gained international recognition for her meticulous paintings of natural forms, particularly flowers and desert-inspired landscapes, which were often drawn from and related to places and environments in which she lived.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erotic art</span> Visual art created to incite sexual arousal and activity

Erotic art is a broad field of the visual arts that includes any artistic work intended to evoke erotic arousal. It usually depicts human nudity or sexual activity, and has included works in various visual mediums, including drawings, engravings, films, paintings, photographs, and sculptures. Some of the earliest known works of art include erotic themes, which have recurred with varying prominence in different societies throughout history. However, it has also been widely considered taboo, with either social norms or laws restricting its creation, distribution, and possession. This is particularly the case when it is deemed pornographic, immoral, or obscene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Bourgeois</span> French-American artist (1911–2010)

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a variety of themes over the course of her long career including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and the unconscious. These themes connect to events from her childhood which she considered to be a therapeutic process. Although Bourgeois exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists and her work has much in common with Surrealism and Feminist art, she was not formally affiliated with a particular artistic movement.

Jennifer Anne Saville is a contemporary British painter and an original member of the Young British Artists. Saville works and lives in Oxford, England and she is known for her large-scale painted depictions of nude women. Saville has been credited with originating a new and challenging method of painting the female nude and reinventing figure painting for contemporary art. Some paintings are of small dimensions, while other are of much larger scale. Monumental subjects come from pathology textbooks that she has studied that informed her on injury to bruise, burns, and deformity. John Gray commented: "As I see it, Jenny Saville's work expresses a parallel project of reclaiming the body from personality. Saville worked with many models who under went cosmetic surgery to reshape a portion of their body. In doing that, she captures "marks of personality for the flesh" and together embraces how we can be the writers of our own lives."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romaine Brooks</span> Portrait artist (1874-1970)

Romaine Brooks was an American painter who worked mostly in Paris and Capri. She specialized in portraiture and used a subdued tonal palette keyed to the color gray. Brooks ignored contemporary artistic trends such as Cubism and Fauvism, drawing on her own original aesthetic inspired by the works of Charles Conder, Walter Sickert, and James McNeill Whistler. Her subjects ranged from anonymous models to titled aristocrats. She is best known for her images of women in androgynous or masculine dress, including her self-portrait of 1923, which is her most widely reproduced work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pauline Boty</span> British pop art painter (1938–1966)

Pauline Boty was a British painter and co-founder of the 1960s' British Pop art movement of which she was the only acknowledged female member. Boty's paintings and collages often demonstrate a joy in self-assured femininity and female sexuality, as well as criticism of the "man's world" in which she lived. Her rebellious art, combined with her free-spirited lifestyle, has made Boty a herald of 1970s' feminism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marlene Dumas</span> South African artist (born 1953)

Marlene Dumas is a South African artist and painter currently based in the Netherlands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mickalene Thomas</span> American painter

Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Thomas's collage work is inspired from popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada, the Harlem Renaissance, and selected works by the Afro-British painter Chris Ofili. Her work draws from Western art history, pop art, and visual culture to examine ideas around femininity, beauty, race, sexuality, and gender.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ghada Amer</span> Egyptian American artist (born 1963)

Ghada Amer is a contemporary artist, much of her work deals with issues of gender and sexuality. Her most notable body of work involves highly layered embroidered paintings of women's bodies referencing pornographic imagery.

Marilyn Minter is an American visual artist who is perhaps best known for her sensual paintings and photographs done in the photorealism style that blur the line between commercial and fine art. Minter currently teaches in the MFA department at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arpita Singh</span> Indian artist

Arpita Singh is an Indian artist. Known to be a figurative artist and a modernist, her canvases have both a story line and a carnival of images arranged in a curiously subversive manner. Her artistic approach can be described as an expedition without destination. Her work reflects her background. She brings her inner vision of emotions to the art inspired by her own background and what she sees around the society that mainly affects women. Her works also include traditional Indian art forms and aesthetics, like miniaturist painting and different forms of folk art, employing them in her work regularly.

Hollis Sigler was an American artist. She received several Arts Lifetime Achievement awards as both an artist and an educator, including the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement from the College Art Association in 2001.

Monica Majoli is an American artist whose artwork examines the relationship between physicality and consciousness expressed through the documentary sexual image. Her work explores intimacy through sexuality, and some aspects of alternative lifestyles such as BDSM.

Juanita McNeely was an American feminist artist known for her bold works that illustrate the female experience in her nude figurative paintings, prints, paper cut-outs and ceramic pieces. Feminist emotional elements in her work include the portrayal of female experiences such as abortion, rape, and menstruation. Her recurring health problems and expressive figurative compositions have prompted comparisons to Frida Kahlo. According to McNeely, "we as women must continue the struggle to hold on to our rights, or let the children lead the way."

Eunice Golden is an American feminist painter from New York City, known for exploring sexuality using the male nude. Her work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Westbeth Gallery, and SOHO20 Gallery.

Nina Chanel Abney is an American artist, based in New York. She was born in Harvey, Illinois. She is an African American contemporary artist and painter who explores race, gender, pop culture, homophobia, and politics in her work.

Amy Sherald is an American painter. She works mostly as a portraitist depicting African Americans in everyday settings. Her style is simplified realism, involving staged photographs of her subjects. Since 2012, her work has used grisaille to portray skin tones, a choice she describes as intended to challenge conventions about skin color and race.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kira Nam Greene</span> New York-based painter

Kira Nam Greene is a New York-based painter known for combining ethnographic imagery, meticulous realism, and layered patterns. Greene has expressed her commitment to painting as a way to explore feminism, materialism, and beauty.

The Untitled Space gallery is an art gallery in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City founded by curator, photographer, magazine editor, and multidisciplinary artist Indira Cesarine in 2015. It exhibits the work of contemporary artists working in media including painting, sculpture, photography, video, printmaking, mixed media, and performance art.