Betty Tompkins

Betty Tompkins (born 1945) is an American artist and arts educator. Tompkins is a painter whose works revolve, almost exclusively, around photorealistic, close-up imagery of both heterosexual and homosexual intimate acts.[1][2] She creates large-scale, monochromatic canvases and works on paper of singular or multiple figures engaged in sexual acts, executed with successive layers of spray painting over pre-drawings formed by text.[3][4]

Betty Tompkins
Born1945 (age 74–75)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma materSyracuse University
Central Washington State College
Known forFeminist art
MovementPhotorealism, Feminist art, Contemporary art

Alongside artists such as Carolee Schneemann, Yoko Ono, Valie Export, Joan Semmel, Lynda Benglis and Judy Chicago, Tompkins has been re-assessed as a pioneer of Feminist art. Tompkins is listed in The Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art's Feminist Art Base.[5]

Early life and education

Tompkins was born in 1945 in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[6]

Tompkins received her B.F.A. degree from Syracuse University. She took a teaching job at Central Washington State College in Ellensburg, Washington shortly after marrying her first husband, Don Tompkins.[7] Don Tompkins had been one of her instructors at Syracuse University.[7][8] She completed her graduate degree at Central Washington State College, traveling between Ellensburg and New York City.[7]

Career

When she married her spouse he had a collection of pornography that he had ordered from Asia in order to avoid US obscenity laws in the 1950s, these images had influenced her abstraction in to the first body of work, Fuck Paintings.[7][8]

In 2002, Jerry Saltz shared an image of one of Tompkins Fuck Paintings with gallery owner Michell Algus, who offered her a solo exhibition in his New York City gallery.[9] Tompkins had not had a solo exhibition in almost 15 years and this exhibition helped restart her art career.[9] As a result of the 2002 solo exhibition she was invited to the 7th Biennale d'Art Contemporain de Lyon in 2003, and a year later the Centre Pompidou purchased one of her works for their permanent collection.[10]

In 2019, Tompkins had her Instagram account deleted after she posted a photo of her Fuck Painting #1.[11] A few months later in 2019, Instagram held a closed meeting to discuss censorship, art, and nudity on their software platform, a few artists joined the meeting including Micol Hebron, Marilyn Minter, Joanne Leah, and Siddhant Talwar.[12] Betty Tompkins was unable to attend the meeting in-person but shared a written statement.[12]

Work
Fuck Paintings (1969–1974, 2003–present)

Tompkins first major body of work was a series of paintings depicting a male and female figure engaging in sexual intercourse. She elected to render the images in extreme close-up, using vintage pornography stills as her source material. Rather than idealize the act of fornication, by having one body or the other exude dominance or beauty above the other, Tompkins equalizes both figures by showing only their genitalia, in congress.[13] Tompkins' first husband possessed a collection of pornographic magazines and images, amassed since the late 1950s (possession of these images was, at the time, illegal).[7] The works were produced using hundreds of layers of spray paint, using a finely-calibrated airbrush to build from underdrawing to final image. These early works were made solely with black and white pigments, with extremely high contrasting tonality.

Since returning to the series in 2003, Tompkins uses a base color combination to produce a more illuminated monochrome. She originally entitled the series Joined Forms, as a more modest way of describing the imagery. She would later call the collective series Fuck Paintings. Within this first series, until 1976, Tompkins produced a sub-set of works entitled Cow Cunt Paintings.[14]

Censored Grids (1974–present)

In 1974, Tompkins was scheduled to show her work in Paris. Once her painting had arrived, French customs officials had seized it, declaring it obscene and unfit for public exhibition. It would take Tompkins nearly a year to arrange for its return (by then, draining her financially and emotionally from the logistic and legal difficulties).[15][16] In response to this ordeal, Tompkins began to make paintings in the form of grids, where a set of white blocks with the word "censored" at the center, would block out all traces of genitalia or primary imagery in the composition. Tompkins has said she will continue to make these paintings, as there is seemingly no perceivable end to government/municipal censorship of visual art.

WOMEN Words (2002 and 2013)

In 2002 and 2013, Tompkins circulated the following email: “I am considering doing another series of pieces using images of women comprised of words. I would appreciate your help in developing the vocabulary. Please send me a list of words that describe women. They can be affectionate (honey), pejorative (bitch), slang, descriptive, etc. The words don’t have to be in English but I need as accurate a translation as possible. Many, many thanks, Betty Tompkins.” Over 3,500 words and phrases were submitted in seven languages, equally split between men and women.[17][18] In 2012, Tompkins was invited to create a performance in Vienna where 500 of the words and phrases were read aloud. Inspired by that performance, the artist then set out to create 1,000 individual word paintings, intending the series to be presented en masse once complete. On January 1, 2013, Tompkins created the first painting SLUT (#1). In an interview with Art in America, Tompkins says, "People sent stories, too. They made comments. It was very personal. But the same four words were the most popular. Actually nothing has changed."[19]

Public museum collections

Tompkins work is held in many public museum collections, including:

Exhibitions

Tompkins work has been in many exhibitions, this is a select list:

Exhibitions
Year Name Type Location Notes
2016 Sex Works/ WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories Group exhibition Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, California and Palm Beach, Florida [22]
2016 The Female Gaze, Part Two: Women Look at Men Group exhibition Cheim & Read, New York City, New York
2016 WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories: 1,000 Paintings By Betty Tompkins Group exhibition FLAG Art Foundation, New York City, New York
2016 Black Sheep Feminism: The Art of Sexual Politics Group exhibition Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas curated by Alison Gingeras
2015 REAL ERSATZ Group exhibition Bruce High Quality Foundation (BHQFU), New York City, New York
2014 Betty Tompkins: Smooch, 55 Gansevoort Solo exhibition 55 Gansevoort, New York City, New York
2014 CORPUS Group exhibition Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland curated by Maria Brewińska in collaboration with Katarzyna Stupnicka
2014 Inaugural Exhibition Group exhibition Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, California
2009–2011 elles@centrepompidou Group exhibition Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France curated by Camille Morineau
2010 Lust and Vice: The 7 Deadly Sins from Dürer to Nauman Group exhibition Zentrum Paul Klee and the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, Bern, Switzerland
2009 Naked! Group exhibition Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York City, New York curated by Adrian Danatt and Paul Kasmin
2007 La Plaisser au Dessin Group exhibition Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Lyon, France
2006 Uncertain States of America Group exhibition Serpentine Galleries, London, England collaboration with Trisha Donnelly, Adam Putnam, and Shannon Ebner
2004 Acquisitions Récentes: Oeuvres contemporaines Group exhibition Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
2003 Biennale de Lyon 2003, "C'est Arrive Demain" Group exhibition 7 Biennale d'Art Contemporain de Lyon curated by Bob Nickas.[10]
2002 Manhattan Skylines Group exhibition Museum of the City of New York, New York City, New York
2002 Solo exhibition Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York City, New York her first solo show in almost 15 years.[9][10]
1992 The Living Object: The Art Collection of Ellen H. Johnson, Group exhibition Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio
1986–1987 25 Years of Feminism (Year 16) Group exhibition Institute for Women and Art (The Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series) at Rutgers University, New Jersey
gollark: On an entirely unrelated note, it appears that you can buy very cheap projectors with astonishing 320x240 resolution.
gollark: I'm glad you agree on what you said.
gollark: Just use grep?
gollark: I mean, sure, `import sys` isn't great, but you could easily make a wrapper which brings all the necessary stuff into scope.
gollark: Also, variables have function scope, not block scope.

References
  1. Cicetti, Robert (July 30, 2012). "Fuck Paintings #NSFW …As If You Needed to Know That". Hyperallergic.
  2. Becker, Noah (June 2014). "Betty Tompkins: The Whitehot Interview". Whitehot Magazine.
  3. Mason, Shana Beth (June 13, 2014). "Hippie with experience". KUNSTforum.as (Oslo).
  4. "NSFW Feminist Artist Betty Tompkins' Time is Now". Observer. 2016-03-22. Retrieved 2016-10-08.
  5. "Betty Tompkins". Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: Feminist Art Base. Retrieved 27 February 2015.
  6. "Interview: In DIALOGUE // Betty Tompkins". Dialogue. Retrieved 2019-10-21.
  7. Silas, Susan; Stathacos, Chrysanne (September 8, 2012). "A conversation with Betty Tompkins". MOMMY. I went to Syracuse University for my undergraduate degree and then I became a cliché and I married one of my teachers and he got a job at Central Washington State College, so we moved out to Ellensburg. I did my graduate degree and then there were a couple of years where we were going back and forth between New York and Ellensburg.
  8. "The Second Coming of Betty Tompkins". Hyperallergic. 2016-08-26. Retrieved 2019-10-21.
  9. "'Everybody Owes Him a Debt of Gratitude': How Mitchell Algus Became New York's Most Beloved, Least Successful Art Dealer". artnet News. 2018-03-21. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  10. "It's Never Too Late: 6 Artists Who Found Fame Later In Life". Artspace. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  11. "Censorship | Feminist Betty Tompkins' Instagram account removed". Happening. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  12. Durón, Maximilíano (2019-10-21). "Instagram Holds Closed-Door Roundtable with Artists on Art and Nudity". ARTnews. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  13. Cicetti, ibid.
  14. Simmons, William J. (2015-10-28). "Betty Tompkins". Flash Art. Retrieved 2016-10-08.
  15. Mason, ibid.
  16. Lark, Jasmine. "Betty Tompkins". WideWalls. Retrieved 2016-10-08.
  17. "WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories - The FLAG Art Foundation". Retrieved 2016-10-08.
  18. Mizota, Sharon (August 5, 2016). "How would you describe women? Betty Tompkins asked, then painted 1,000 answers". latimes.com. Retrieved 2016-10-08.
  19. Vogel, Wendy. "Beyond the F Word: An Interview with Betty Tompkins - Interviews - Art in America". www.artinamericamagazine.com. Retrieved 2016-10-08.
  20. "Fuck Painting #1". Centre Pompidou (in French). Retrieved 2019-10-21.
  21. "2015 Spring Art Rental: Top 20, #19 Betty Tompkins, American, b. 1945" (PDF). Allen Memorial Art Museum.
  22. "Betty Tompkins: Sex World/WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories". The Miami Rail. 2017-04-02. Retrieved 2019-10-21.
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