Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives

Vulgar Lives includes 38 paintings and a series of preparatory drawings created between 1960 and 2014 by legendary Pop artist Rosalyn Drexler (born 1926). A novelist, Obie-winning playwright, sculptor, wrestler, and film and television writer, Drexler is a one-of-a-kind polymath whose 1960s paintings have enjoyed a recent resurgence. Using vibrant, often primary colors, the artist creates collage-paintings incorporating societal or media imagery with her own fantastical twist; figures from Western cultural history such as Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol and the Beatles are a few of her iconic subjects. This publication is unique in its move beyond Drexler’s 1960s work, compiling a selection of the forceful―and sometimes jarring―imagery she has continued to create since that time, taking more liberties in form and content. Arranged chronologically, the works offer an insightful distillation of contemporary life in all its humorous and frightening contradictions.