Opinion
Suellen Rocca: A Woman’s Take on the ‘Hairy Who’
THE DAILY PIC: At Matthew Marks, the Chicago Imagist revels in breasts and pink paint.
by
Blake Gopnik
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THE DAILY PIC (#1645): The Pink Creature on TV is a painting by Suellen Rocca from around 1965. It is now in a solo show of her ’60s works on view at Matthew Marks gallery in New York – Rocca’s first-ever such show in the city. That’s a surprise because Rocca was a founding member of the famous Chicago “Imagist” group called the Hairy Who. It’s less of a surprise given that she was one of only two women among its four men.
But in fact it’s Rocca’s female imagery and esthetics – all those boobs; all that pink – that I find notably compelling, since it’s rare for art in this mode at this date. “Imagist” distortions and disjunctions seem to make special sense in dealing with the distortions and disjunctions imposed by life in a misogynist culture. (©Suellen Rocca, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery)
For a full survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.
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