Dorothy Iannone Air de Paris www.airdeparis.com [email protected] Dorothy Iannone, Berlin, 2009. © Jason Schmidt Air de Paris www.airdeparis.com [email protected] Dorothy Iannone was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1933. She attended Boston University and Brandeis University where she majored in Literature. In 1961 she successfully sued the U.S. Government on behalf of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer", which until then was censured in the U.S., to allow its importation into the country. She begins painting in 1959 and travels extensively with her husband to Europe and the Far East. From 1963 until 1967, she runs a co-operative gallery on Tenth Street. New York together with her husband. In 1966 they live for some months in the South of France where she begins a close friendship with Robert Filliou and other artists from Fluxus. She meets and falls in love with German- Swiss artist Dieter Roth during a journey to Reykjavik and will share his life in different European cities until 1974. Two years later Iannone moves to Berlin after receiving a grant from the DAAD Berlin Artists' Program. She still lives and works in Berlin, where she pursues her artistic production. Since the beginning of her career in the 1960's, Dorothy Iannone has been making vibrant paintings, drawings, prints, films, objects and books, all with a markedly narrative and overtly autobiographical visual feel. Her oeuvre is likean exhilarating ode to an unbridled sexuality and celebration of ecstatic unity, unconditional love, and a singular attachment to Eros as a philosophical concept. She has had to frequently face censorship problems, in particular in the "Friends' Exhibition" organized by Harald Szeemann at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1969. Iannone later recreated the event in her well-known book,"The Story Of Bern". Her works narrate the artist's life in intimate detail, transforming somewhat the feminist discourse of the 1960's, by emphasizing personal freedom and spiritual transcendence through complete devotion to, and union with, a lover. The New Museum presented "Lioness", her first solo show in the United States in 2009. Her mixed media work "I Was Thinking Of You" was included in the Whitney Biennial in 2006. She has recently had major retrospectives, notably at Camden Arts Centre in London (2013), the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin (2014) and Migros Museum in Zurich (2014) . Her masterpiece and impressive installation "Follow Me" has joined the prestigious collection of Centre Pompidou, Paris. She also recently received the BZ Kultur Preis in 2016. Exhibition views Air de Paris www.airdeparis.com [email protected] Dorothy Iannone Exhibition views « The Story Of Bern (Or) Showing Colors + The (Ta)Rot Pack + A Cookbook», Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris, 03.06 - 10.07.2016 Air de Paris www.airdeparis.com [email protected] Air de Paris www.airdeparis.com [email protected] Dorothy Iannone, Exhibition views « Welcome To Our Show», Air de Paris, Paris. March 28 - May 16, 2015 Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Exhibition views, Dorothy Iannone, Censorship And The Irrepressible Drive Toward Love And Divinity, 2014, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich. Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Exhibition views «This Sweetness Outside Of Time», Berlinische Galerie 21.02 - 02.06.2014, © Photo: Kai-Annett Becker, Berlinische Galerie. Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Dorothy Iannone Exhibition views « Innocent and Aware», Camden Arts Center, London 2013 Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Dorothy IANNONE Exhibition views "Arthur Rainbow", Galerie Air de Paris, Paris 2012 Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Dorothy IANNONE Exhibition views «Dorothy Iannone: Lioness», New Museum, New-York 2009 Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Dorothy IANNONE Exhibition views «Follow Me», Gallery September, Berlin 2008 Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com DOROTHY IANNONE Vue de l’exposition She is a freedom fighter, Galerie Air de Paris, Paris 2007 Catalogue Withney Biennal Dayfornight, 2006 1/2 Catalogue Withney Biennal Dayfornight, 2006 2/2 Cat. Ice Cream, Ed Phaidon, 2007 1/4 Cat. Ice Cream, Ed Phaidon, 2007 2/4 Cat. Ice Cream, Ed Phaidon, 2007 3/4 Cat. Ice Cream, Ed Phaidon, 2007 4/4 Charley 05, edited by M. Cattelan, M. Gioni and A. Subotnick, Minneapolis, 2008 1/6 Charley 05, edited by M. Cattelan, M. Gioni and A. Subotnick, Minneapolis, 2008 2/6 Charley 05, edited by M. Cattelan, M. Gioni and A. Subotnick, Minneapolis, 2008 3/6 Charley 05, edited by M. Cattelan, M. Gioni and A. Subotnick, Minneapolis, 2008 4/6 Charley 05, edited by M. Cattelan, M. Gioni and A. Subotnick, Minneapolis, 2008 5/6 Charley 05, edited by M. Cattelan, M. Gioni and A. Subotnick, Minneapolis, 2008 6/6 Johanna Burton, Dorothy Iannone, Artforum, October 2009, p.232-233 Johanna Burton, Dorothy Iannone, Artforum, October 2009, p.232-233 Amy Sillman, Best of 2009, Artforum, December 2009, p.195 Amy Sillman, Best of 2009, Artforum, December 2009, p.195 Amy Sillman, Best of 2009, Artforum, December 2009, p.195 Dorothy Iannone, The Second Sex, V Magazine, n°62, Winter 09-10, p.51 Karl Holmqvist, This Sweetness Outside of Time, May n°13, 2014, p.133-138 Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com Air de Paris - 32, rue Louise Weiss, Fr-75013 Paris, France - T.+33 (0)1 44 23 02 77 - [email protected] - www.airdeparis.com feature An Ecstatic Unity The daily celebration of life and love in the work of Dorothy Iannone by karen archey “Grande dame,” “sex,” “Dieter Roth,” “femininity,” Most narratives about Iannone’s work are organized Next page: “proximity,” “censored,” “folkloric”: these are but a biographically, which may seem facile at first — who Love The Stranger (1981) handful of platitudinous words that often describe cares about Richard Artschwager’s vacations or Albert Photography by Friedrich Rosenstiel American artist Dorothy Iannone’s decades-long prac- Oehlen’s sexual partners? Still, Iannone’s paintings, artist tice. Iannone, who was born in Boston, Massachusetts, books and sculptural video works often take her admit- in 1933, started painting in the late 1950s. She has de- tedly very interesting biography as content. Iannone’s veloped a practice so idiosyncratic that most people oeuvre begins with her paintings and collages from 1959 have a difficult time describing it. And, though it’s through the mid-1960s, when her paintings took on a hard to imagine sexual content being problematic distinct Abstract Expressionist feel then popular among today, the reception of Iannone’s most iconic works the East Tenth Street scene in New York. Although it’s over the past sixty years — depicting figures in rap- self-evident that an artist’s early work can greatly vary ture donning swollen genitalia — has ranged from from that created in one’s mature years — take the dis- scandalized and censored to just plain ignored. It has similarity between John McCracken’s early mandala only been in the last decade or so, perhaps since her paintings and his sleek, minimal columns for which inclusion in a 2005 exhibition at the Tate Modern via he is best known — Iannone’s early work may surprise the Wrong Gallery, which led to her inclusion in the those familiar with her most iconic paintings. The art- 2006 Whitney and Berlin Biennials, that Iannone has ist’s 1959 oil crayon on paper compositions Certainty, gained renown as an artist. Yet, retreading Iannone’s Impeccable, Impose, and Majestic melt Crayola-colored neglected successes throughout the years seems equally abstract forms into themselves, and appear as exercises worthwhile and reductive: Why do so many critically for finished works.