The Playmate As Fine Art

Seven famous contemporary

artists interpret Playboy's

provocative Centerfold

It was a different world back in 1967, when Hugh Hefner and playboy Art Director Arthur Paul sought out 11 of the world's best-known artists and sculptors to transform the Playmate into fine art. The Centerfold had not yet assumed its place in the American consciousness, and artists were not as likely then as they are today to use elements of popular culture for inspiration. That has changed, of course. Today the Playmate is a part of American iconography: We see references to her image in many parts of our culture. It seemed appropriate, then, to revisit the Playmate with a new generation of art­ists and to see how they might respond to this American archetype. With that in mind, we asked seven artists to interpret the Centerfold on their own terms. No conditions were set, nor specific Playmates mandated. On these eight pages, we see the creative responses of our artists.

6WM@otton

> Will Cotton was born in Melrose, Massachusetts and raised in New Paltz, New York. His education includes studies at the Mus6e des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, France, the New York Academy of Art and Cooper Union in New York, where he earned a fine art degree. Mary Boone Gallery in New York has repre-

sented him since 1999. His paintings have been shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Kunsthalle Bielefeld in Germany, the Hudson River Museum in New York, the Triennale di Milano, the Mus6e Marmottan Monet in Paris and the Museo National de Bellas Artes

in Havana. Cotton's work is in the col­lections of the Seattle Art Museum and the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio. "The model for this painting is Miss Ruby Valentine, a burlesque dancer from New York," says the artist. "She's reclining on a cotton candy cloud, wearing a crown of sweets."

Richard Prince

> "It's different to gen­erate my own photo­graphs. I don't do it of­ten, but when I do, I try to think that what I'm taking already exists," says Prince. American artist, painter, photog­rapher and bibliophile Prince has been creating pop-culture-inspired art for more than 30 years. Born in 1949 in the Panama Canal Zone, he lives and works in New York. Joke: "My wife likes to talk when she has sex. The other night she called."

? Artist and writer Jill Magid explores themes of intimacy and secrecy within systems of power. Magid's work developed from her experiences inside these systems, including the U.S. military, the British police and the Dutch secret service—an organization that has confiscated her work from the Tate Modern in London. Chrissie lies, senior curator at the Whitney Museum in New York, says,

"The work of Jill Magid is incisive in its poetic questioning of the ethics of human behavior and the hidden political structures of society. Her intelligent conceptual strategies engage the viewer in an absorbing aesthetic and intel­lectual experience that turns conventional assumptions of power, secrecy, control and social space inside out." Her neon work With Full Consent was made especially for playboy.

* Artist Wes Lang grew up in Chatham, New Jersey and moved to New York in the early 1990s. He resides in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and works out of a studio in nearby Bushwick, Brooklyn. Lang's work centers on the use of American tropes, including the grim reaper, roses, winged skulls, birds, Native American headdresses, beer mugs, pinups and the logos and lyrics of the Grateful Dead. Abstract ele­ments are also at play. The artist's subject is the peculiar relationship between beauty and dark­ness. His gift is the ability to communicate his

perspective experientially, without sacrificing nuance. It is normal to both shudder and laugh. Lang is transparent about his influences: Mar­tin Kippenberger, Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cy Twombly and Mike Kelley. Recent exhibitions of his work include solo shows at Half Gallery in New York and Marlborough Gallery in Madrid. He also recently completed a commission for the Grateful Dead. His work can be found in museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery in Copenhagen.

? McGinness is an American artist living and working in New York. He grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia and studied at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh as an Andrew Carn­egie Scholar. During college he interned at the Andy Warhol Museum as a curatorial assistant. Known for its extensive vocab­ulary of images that use the visual language of public signage, corporate logos and contemporary iconography, McGinness's work is in the permanent public collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Contempo­rary Art in San Diego, the Cincinnati Art Museum, MUSAC in Spain and the Taguchi Art Collection in Japan.

Qindy ^Herman

? Born in 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Sherman is counted among the most influential artists of the last half-century. Upon graduating from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1976, Sherman relocated to New York City, where she began making the seminal Untitled Film Stills. She has gone on to photograph and cast herself in various roles through her masterful use of costume, setting and pose. A retrospective of Sherman's work is currently on view at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue, the exhibition, which began its tour at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, will also travel to the Dallas Museum of Art. A selective exhibition organized by the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo will open in 2013 before traveling to other European venues.

^fracey

? Born in 1963, Tracey Emin lives and works in London. She is part of the group known as the Young British Artists, and her work often refers to episodes from her childhood and teen­age years. In 2007 Emin represented Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale and was made a member of the Royal Academy. In 2011 she became the Royal Academy's professor of drawing. Exhibi­tions of her work will be held this winter at MALBA in Buenos Aires and White Cube in Sao Paulo.