Last December I came across a picture I had saved of Stephanie’s Family by Marisol Escobar. Marisol was the only woman in the new Pop Art movement that burst on the scene in New York in the early 60's. I had always assumed that her stature had continued to climb with that of her male Pop compatriots. Somehow I had missed that she had been stripped of membership in Pop Art by the art critic Lawrence Alloway who declared in his 1974 book on Pop Art that she was "a sophisticated, naive sculptor, whose figures possess a folkloric decoration and fantasy that is quite unlike Pop." That pronouncement didn’t seem to slow down Marisol. She is still making sculpture, her work is in the collections of major museums and a 2007 retrospective of her work was at the Neuhoff Edelman Gallery in New York.
In 1975, I had the unlikely opportunity to visit the private home of a major collector of American Pop Art. There was a grouping of multiple Warhol portraits of the collector's wife gracing the dining area. The gallery room featured Jasper John’s paintings and number prints, one through nine. An Oldenburg vinyl drum set, a Stella, a Lichtenstein and other pop art masterpieces were on display throughout the house. I was mesmerized by the Jasper Johns prints. It was the only time I have ever seen that much work of Johns close up. Their layers, complexity, and variation were beyond the capabilities of a camera to capture. It is true, Marisol’s work was no where to be found and probably would have been out of place in that sleek contemporary home and life style where the human element had been reduced to a design element. It was a wonderful afternoon, but I left looking for my heroes elsewhere.
Like the other Pop artists, Marisol looked to popular American culture for subject matter. But she focused on the people and the social conventions of the time, not the products they consumed. She created at times poignant and other times searingly satirical portraits of the unknown and the famous. Warhol treated a Campbell soup can and Marilyn Monroe the same, but Marisol’s subjects never lost their humanity. The famous often looked foolish (John Wayne on a hobby horse or The Generals) or over-whelmed (Desmond Tutu reduced to a small head atop a massive red rectangle and a staff). But the unknown always seemed to maintain their dignity and pride.
In a 2004 interview with Whitney Eskew, Marisol was asked if there was a dominant mood or theme in current artwork. She stated that there wasn’t and went on to say - "Art used to be a group effort. Artists worked in movements like Abstract Expressionism. Now everyone is on his or her own, working in a more individualistic style. Working together our efforts were more fruitful." When asked by Whitney where her work belonged, Marisol said, " My work is Pop, but not in the strictest sense because it doesn’t use found objects exclusively. My work has a surrealistic quality as well."
I find myself wondering. How would it feel to be part of a movement, to know where you belong even when the experts declared otherwise? What would I have thought of her work had I seen it that long ago afternoon I spent immersed in Pop Art, when I was still in search of a place to belong? Would I have followed her work more closely? Who else did I dismiss too early, who persisted, who now have a lifetime of art to discover and glean?
