Marjorie Strider: Pop Artist

By OCAL at clker.com

Marjorie Stride was heavy into the 1960's avant-garde art scene. She was involved in happenings. Stride arranged the original Street Work with the help of Hannah Weiner and John Perreault; in this casual art event for the public, she hung picture frames in the outdoors to "frame" what was there. For the fourth Street Work event, she hung a huge frame in front of the Architectural League in New York, right before the steps to the entrance.

Strider transformed iconic images of women that objectified the female form into threatening figures. Yet, these forms had a seductive effect too, and the lips might be voraciously eating a strawberry or radish. She took on the sexually exploitative images and added humor and made a point about the exploitation. In the sixties, she created paintings with sculptural effects.

In the seventies, she turned to soft sculptures. For instance, one that exploded shooting polyurethane foam tinted orange and red that flowed out a window or knocked a ladder over. The installations were individualized to the building they were in, for instance, the polyurethane streaming down a spiral staircase Blue Sky (1976) or out of a window as in Building Work (1976). In the nineteen-nineties, with ceramic, acrylic, and modeling paste Strider painted symbols like skulls, Madonna, Buddhist icons,and roses delivered in a ground of hash marks and dots.

Strider studied at the Kansas City Art Institute. When she hit New York City in the nineteen-sixties, the art world wasn't receptive to her work; then, Arne Glimcher showed her work in nineteen-sixty-four at The Pace Gallery. The show called " The First International Girlie Show" had its inspiration from Triptych a painting done by Strider. She succeeded in getting a solo show at the Pace in the coming year.

During 2010 and 2011, Strider's work was shown in a touring show entitled Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists 1958-1968. The show was received well.