Burkhart, Kathe.

[FEMINIST POP ART] Extensive collection consisting of a numbered and signed multiple, numerous drafts, source materials, as well as exhibition announcements and invitation cards.

Various places, 1983–2016. Various formats including photographs, photocopies, various printed matter, a few signed. Item #54870

This group provides insight into the artist's working methods. Burkhart's large acrylic paintings draw on the Pop Art of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, for example, by transferring images from mass media such as cinema, the tabloid press, and advertising to the large-format canvas. In doing so, she often also adds a lemma to her pictures over a large area, so that an interpretative interplay is initiated between image and writing, similar to the Baroque genre of the emblem. Her pictures are, as it were, emblems of postmodernism, taking their literary and motivic allusions not primarily from mythology, ancient poetry, and philosophy or the Old and New Testaments, but from pop culture, primarily of the 1950s to 1970s. And even her “lemmas” are not enigmatic parables, but mostly obscene and vulgar words and statements. Her main subject is the image of women on the one hand and the subtext associated with it on the other. She uses the older images to negotiate current debates.

Burkhart was particularly influenced by the work of Judy Chicago, whose political and artistic commitment to her studies at the California Institute of the Arts remained effective until the early 1980s. There, Burkhart initially experimented with actionist and interventionist practices, which she later returned to only occasionally. Her turn to mass media images is marked by her artistic exploration of the figure of Liz Taylor. The resulting body of work encompasses various genres and techniques, such as acrylic painting with material applications, drawings, and screen prints, for which Burkhart used film stills, posters, and photographs from magazines and newspapers, as well as snapshots that had been released to the public. She used light projections and a light table to transfer the originals onto the canvas. The resulting images are reminiscent of comics and old film posters in their colorfulness. Another important group of works are the “Torture paintings” (1992–2001). These are depictions of historical instruments of torture, mostly in the style of popular-scientific simplified illustrations, which she endows with autobiographical references, for example by using dates and male first names as titles. (Cf. Görke, S. 2021. Burkhart, Kathe. In: AKL, available from: http s ://ww w.de gruyter. c om/database/AKL/entry/_30078487/ht ml, 2025.01.15.)

Kathe Burkhart's working methods can be clearly traced on the basis of this collection. There are several photocopies from journals in which Liz Taylor is depicted in different ways. One of the portraits was captioned by the photo editor: “a woman so beautiful the camera never has to lie about her.” Other tabloid journals showed the actress lying on the beach on a double-page spread, kissing and embracing Richard Burton. Burkhart ultimately cut these and other images out of their context in order to be able to work with them as singular images. The collection also contains photocopies of the drafts for the “Lemmata” (probably produced on the computer?), which she ultimately integrated into the paintings. The printouts already show the typographies later used in the paintings. However, it is not only her Liz Taylor series that can be traced here in terms of designs and image research; the collection also contains materials relating to her “Torture paintings”. Thus, for example, photocopies from a German-language non-fiction book showing various tongs alluding to the torture methods of the Inquisition. The popular science text describes different variants of stretch torture in detail. This is followed by a sheet with three glued-on film stills (Hitchcock: "The Lodger", "Psycho", "Frenzy") showing screaming women. Finally, there is a photocopy of a photomontage on which the faces of Bill and Hillary Clinton are mounted on a sadomasochistic scene.

The group contains:

(a) “Ask me about being a Dominant Woman”. Bumper sticker. Multiple. 9 × 27.5 cm. Printed in green, black and red on self-adhesive vinyl. One of 500 signed and numbered copies. Produced by Roger Vandaele Edition and Graphics in Antwerp in 1997. In addition: unsigned/unnumbered copy.

(b) Modified photographic print (Burton and Taylor), signed. 29.7 × 21 cm.

(c) Joseph Jasgur. Marilyn Monroe in a striped bikini in 1946 on a beach in California. Gelatin silver print. 20.3 × 25.2 cm.

(d) Photocopy ("Liz' 102 sex mistakes") with tracing paper pasted over with tracings in red. 29 × 21.5 cm.

(e) Cardboard with mounted color printed film still and five equally mounted color photocopies of the same image. 31.5 × 29.6 cm.

(f) A leaf with three mounted film stills (Hitchcock: “The Lodger”, “Psycho”, “Frenzy”) and Aqurell color blots. 21.5 × 27.8 cm.

(g) 23 leaves of photopies and newspaper clippings, a minority inscribed. Different formats, no larger than 29.7 × 22 cm.

(h) Five leaves with computer-printed and/or photocopied designs for pictorial inscriptions. Ca. 30 × 22 cm.

(i) 22 cards for solo exhibitions and 33 groupshow invitations between 1983–2016. A few signed. Different formats between 11.5 × 16.4 and 47 × 22 cm.

Price: €3,500.00

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