Rosalyn Drexler

Rosalyn Drexler (born 1926) is a Pop artist, novelist, Obie Award-winning playwright, and Emmy Award-winning screenwriter. She is represented by Garth Greenan Gallery.

Biography

Early life

Rosalyn Drexler (née Bronznick) was born in 1926 in the Bronx, New York. Drexler has said of her New York upbringing,

I grew up in East Harlem and the Bronx. My grandparents had a secondhand store in Harlem, I used to climb up to the loft where they kept the mattresses, and I hid there: warm, giggling, sure they’d never find me, and we lived there for a while. Grandpa used to buy stolen jewelry that he kept in boxes under the bed. There were diamond tie-pins, and gold watches. I heard the adults whispering about it. There’s a whole thing I went through about growing up in the Bronx where they still had tomato plants growing. It was like a whole different place. And the Russian immigrants sat in Van Cortlandt Park across from Hunter Hall playing mahjong. I can still hear that sound. The clicking of the ivory pieces.

She attended the High School of Music and Art in New York City where she majored in voice. She attended Hunter College for one semester only before leaving school to marry figure painter Sherman Drexler in 1946. She is the subject of many of her husband's paintings. They have a daughter and a son.

In 1955, Drexler exhibited her first works along with those of her husband Sherman in Berkeley, California. These lumpen plaster accretions, built around found scrap metal and wood armatures, were very much in keeping with the informal aspects of Abstract-Expressionist-influenced Beat sculpture of the time.

After she had returned East, her works were shown in New York in 1960 at Reuban Gallery, whose associates included Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine. Notables of the New York School including David Smith and Franz Kline endorsed her sculptures.

Soon after the Reuban's Gallery closure, Drexler began painting, organically developing her work from assemblage to Pop Art.

Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire

In 1951 Drexler pursued a brief career as a professional wrestler under the name "Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire." Andy Warhol made a series of silkscreen paintings based on a photograph of Drexler from her wrestling days. Drexler's experience as Rosa Carlo later formed the basis of her 1972 critically acclaimed novel To Smithereens. The novel inspired the 1980 film Below the Belt.

Artistic career

Drexler began making found-object sculptures while living in Berkeley, California where her husband was finishing his art degree. Made as amusements for display in her home, Drexler exhibited her work once she moved back to New York City at the urging of dealer Ivan Karp. One critic called these early works "ridiculous and nutty" sculptures that revealed a "real beauty beneath their I-don't-care attitudes."

Drexler had her first solo exhibition in 1960 at New York's Reuben Gallery, a downtown cooperative that showed other emerging Pop artists such as George Segal and Claes Oldenburg, as well as Allan Kaprow and other Fluxus artists. The first Happenings also took place at the Reuben Gallery, in which Drexler participated. However, the Reuben Gallery closed after a year. While other artists had little difficulty finding representation elsewhere, Drexler struggled.

Women were not bankable at that time. Every other male artist…other galleries came along. I received no offers. In my naivete I thought it was because I was not a painter so I must make paintings. —Rosalyn Drexler

Despite encouragement from sculptor David Smith to continue working in the same medium, Drexler switched her focus to painting in the early 1960s. Entirely self-taught, her process consisted of blowing up images from magazines and newspapers, collaging them onto canvas, and then painting over them in bright, saturated colors. Drexler started appropriating popular imagery in her art at the same time as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were developing similar techniques, putting her at the forefront of the Pop art movement.

Drexler eventually signed with Kornblee Gallery, where she had solo shows in 1964–1966. In January 1964 her work was included in the "First International Girlie Exhibit" at Pace Gallery, New York. She and Marjorie Strider were the only two women Pop artists included in this landmark exhibition, which otherwise featured a variety of male artists including Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Tom Wesselmann.

Drexler exhibited collages cut and pasted from girlie magazines. The work scandalized many, but her paintings were otherwise well received. As one critic noted, "Miss Drexler’s collage paintings…fly through contemporary life and fantasy with a virtuosic, uninhibited imagination that is refreshingly direct in its frank expression of brutality, desire, pathos and playfulness."

Although her paintings continued to enjoy favorable reviews and were exhibited in major Pop art exhibitions throughout the 1960s, Drexler did not gain the same level of recognition or success as many of her male peers. Not only was she a woman in a male-dominated field, the major themes in her paintings—violence against women, racism, social alienation—were decidedly "hot" topics in a genre known for being "cool" and detached. For these reasons, her Pop paintings have been identified more recently as early feminist artworks, yet Drexler vehemently objected to the label.

Don't try to make me into a politically conscious artist. I wasn't. I don't teach lessons...My work does not lend itself to causes. Unless it does when I'm not looking. —Rosalyn Drexler

In 1968, Drexler signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

Major Themes & Works

• The Love and Violence series refers to a body of paintings that depicts abusive relationships between men and women. The canvases evoke the covers of pulp fiction novels, B-movie posters, and scenes from gangster films or film noir. Titles such as I Won’t Hurt You (1964), This is My Wedding (1963), and Rape (1962) make explicit the sexual violence against women suggested in the scene. While the men depicted are most often the abusers, in some paintings, such as Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) and Dangerous Liaison (1963), the power dynamic between the male and female subjects is left more indeterminate. Other works in this series include The Bite (1963), Love and Violence (1965), and Baby, It’s Alright (1963).

• Is It True What They Say About Dixie? (1966) was inspired by a newspaper photo of Bull Connor, the police chief who instigated the Birmingham race riot of 1963, leading a group of white supremacists. The figures advance towards the viewer dressed in nearly identical black suits against a stark white background.

The painting's title is taken from an American song popularized in the mid-1950s by Dean Martin and Bill Haley that suggests the South is a romantic idyll. Drexler's painting acts as an ironic commentary on the racial violence of her time.

Similar in composition and intent is the painting F.B.I. (1964) that both glamorizes the depicted government agents and inherently questions their status as figures of authority.

• The Men and Machines series shows working men with various types of mechanical equipment. The series speaks to Cold-War era obsession with technological advancements and plays on the cliché of machines as phallic symbols of male sexual power. Paintings in this series include Pilot to Tower (1966).

• Marilyn Pursued by Death (1967) is a haunting image of Marilyn Monroe being followed by a male figure. Although "Death" appears to be a stalker or member of the paparazzi, the photograph after which the painting was made makes clear that the man is actually her bodyguard.

• Paintings made after movie posters include King Kong aka The Dream (1963), modeled after the lobby card for John Lemont's 1961 film Konga, and Chubby Checker (1964), inspired by the poster for 1961 movie musical Twist Around the Clock.

Awards

Drexler received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2007.

Selected Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

• 1960 "Rosalyn Drexler: Sculpture"—Reuben Gallery, NYC
• 1963 O.K. Harris Gallery, Provincetown, MA
• 1964 "Rosalyn Drexler"—Kornblee Gallery, NYC
• 1964 "Rosalyn Drexler"—Ward-Nasse Gallery, Boston, MA
• 1964 Sun Gallery, Provincetown, MA
• 1965 "Rosalyn Drexler"—Kornblee Gallery, NYC
• 1965 Feingarten Gallery, Chicago, IL
• 1966 "Rosalyn Drexler"—Kornblee Gallery, NYC
• 1967 "Rosalyn Drexler"—The Contemporary Gallery, Jewish Community Center, Kansas City, MO
• 1973 Rockland State College, Suffern, New York
• 1976 "Rosalyn Drexler"—The Visual Arts Gallery, Saint Catherine College, St. Paul, MN
• 1978 P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY
• 1986 "Rosalyn Drexler: Intimate Emotions"—Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University, NYC (traveling exhibition)
• 1992 "Life: The Magic Show: Recent Paintings"—LaMaMa La Galleria, NYC
• 1998 "Nothing Personal: Recent Paintings"—Maurine and Robert Rothschild Gallery, The Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA
• 2000 "I Won't Hurt You: Paintings 1962–1999"—Nicholas Davies Gallery in association with Mitchell Algus Gallery, NYC
• 2004 "Rosalyn Drexler: To Smithereens, Paintings 1961–2003"—Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
• 2006 "Rosalyn Drexler and the Ends of Man"—Paul Robeson Gallery, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, NJ
• 2007 "Rosalyn Drexler: I am the Beautiful Stranger – Paintings from the ‘60s"—PaceWildenstein, NYC
• 2015 "Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives"–Garth Greenan Gallery, NYC

Group Exhibitions=

1960

• "New Forms–New Media II—Martha Jackson Gallery, NYC
• "Homage to Albert Camus"—Stuttman Gallery, NYC

1961

• Group Show (with Sol Bloom, John Button, Morton Lucks, Kenneth Kilstrom, Renata McLean, Henry Raleigh, Salvatore Sirugo, Tom Wesselmann)—Tanager Gallery, NYC
• Great Jones Gallery, NYC

1962

• "The Closing Show 1952–1962"—Tanager Gallery, NYC

1963

• "Sculpture"—Riverside Museum,NYC
• J. Morris Gallery, Toronto, Cananda
• "Pop Art U.S.A."—Oakland Art Museum, Oakland, CA
• "Rosalyn Drexler and Tom Doyle"—Zabriskie Gallery, NYC
• "The New Formalists" University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
• "Mixed Media and Pop Art"—Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

1964

• Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, D.C.
• "The New Art"—Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
• "Some Contemporary American Figure Painters"—Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT
• "The Painter and the Photograph" Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (traveling exhibition)
• "Collage-Assemblage Exhibition"—Pace Gallery, Boston, MA
• "Inform and Interpret"—American Federation of Arts
• "Dealer’s Choice: An Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings, and Prints"—Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX

1965

• "Eleven from the Reuben Gallery"—Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC
• "First International Girlie Show"—Pace Gallery, NYC
• "The New American Realism"—Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
• "Pop Art and the American Tradition"—Milwaukee Art Museum, WI

1966

• "The Harry N. Abrams Family Collection"—The Jewish Museum, NYC

1967

• "Homage To Marilyn Monroe"—Sidney Janis Gallery, NYC.

1970

• "January ’70: Contemporary Women Artists"—Hawthorn Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga, NY

1972

• "Unmanly Art"—The Suffolk Museum, Stoney Brook, NY

1974

• "Six Women at Bienville"—Bienville Gallery, New Orleans, LA
• "Finch College Museum, NY

1975

• Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
• Gallery 101, Stamford, CT

1977

• "Pop Plus"—Whitney Museum of American Art, Downtown Branch, NYC

1978

• "Another Aspect of Pop Art"—P.S. 1, Long Island City, NY
• Group Show—Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
• M Galleries, Miami, Florida

1979

• "Women Artists In Washington Collections"—University of Maryland Art Gallery and Women’s Caucus for Art, College Park, MD

1984

• "American Women Artists: Part 1. 20th Century: The Pioneers"—Sidney Janis Gallery, NYC
• "The New Portrait"—P.S. 1, Long Island City, NY
• "1+1=2"—Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, NYC (traveling exhibition)

1987

• "Made in U.S.A.: An Americanization in Modern Art, the ‘50s and ‘60s"—Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley. CA

1991

• "Back Room: The Abortion Project"—Simon Watson Gallery, NYC

1992

• Invitational, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

2001

• "Pop Art: U.S./U.K. Connections '56-'66"—The Menil Collection, Houston, TX

2007

• "Beauty and the Blonde: An Exploration of American Art and Popular Culture"—Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

2010

• "Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968"—University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA (traveling exhibition)
• "Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism"—The Jewish Museum, NYC
• "Power Up: Women Pop Art"—Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria

2012

• "Sinister Pop"—Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC

2014

• "Pop to Popism"—Art Gallery New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

2015

• "International Pop"—Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

Selected Public Collections

• Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio
• Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Connecticut
• Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University, New York
• Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
• Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
• Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park, Florida

Books

Novels

• I Am the Beautiful Stranger (1965)
• One or Another (1970)
• To Smithereens (1972)
• The Cosmopolitan Girl (1974)
• Unwed Widow (1975)—written under the pseudonym Julia Sorel
• Starburn: The Story of Jenni Love (1979)
• Bad Guy (1982)
• Art Does (Not!) Exist (1996)
• Vulgar Lives (2007)

Adapted Screenplays

written under the pseudonym Julia Sorel

• Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway (1976)—Adapted from the screenplay by Dalene Young
• Rocky (1976)—Based on the screenplay by Sylvester Stallone
• Alexander, The Other Side of Dawn (1977)—Adapted from the screenplay by Dalene Young
• See How She Runs (1978)—Adapted from the screenplay by Marvin Gluck

Plays

Published work

• Home Movies (1964).
• The Line of Least Existence and Other Plays (1967)
• "Skywriting" in Collision Course (1968)
• “Hot Buttered Roll" in Theatre Experiment: An Anthology of American Plays (1968)
• Methuen Playscripts (1969)
• "Home Movies" in The Off-Off Broadway Book: The Plays, People, Theatre (1972)
• Fiction (1972)
• “Skywriting" in A Century of Plays by American Women, edited by Rachel France (1979)
• Transients Welcome: Three One-Act Plays (1984)
• "Occupational Hazard" in Women on the Verge: 7 Avant-Garde American Plays (1993)

Productions

• Home Movies—Judson Memorial Church, Provincetown Playhouse, NYC 1964
• The Investigation—Theatre Company of Boston 1966; New Dramatist's Committee, NYC 1966; Milwaukee Repertory Theater 1966; Open Space Theatre, London 1969; Miami University, Ohio 1979
• The Line of Least Existence—Judson Poets' Theatre, NYC 1969; Theatre of the Living Arts, Philadelphia 1970; Traverse, Edinburgh 1968; Network Theatre, NYC 1980
• Hot Buttered Roll—New Dramatist's Committee, NYC 1968; Milwaukee Repertory Theater 1966; Open Space Theatre, London 1969
• Skywriting—Cafe Au GoGo, NYC 1968; Dowling College, Suffolk County, NY 1973
• The Ice Queen—The Proposition, Boston 1973; Kornblee Gallery, NYC 1965 (with puppets)
• Softly and Consider the Nearness—Manhattan Theatre Club, NYC 1973; West Carolina University, NC 1973
• The Bed Was Full—New Dramatist's Committee, NYC 1972
• She Who Was He—Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond 1974; New York Theatre Strategy, NYC 1974
• Travesty Parade—Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles 1974
• The Writer's Opera—Theatre for the New City, NYC 1979.
• Graven Image—Theatre for the New City, NYC 1980; Oberlin College, Ohio 1980
• Vulgar Lives—La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, NYC 1979
• The Tree Artist—Gateway, Long Island, NY 1981
• Starburn—Theatre for the New City, NYC 1983
• The Mandrake—Center Stage, Baltimore 1983
• Dear—SoHo Repertory, NYC 1983
• Room 17C—Omaha Magic, NE 1983
• Delicate Feelings—Theatre for the New City, NYC 1984

Film and Television

TV

• Lily (1973), CBS Comedy Special starring Lily Tomlin, Alan Alda, and Richard Pryor. Rosalyn Drexler was one of 15 writers for this special.

Film

• Who Does She Think She Is? (1975), an hour-long film about Rosalyn Drexler directed by Patricia Lewis Jaffe and Gaby Rodgers
• Below the Belt (1980), directed by Robert Fowler, suggested by Rosalyn Drexler's novel To Smithereens

Awards

• 1964 Obie Award for Distinguished Play, Home Movies
• 1965, 1968, 1974, 1986 Rockefeller Grants in Playwriting
• 1966 Paris Review Humor Prize, Dear
• 1970-71 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1973 Emmy Award for Best Writing for Comedy-Variety (Special Program), Lily
• 1979 Obie Award for Best Playwriting, The Writer's Opera
• 1985 Obie Award for Best Playwriting, Transients Welcome
• 1990 New York Foundation for the Arts, Grant in Playwriting
• 1991 National Endowment for the Arts, Grant in Theater
• 1994, 2000 Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Grant in Painting
• 1997-8 Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe College/Harvard University, Visual Arts-Painting
• 2005 Helen & George Segal Foundation, Grant in Painting

Further reading

• Johnston, Jill. “Rosalyn Drexler and Tom Doyle [Zabriskie; April 15–May 4]” (exhibition review). Art News 62 (April 1963): 14.
• Sontag, Susan. “Going to Theater, etc.” Partisan Review (Summer 1964).
• Bourdon, David. “A Bout With Roslayn Drexler.” Village Voice, 1965: 5–6.
• Lippard, Lucy. Pop Art. New York: Praeger, 1966.
• Drexler, Rosalyn. “Eight Artists Reply: Why Have There been No Great Women Artists?” Art News 69 (January 1971): 40–41.
• Hess, Thomas B. and E.C. Baker. Art & Sexual Politics: Women’s Liberation, Women Artists and Art History. New York: Art News Series, Collier Books, 1973.
• Alloway, Lawrence. American Pop Art. New York: Collier Books, 1974.
• Alloway, Lawrence. Topics in American Art since 1945. New York: W.W. Norton Co., 1975.
• Women in the Arts: Artists Choice, 1976–1977. New York: Women in the Arts Foundation, 1976.
• Munro, Eleanor C. Originals: American Women Artists. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979.
• Taylor, Roger G. Marilyn in Art. London: Elm Tree Books, 1984.
• Russell, John. “Intimate Emotions” (exhibition review). The New York Times, 25 July 1986.
• Newhall, Edith. “Eye of the Prophet.” New York Magazine, 11 August 1986: 15.
• Drexler Rosalyn and Steve Bottoms, "Rosalyn Drexler, Interviewed by Steve Bottoms, NYC, 14/8/96", August 14, 1996.
• Danatt, Adrian. “NY Artist Q&A: Rosalyn Drexler” (interview). The Art Newspaper, (March 2000): 77.
• De Salvo, Donna. “Underrated: Rosalyn Drexler.” Art News (December 2000): 121–130.
• Brauer, David E. Pop Art: US/UK Connections (exhibition catalogue). Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2001.
• To Smithereens: Paintings 1961–2003 (exhibition catalogue). Texts by Sid Sachs and Robert Storr. Philadelphia: The University of The Arts, 2004.
• Rosalyn Drexler and the Ends of Man: Works from 1961–2001 (exhibition catalogue). Newark, NJ: Paul Robeson Gallery, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 2006.
• Rosalyn Drexler: I am the Beautiful Stranger. Paintings of the ‘60s (exhibition catalogue). Text by Arne Glimcher and Rosalyn Drexler. New York: PaceWildenstein, 2007.
• Baker, R.C. “Mexican Spitfire Returns” (PaceWildenstein exhibition preview). Village Voice, 7–13 March 2007.
• Yau, John. “Rosalyn Drexler: I am the Beautiful Stranger—Paintings of the ‘60s” (exhibition review). The Brooklyn Rail, 16 March–21 April 2007: 36.
• Minioudaki, Kalliopi. "Pop's Ladies and Bad Girls: Axell, Pauline Boty and Rosalyn Drexler." Oxford Art Journal 30.3 2007, 402-430.
• Sachs, Sid and Kalliopi Minioudaki, eds. Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968. [exhibition catalogue] University of the Arts, Philadelphia. New York and London: Abbeville Press, 2010.
• Hirsch, Faye. "Rosalyn Drexler." Art in America, (May 2015):105, 157.

External links

• Rosalyn Drexler at Pace Gallery
• Rosalyn Drexler on artnet
• Rosalyn Drexler at the Internet Movie Database