Deborah Kass
Encyclopedia
Deborah Kass is an American
artist whose work explores the intersection of pop culture, art history, and the self.
, and studied at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and the Art Students League of New York
. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art
; Whitney Museum of American Art
; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
; Jewish Museum (New York)
; Museum of Fine Art, Boston
; The Cincinnati Museum; New Orleans Museum
; and Weatherspoon Museum, among others, as well as numerous public and private collections. Her work has been written about extensively in the press, academic journals and books, and by the pre-eminent art historians and curators Robert Storr
, Robert Rosenblum
, Linda Nochlin
, and Irving Sandler
, among others.
Kass's work has been shown nationally and internationally including at the Venice Biennale
, the Istanbul Biennale, and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. A survey show, "Deborah Kass, The Warhol Project" traveled across the country from 1999-2001. She is a Senior Critic in the Yale University M.F.A. Painting Program.
Kass is represented by Vincent Fremont and the Paul Kasmin Gallery.
, Jasper Johns
, Jackson Pollock
, and other contemporary sources. Establishing appropriation as her primary mode of working, these early paintings also introduced many of the central concerns of her work to the present. Before and Happily Ever After, for example, coupled Andy Warhol
’s painting of an advertisement for a nose job with a movie still of Cinderella fitting her foot into her glass slipper, touching on notions of Americanism and identity in popular culture.
’s paintings employed methods lifted from mass production to depict iconic American products and celebrities. Using Andy Warhol
’s technical and stylistic language to represent figures in many cases no less iconic, Kass nevertheless turned Warhol’s ambivalent relationship to popular culture on its head by choosing subjects that had an explicitly personal and political relationship to her own cultural interests. Kass painted artists and art historians that were her “heroes”, like Cindy Sherman
and Elizabeth Murray
, Robert Rosenblum
and Linda Nochlin
, in the vein of Warhol’s celebrities. In The Jewish Jackie Series she painted Barbra Streisand
, a celebrity with whom she closely identifies, after Warhol’s paintings of Jackie Onassis and Marilyn Monroe
. Her My Elvis series speak to gender and ethic identity by replacing Warhol’s Elvis with Barbra Streisand
from Yentl
: a 1983 film in which Streisand plays a Jewish woman who dresses and lives as a man in order to receive an education in the Talmudic Law
. Kass’s Self Portraits as Warhol nod to the act of drag performed in her all appropriation of Warhol’s work.
, Frank Stella
, Jackson Pollock
, Andy Warhol
, and Ed Ruscha, along with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
, Laura Nyro
, and Sylvester
, among others, pulling from popular music, Broadway show tunes, the Great American Songbook, Yiddish, and film. The paintings view American art and culture of the last century through the lens of that time period’s outpouring of creativity that was the result of post-war optimism, a burgeoning middle class, and democratic values. Responding to the uncertain political and ecological climate of the new century in which they have been made, Kass’s work looks back on the 20th century critically and simultaneously with great nostalgia, throwing the present into high relief. Drawing, as always, from the divergent realms of art history, popular culture, political realities, and her own political and philosophical reflection, the artist continues into the present the explorations that have characterized her paintings since the 1980s in these new hybrid textual and visual works.
2006: Wagner, Frank, Kasper Konig, Julia Freidrich, eds., The Eighth Square, Gender, Life, and Desire in the Arts since 1960, exhibition catalog,
Museum Ludwig, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Germany
2006: Bloom, Lisa, Jewish Identities in American Feminist Art, Routledge, New York, NY
2004: Higgs, Matthew, Likeness: Portraits of Artists by Other Artists, exhibition catalogue, CAA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art and Independent Curators International, San Francisco, CA
1999: Plante, Michael, ed. (with essays by Maurice Berger, Linda Nochlin, Robert Rosenblum, and Mary Anne Staniszewski), Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project, exhibition catalog, Newcombe Art Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
1998: Bright, Deborah, ed., The Passionate Camera, Photography and Bodies of Desire, Routledge, New York, NY
1997: Schor, Mira, Wet, On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture, Duke University Press, Durham, NC
1996: Kleeblatt, Norman L and Linda Nochlin, Too Jewish?: Challenging Traditional Identities, exhibition catalog, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ
1996: James, Jamie, Pop Art Colour Library, Phaidon Press Ltd., London, England
1995: Blake, Nayland, Lawrence Rinder, Amy Scholder, eds., In A Different Light; Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, Queer Practice, exhibition catalogue, City Lights Books, San Francisco, CA
1993: Chernow, Barbara A. and George A. Vallasi, eds., "American Art," The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, Columbia University Press, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA
2010: Sandler, Irving, "Deborah Kass," bombsite.com, September
2010: Wolin, Joseph R., "Deborah Kass, “MORE feel good paintings for feel bad times," Time Out New York, October 17
2010: Myers, Terry, “Deborah Kass with Terry Myers," The Brooklyn Rail, September
2010: Goldsworthy, Rubert, "Deborah Kass: Back to Broadway," artinamericamagazine.com, October 15
2010: Russeth, Andrew, "Singing on the Edge of Extinction: A Q&A With Painter Deborah Kass," artInfo.com, October 19
2007: McClermont, Doug, “Last Chance,” saatchi-gallery.co.uk, October 8
2007: Mueller, Stephen, “The Word May Be the Thing,” Gay City News, September 20
2007: Finch, Charlie, “ANOTHER OPENING, ANOTHER SHOW,” artnet.com, September 10
1996: Kimmelman, Michael, “Too Jewish? Jewish Artists Ponder,” The New York Times, March 8
1995: Cotter, Holland, “Deborah Kass, ‘My Andy: a retrospective’ at Jose Freire,” The New York Times, March 24
1993: Cotter, Holland, “Deborah Kass at fiction/nonfiction,” The New York Times, January 15
1992: Smith, Roberta, “Women Artists Engage the Enemy,” The New York Times, August 16
1991: Kimmelman, Michael, “Painting Culture at fiction/nonfiction,” The New York Times, November 1
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
artist whose work explores the intersection of pop culture, art history, and the self.
Life and work
Deborah Kass received her BFA in Painting at Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
, and studied at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and the Art Students League of New York
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...
. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
; Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
; Jewish Museum (New York)
Jewish Museum (New York)
The Jewish Museum of New York, an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, is the leading Jewish museum in the United States. With over 26,000 objects, it contains the largest collection of art and Jewish culture outside of museums in Israel. The museum is housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in...
; Museum of Fine Art, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas...
; The Cincinnati Museum; New Orleans Museum
New Orleans Museum of Art
The New Orleans Museum of Art is the oldest fine arts museum in the city of New Orleans. It is situated within City Park, a short distance from the intersection of Carrollton Avenue and Esplanade Avenue, and near the terminus of the "Canal Street - City Park" streetcar line...
; and Weatherspoon Museum, among others, as well as numerous public and private collections. Her work has been written about extensively in the press, academic journals and books, and by the pre-eminent art historians and curators Robert Storr
Robert Storr
-Education:Robert Storr received his B.A. in History and French from Swarthmore College in 1972, and earned an M.F.A. in Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978.-Career:...
, Robert Rosenblum
Robert Rosenblum
Robert Rosenblum was an American art historian and curator known for his influential and often irreverent scholarship on European and American art of the mid-eighteenth to 20th century....
, Linda Nochlin
Linda Nochlin
Linda Nochlin is an American art historian, university professor and writer. She is considered to be a leader in feminist art history studies. She is best known as a proponent of the question "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"...
, and Irving Sandler
Irving Sandler
Irving Sandler is an American art critic and educator. He has provided numerous first hand accounts of American art, particularly around the abstract expressionist circles of the 1950s, where he managed the Downtown Tanager Gallery and co-ordinated the New York artists' 'Club' from 1955 to its...
, among others.
Kass's work has been shown nationally and internationally including at the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
, the Istanbul Biennale, and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. A survey show, "Deborah Kass, The Warhol Project" traveled across the country from 1999-2001. She is a Senior Critic in the Yale University M.F.A. Painting Program.
Kass is represented by Vincent Fremont and the Paul Kasmin Gallery.
Art History Paintings 1989–1992
In Kass’s first significant body of work, the Art History Paintings, she combined frames lifted from Disney cartoons with slices of painting from Pablo PicassoPablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.-Life:Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed...
, Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
, and other contemporary sources. Establishing appropriation as her primary mode of working, these early paintings also introduced many of the central concerns of her work to the present. Before and Happily Ever After, for example, coupled Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
’s painting of an advertisement for a nose job with a movie still of Cinderella fitting her foot into her glass slipper, touching on notions of Americanism and identity in popular culture.
The Warhol Project 1992–2000
In 1992 Kass began The Warhol Project. Beginning in the 1960s, Andy WarholAndy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
’s paintings employed methods lifted from mass production to depict iconic American products and celebrities. Using Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
’s technical and stylistic language to represent figures in many cases no less iconic, Kass nevertheless turned Warhol’s ambivalent relationship to popular culture on its head by choosing subjects that had an explicitly personal and political relationship to her own cultural interests. Kass painted artists and art historians that were her “heroes”, like Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in and Metro Pictures gallery in...
and Elizabeth Murray
Elizabeth Murray
Elizabeth Murray may refer to:*Lady Elizabeth Murray, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Mansfield*Elizabeth Murray , American artist*Elizabeth Murray, wife of Edward Robbins and great-great grandmother to Franklin D. Roosevelt...
, Robert Rosenblum
Robert Rosenblum
Robert Rosenblum was an American art historian and curator known for his influential and often irreverent scholarship on European and American art of the mid-eighteenth to 20th century....
and Linda Nochlin
Linda Nochlin
Linda Nochlin is an American art historian, university professor and writer. She is considered to be a leader in feminist art history studies. She is best known as a proponent of the question "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"...
, in the vein of Warhol’s celebrities. In The Jewish Jackie Series she painted Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
, a celebrity with whom she closely identifies, after Warhol’s paintings of Jackie Onassis and Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
. Her My Elvis series speak to gender and ethic identity by replacing Warhol’s Elvis with Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
from Yentl
Yentl
Yentl is a play by Leah Napolin and Isaac Bashevis Singer.Based on Singer's short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy," it centers on a young girl who defies tradition by discussing and debating Jewish law and theology with her rabbi father...
: a 1983 film in which Streisand plays a Jewish woman who dresses and lives as a man in order to receive an education in the Talmudic Law
Talmudic law
Talmudic Law Is the law that is derived from the Talmud based on the teachings of the Talmudic Sages.* See Talmud or Talmudical Hermeneutics for more information....
. Kass’s Self Portraits as Warhol nod to the act of drag performed in her all appropriation of Warhol’s work.
Feel Good Paintings for Feel Bad Times 2002–present
In 2002, Kass began a new body of work, feel good paintings for feel bad times, inspired, in part, by her reaction to the Bush administration. In 2007 and in 2010, she presented the work at Paul Kasmin Gallery in two solo shows to great critical acclaim. These works combine stylistic devices from a wide variety of post-war painting, including Ellsworth KellyEllsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly is an American painter and sculptor associated with Hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and the Minimalist school. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing the simplicity of form found similar to the work of John McLaughlin. Kelly often employs bright colors to...
, Frank Stella
Frank Stella
Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker, significant within the art movements of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.-Biography:...
, Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, and Ed Ruscha, along with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
, Laura Nyro
Laura Nyro
Laura Nyro was an American songwriter, singer, and pianist. She achieved considerable critical acclaim with her own recordings, particularly the albums Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and New York Tendaberry, and had commercial success with artists such as Barbra Streisand and The 5th...
, and Sylvester
Sylvester
Sylvester is a name derived from the Latin adjective silvestris meaning "wooded" or "wild", which derives from the noun silva meaning "woodland". Classical Latin spells this with i. In Classical Latin y represented a separate sound distinct from i, not a native Latin sound but one used in...
, among others, pulling from popular music, Broadway show tunes, the Great American Songbook, Yiddish, and film. The paintings view American art and culture of the last century through the lens of that time period’s outpouring of creativity that was the result of post-war optimism, a burgeoning middle class, and democratic values. Responding to the uncertain political and ecological climate of the new century in which they have been made, Kass’s work looks back on the 20th century critically and simultaneously with great nostalgia, throwing the present into high relief. Drawing, as always, from the divergent realms of art history, popular culture, political realities, and her own political and philosophical reflection, the artist continues into the present the explorations that have characterized her paintings since the 1980s in these new hybrid textual and visual works.
Selected solo exhibitions
- Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY, "MORE feel good paintings for feel bad times" (2010)
- Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY, "feel good paintings for feel bad times" (2007)
- Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, "Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project" (2001)
- University Art Museum, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, "Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project" Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Houston, TX, "Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project" (2000)
- Newcombe Art Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, "Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project (traveling, catalogue) (1999)
- Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA (1998)
- Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Kansas City, MO, "My Andy: a retrospective" (catalogue) (1996)
- Jose Freire Fine Art, New York, NY, "My Andy: a retrospective" Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA (1995)
- Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston, MA (1994)
- Jose Freire Fine Art, New York, NY, "Chairman Ma" Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA (1993)
- fiction/nonfiction, New York, NY, "The Jewish Jackie Series and My Elvis" Simon Watson, New York, NY, "The Jewish Jackie Series" (1992)
- Simon Watson Gallery, New York, NY (1990)
- Scott Hanson Gallery, New York, NY (catalogue) (1988)
- Baskerville and Watson Gallery, New York, NY (1986)
- Baskerville and Watson Gallery, New York, NY (1984)
Selected books
2010: Katz, Jonathan D. and David C. Ward, eds., HIDE/ SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, exhibition catalog, Smithsonian Books, Washington DC2006: Wagner, Frank, Kasper Konig, Julia Freidrich, eds., The Eighth Square, Gender, Life, and Desire in the Arts since 1960, exhibition catalog,
Museum Ludwig, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Germany
2006: Bloom, Lisa, Jewish Identities in American Feminist Art, Routledge, New York, NY
2004: Higgs, Matthew, Likeness: Portraits of Artists by Other Artists, exhibition catalogue, CAA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art and Independent Curators International, San Francisco, CA
1999: Plante, Michael, ed. (with essays by Maurice Berger, Linda Nochlin, Robert Rosenblum, and Mary Anne Staniszewski), Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project, exhibition catalog, Newcombe Art Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
1998: Bright, Deborah, ed., The Passionate Camera, Photography and Bodies of Desire, Routledge, New York, NY
1997: Schor, Mira, Wet, On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture, Duke University Press, Durham, NC
1996: Kleeblatt, Norman L and Linda Nochlin, Too Jewish?: Challenging Traditional Identities, exhibition catalog, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ
1996: James, Jamie, Pop Art Colour Library, Phaidon Press Ltd., London, England
1995: Blake, Nayland, Lawrence Rinder, Amy Scholder, eds., In A Different Light; Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, Queer Practice, exhibition catalogue, City Lights Books, San Francisco, CA
1993: Chernow, Barbara A. and George A. Vallasi, eds., "American Art," The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, Columbia University Press, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA
Selected press
2010: Denson, Robert D., "Women Artists Sweep Best of 2010 NYC Arts," huffingtonpost.com, December 82010: Sandler, Irving, "Deborah Kass," bombsite.com, September
2010: Wolin, Joseph R., "Deborah Kass, “MORE feel good paintings for feel bad times," Time Out New York, October 17
2010: Myers, Terry, “Deborah Kass with Terry Myers," The Brooklyn Rail, September
2010: Goldsworthy, Rubert, "Deborah Kass: Back to Broadway," artinamericamagazine.com, October 15
2010: Russeth, Andrew, "Singing on the Edge of Extinction: A Q&A With Painter Deborah Kass," artInfo.com, October 19
2007: McClermont, Doug, “Last Chance,” saatchi-gallery.co.uk, October 8
2007: Mueller, Stephen, “The Word May Be the Thing,” Gay City News, September 20
2007: Finch, Charlie, “ANOTHER OPENING, ANOTHER SHOW,” artnet.com, September 10
1996: Kimmelman, Michael, “Too Jewish? Jewish Artists Ponder,” The New York Times, March 8
1995: Cotter, Holland, “Deborah Kass, ‘My Andy: a retrospective’ at Jose Freire,” The New York Times, March 24
1993: Cotter, Holland, “Deborah Kass at fiction/nonfiction,” The New York Times, January 15
1992: Smith, Roberta, “Women Artists Engage the Enemy,” The New York Times, August 16
1991: Kimmelman, Michael, “Painting Culture at fiction/nonfiction,” The New York Times, November 1
External links
- deborahkass.com artist's website
- paulkasmingallery.com gallery's website