Kathe Burkhart

Last updated
Kathe Burkhart
Born1958
Martinsburg, West Virginia
NationalityAmerican
Known forThe Liz Taylor Series
Styleinterdisciplinary artist, painter

Kathe Burkhart (born 1958, Martinsburg, West Virginia) is an American interdisciplinary artist, painter, writer and art critic. Described as both a conceptual artist and an installation artist, she uses various media in her work, combining collage, digital media, drawing, fiction, installation, nonfiction, painting, photography video, poetry, and sculpture. The content is feminist; the radical female is the subject. The Liz Taylor painting series, which she began painting in 1982, have been exhibited at the MoMA PS1, the Stedelijk Museum, and the Venice Biennale. [1] Burkhart is also the author of literary fiction and poetry. [2]

Contents

The Liz Taylor Series

Burkhart's The Liz Taylor Series (1982-ongoing) is a self-portrait project in which the artist uses the image of Liz Taylor to explore fantasies and evoke the artists genderqueer identity. [3] Stills of Taylor taken from her films are painted in a cartoonish style with profane text imposed on top. Jane Ursula Harris says Burkhart's work embodies: "ribald humor and [a] feminist-punk attitude." [4] Artist Keith Mayerson has said of Burkhart's series, "Reproduced chronologically, the portraits take on new life as a visual diary, a pictorial narrative in which we witness how women's freedom and spirit have been repressed by male-dominated capitalist culture, with Liz Taylor as our courageous avatar". [5]

Exhibitions

Individual exhibitions

Selected group exhibitions

Readings and performances

5 Minute Performance Olympics, High Performance, Los Angeles, 1984; Anti-Club, Lhasa Club, Los Angeles, 1985; Beyond Baroque, Venice, California, 1985; TV Generations Reading, LACE, Los Angeles, 1986; ABC NO RIO, New York, 1986; Feature, Chicago, and Greathouse, New York, 1988; 6 Women: The Word and the Will, The Knitting Factory, New York, 1989; Brand Name Damages, Brooklyn and elsewhere, 1991; Newyorican Poets Cafe, 1992; The Banquet, Thread Waxing Space, New York, 1992; Jail of Gender; A Theatrical Adaptation of the Poetry, Prose, and Visual Art of Kathe Burkhart, Cafe Voltaire and Transient Theatre, Chicago, 1994; Bob Flanagan Memorial Reading, Poetry Project, New York, 1996. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Currin</span> American painter

John Currin is an American painter based in New York City. He is most recognised for his technically proficient satirical figurative paintings that explore controversial sexual and societal topics. His work shows a wide range of influences, including sources as diverse as the Renaissance, popular culture magazines, and contemporary fashion models. He often distorts or exaggerates the erotic forms of the female body, and has stressed that his characters are reflections of himself rather than inspired by real people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenny Scharf</span> American artist (born 1958)

Kenny Scharf is an American painter known for his participation in New York City's interdisciplinary East Village art scene during the 1980s, alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Scharf's do-it-yourself practice spanned painting, sculpture, fashion, video, performance art, and street art. Growing up in post-World War II Southern California, Scharf was fascinated by television and the futuristic promise of modern design. His works often includes pop culture icons, such as the Flintstones and the Jetsons, or caricatures of middle-class Americans in an apocalyptic science fiction setting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annette Messager</span> French artist

Annette Messager is a French visual artist. She is known for championing the techniques and materials of outsider art. In 2005, she won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale for her artwork at the French Pavilion. In 2016, she won the prestigious Praemium Imperiale International Arts Award. She lives and works in Malakoff, France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminist art movement in the United States</span> Promoting the study, creation, understanding, and promotion of womens art, began in 1970s

The feminist art movement in the United States began in the early 1970s and sought to promote the study, creation, understanding and promotion of women's art. First-generation feminist artists include Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Suzanne Lacy, Judith Bernstein, Sheila de Bretteville, Mary Beth Edelson, Carolee Schneeman, Rachel Rosenthal, and many other women. They were part of the Feminist art movement in the United States in the early 1970s to develop feminist writing and art. The movement spread quickly through museum protests in both New York and Los Angeles, via an early network called W.E.B. that disseminated news of feminist art activities from 1971 to 1973 in a nationally circulated newsletter, and at conferences such as the West Coast Women's Artists Conference held at California Institute of the Arts and the Conference of Women in the Visual Arts, at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C..

Joe Goode is an American artist who attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1959–1961. Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Goode made a name for himself in Los Angeles through his cloud imagery and milk bottle paintings which were associated with the Pop Art movement. The artist is also closely associated with Light and Space, a West coast movement of the early 1960s. He currently creates and resides in Los Angeles, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Bidlo</span> American conceptual artist

Michael Bidlo is an American conceptual artist who employs painting, sculpture, drawing, performance, and other forms of "social sculpture."

Peter Ford Young is an American painter. He is primarily known for his abstract paintings that have been widely exhibited in the United States and in Europe since the 1960s. His work is associated with Minimal Art, Post-minimalism, and Lyrical Abstraction. Young has participated in more than a hundred group exhibitions and he has had more than forty solo exhibitions in important contemporary art galleries throughout his career. He currently lives in Bisbee, Arizona.

Sylvia Plimack Mangold is an American artist, painter, printmaker, and pastelist. She is known for her representational depictions of interiors and landscapes. She is the mother of film director/screenwriter James Mangold and musician Andrew Mangold.

Sebastiaan Bremer is a Dutch artist who lives and works in New York City.

Michelle Stuart is an American multidisciplinary artist known for her sculpture, painting and environmental art. She is based in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miriam Cahn</span> Swiss painter

Miriam Cahn is a Swiss painter.

Channa Horwitz was a contemporary artist based in Los Angeles, United States. She is recognized for the logically derived compositions created over her five-decade career. Her visually complex, systematic works are generally structured around linear progressions using the number eight.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ted Stamm</span> American artist (1944–1984)

Ted Stamm (1944-1984) was an American minimalist and conceptualist artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ree Morton</span> American visual artist (1933–1977)

Ree Morton was an American visual artist who was closely associated with the postminimalist and feminist art movements of the 1970s.

Charles Gaines is an American artist whose work interrogates the discourse of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy. Taking the form of drawings, photographic series and video installations, the work consistently involves the use of systems, predominantly in the form of the grid, often in combination with photography. His work is rooted in Conceptual Art – in dialogue with artists such as Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner and Mel Bochner – and Gaines is committed to its tenets of engaging cognition and language. As one of the only African-American conceptual artists working in the 1970s, a time when political expressionism was a prevailing concern among African-American artists, Gaines was an outlier in his pursuit of abstraction and non-didactic approach to race and politics. There is a strong musical thread running through much of Gaines' work, evident in his repeated use of musical scores as well in his engagement with the idea of indeterminacy, as similar to John Cage and Sol LeWitt.

Lea Lublin was an Argentine-French performance artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Taylor (artist)</span> American painter

Henry Taylor is an American artist and painter who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He is best known for his acrylic paintings, mixed media sculptures, and installations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leidy Churchman</span> American painter

Leidy Churchman is an American painter who lives and works in New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornelia Schleime</span>

Cornelia Schleime is a German painter, performer, filmmaker and author. Born in East Berlin under the GDR, she studied painting and graphic arts at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts before becoming a member of the underground art scene.

Sue Williams is an American artist born in 1954. She came to prominence in the early 1980s, with works that echoed and argued with the dominant postmodern feminist aesthetic of the time. In the years since, her focus has never waned yet her aesthetic interests have moved toward abstraction along with her subject matter and memories. She lives and works in New York.

References

  1. Denson, G. Roger (9 April 2011). "The Liz Taylor Paintings of Kathe Burkhart: Picturing the Trials and Tribulations of a Proto-Feminist". Huffington Post. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  2. "Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: Feminist Art Base: Kathe Burkhart". Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  3. "In the Studio: Kathe Burkhart – Magazine – Art in America". www.artinamericamagazine.com. 23 February 2016. Retrieved 2016-03-06.
  4. Ursula Harris, Jane. "Kathe Burkhart in the Studio". Art in America. 104 (3): 128.
  5. Mayerson, Keith (2008). "Kathe Burkhart- The Liz Taylor Series: The First 25 Years (1982–2007)". Modern Painters. Archived from the original on March 7, 2016. Retrieved March 6, 2016.
  6. Hillstrom, Laurie Collier; Hillstrom, Kevin (1999-01-01). Contemporary women artists. Detroit: St. James Press. ISBN   1558623728.
  7. Hillstrom, Laurie Collier; Hillstrom, Kevin (1999-01-01). Contemporary women artists. Detroit: St. James Press. ISBN   1558623728.