Erika Rothenberg

Rothenberg was born in New York City in 1950. She studied art at the University of Chicago until she was thrown out for participating in a student demonstration. After returning to New York in the early 1970s, she found work at the advertising agency McCann-Erickson; seeking to become an art director, she took a design night course at the School of Visual Arts and soon became the agency's first female in that position. She worked for eight years at the agency, for clients including Coca-Cola, NBC, Lufthansa and The New York Times, while creating art in her off-time.

Rothenberg began her art career in the late 1970s. She adapted her work experience to artmaking, melding dark humor and sociopolitical commentary with advertising's wide reach, directness, and blend of language and visuals.Laguna Art Museum. [https://lagunaartmuseum.org/artist/erika-rothenberg/ Erika Rothenberg], Collection. Retrieved March 10, 2022. In her first decade, she exhibited in solo shows at P.P.O.W. Gallery (New York),Linker, Kate. [https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/198709/erika-rothenberg-61793 "Erika Rothenberg,"] Artforum, November 1987. Retrieved March 14, 2022. W.P.A. (Washington)Swisher, Kara. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/04/20/feminist-strokes-at-wpa/ebda8fa5-9dbd-4683-a48a-c9d2e719f2cb/ "Feminist Strokes at WPA,"] The Washington Post, April 20, 1987. Retrieved March 14, 2022. and Rosamund Felsen Gallery (Los Angeles),Wilson, William. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-03-25-ca-236-story.html Review], Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1988. Retrieved March 14, 2022. and group shows at Franklin Furnace, Artists Space, White Columns and The Alternative Museum, among others.Brenson, Michael. [https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/06/arts/art-35-stone-wonders-of-india-southeast-asia.html?searchResultPosition=19 Review], The New York Times, January 6, 1984. Retrieved March 14, 2022.Brenson, Michael. [https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/22/arts/art-a-view-of-news-manipulation.html?searchResultPosition=10 "A View of News Manipulation,"] The New York Times, March 22, 1985. Retrieved March 14, 2022. New Museum director Marcia Tucker selected Rothenberg's work for "Not Just For Laughs: The Art of Subversion" (1980), the influential and divisive exhibition, "Bad Girls" (1994), and a 1989 solo exhibition.New Museum. [https://archive.newmuseum.org/people/2147 Erika Rothenberg], People. Retrieved March 10, 2022.Glueck, Grace. "A Broader View of Feminism," The New York Observer, February 7, 1994.Knight, Christopher. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-02-08-ca-20290-story.html "Bad Girls: Feminism on Wry,"] Los Angeles Times, February 8, 1994. Retrieved March 10, 2022. From the beginning, Rothenberg pursued socially committed art, participating in public projects organized by Group Material, among others. In a 2003 lawsuit, she inadvertently outed herself as "Kathe Kollwitz", one of the leaders of the Guerrilla Girls, an artists collective that organized anonymously in 1985 (adopting the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms) to publicize and combat sexism, racism and corruption in the art world.[http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/guerrilla-girls-6858 Guerrilla Girls in Tate Modern Collection]Ryzik, Melena. [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/arts/design/the-guerrilla-girls-after-3-decades-still-rattling-art-world-cages.html "The Guerrilla Girls, After 3 Decades, Still Rattling Art World Cages,"] New York Times, August 5, 2015. Retrieved June 26, 2018.Toobin, Jeffrey. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/05/30/girls-behaving-badly "Girls Behaving Badly,"] The New Yorker, May 23, 2005. Retrieved March 11, 2022.

Rothenberg's style has been described as "user-friendly," employing concise, deadpan prose and emblematic, often hand-painted imagery in unconventional contexts—fake ads, billboards, window displays, newspaper inserts—in order to examine American ideology, mass culture, and taboo subjects.Myers, Holly. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-mar-13-et-multiple13-story.html "Dynamically capturing the feminist spirit,"] Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2007. Retrieved March 11, 2022. Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight wrote that her work combines accessibility and "a resonant conceptual side" informed by the often-ignored political dimension of Pop art, "engaging a diverse and wide-ranging audience in a consideration of their shared situation as citizens." Leah Ollman placed Rothenberg among a long line of contemporary social satirists—from Barbara Kruger to Stephen Colbert—"spearing the status quo" with work that "induces cringes, queasy laughter and sighs of every stripe—pain, shame, outrage."

File:Erika Rothenberg Freedom of Expression National Monument 1984.jpg

Rothenberg first gained wide attention for her "Morally Superior Products" series (1980–90)—installations and storyboard paintings that promoted fictional companies and products, and comprised much of her first solo gallery exhibitions at P.P.O.W. in 1986 and 1987.Brenson, Michael. [https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/28/arts/art-knowlton-s-works-on-show-at-the-modern.html?searchResultPosition=6 "Erika Rothenberg,"] The New York Times, March 28, 1986. Retrieved March 14, 2022. Based on advertising strategies, the series employed bright colors, friendly faces and a relentless tone of upbeat cheeriness in order to examine intersections between American exceptionalism and consumerism through the creation of products with a moral conscience.Brenson, Michael. [https://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/02/arts/art-william-tucker-and-his-greek-titans.html?searchResultPosition=7 "Erika Rothenberg,"] The New York Times, October 2, 1987. Retrieved March 14, 2022. Her products included "Sauce Against Racism" and "The Secret Penis"—hosiery that she supplemented with a sewn-in bulge designed to help women "feel equal" in the workplace; its tagline read: "A Woman Needs to Start At the Bottom In Order to Get to the Top!" Artforum critic Kate Linker described the work as "raunchy, rollicking, and deliberately unsubtle" in its political points. New York Times critic Michael Brenson wrote, "Rothenberg plunges us into the gap between appearance and reality ... there is a bleakness that suggests the view of America in the best works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Joan Didion."

Rothenberg's 1989 New Museum window display, Have You Attacked America Today?, was described by director Marcia Tucker as "the most notorious exhibition" the museum hosted.McGee, Cecilia. [https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/17/archives/artsartifacts-high-priestess-of-trendiness.html?searchResultPosition=24 "High Priestess of Trendiness,"] The New York Times, January 17, 1993. Retrieved March 14, 2022.Saltz, Jerry and Rachel Corbett. [https://www.vulture.com/2016/04/identity-politics-that-forever-changed-art.html "How Identity Politics Conquered the Art World. An oral history,"] Vulture, April 2016. Retrieved March 14, 2022. The drugstore-like display offered tongue-in-cheek "Freedom of Expression Drugs" designed to facilitate citizen dissent (an anti-apathy ointment, "Offend" mouthwash, "Pro-Test" pills), a rewritten "Star-Spangled Banner," and flag-burning kits depicting fresh-faced, smiling adolescents subtly igniting American flags.Orr, Rachel. [https://www.thelily.com/10-women-artists-from-the-80s-who-helped-define-contemporary-art/ "10 women artists from the ’80s who helped define contemporary art,"] The Lily (Washington Post, June 1, 2018. Retrieved March 10, 2022. Both popular and controversial, it was vandalized twice by visitors who broke the window and looted most of the goods, which Rothenberg replaced. The display was shown in Los Angeles in 1990 (along with a billboard work), and the products included in the Hirshhorn Museum show, "Brand New" (2018).

During this period, Rothenberg also created her first major public art work, Freedom of Expression National Monument (1984), in collaboration with architect Laurie Hawkinson and performance artist John Malpede for the Creative Time-commissioned exhibition "Art on the Beach."Glueck, Grace. [https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/13/arts/art-sculpture-on-the-sands-of-battery-park-city.html?searchResultPosition=20 "Sculpture on the Sands of Battery Park City,"] The New York Times, July 13, 1984. Retrieved March 10, 2022.Creative Time. [https://creativetime.org/programs/archive/1984/Art_Beach6/Art_Beach6.htm "Art on the Beach 6,"] Programs. Retrieved March 14, 2022.Melvin, Tessa. [https://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/07/nyregion/arts-group-to-fight-rejection-of-sculpture.html?searchResultPosition=16 "Arts Group to Fight Rejection of Sculpture,"] The New York Times, December 7, 1986. Retrieved March 14, 2022. Inspired by early Soviet Agitprop, the monument consisted of a large red megaphone mounted atop a flight of stairs and pointed toward the Lower Manhattan skyline, inviting visitors to air their opinions and grievances.Muschamp, Herbert. [https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/31/arts/the-new-ground-zero-with-a-dubious-idea-of-freedom.html?searchResultPosition=17 "The New Ground Zero … With a Dubious Idea of 'Freedom,'"] The New York Times, August 31, 2003. Retrieved March 14, 2022. In 2003, New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp proposed the project's reconstruction at Ground Zero. The following year, Creative Time re-presented it, this time facing the courthouses of Foley Square during American election season;Vogel, Carol. [https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/arts/inside-art.html?searchResultPosition=5 "Inside Art: A Vocal Expression,"] The New York Times, July 30, 2004. Retrieved March 14, 2022. it was also part of the Museum of the City of New York exhibition, "Art in the Open," in 2017.Rebecca Travis [https://www.apollo-magazine.com/the-story-of-public-art-in-new-york-city/ "The story of public art in New York City,"] Apollo, November 20, 2018. Retrieved March 14, 2022.

File:Erika_Rothenberg_America_A_Shining_Beacon_to_the_World_2018.jpg

In the 1990s, Rothenberg began producing satirical, hand-painted works that mimicked the form and generic sentimentality of greeting cards while examining a range of social and political ills and injustices.Phillips, Patricia.[https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/199208/erika-rothenberg-57289 "Erika Rothenberg,"] Artforum, August 1992. Retrieved March 14, 2022.Curtis, Cathy. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-04-21-ol-48719-story.html "Erika Rothenberg Sends Subversive, Sarcastic Messages in Her 'Cards,'"] Los Angeles Times, April 21, 1994. Retrieved March 10, 2022. She presented ninety of them in the greeting store-styled installation, House of Cards (1992, MoMA), each one employing the one-two punch strategy of typical cards—an innocuous cover with a gotcha line on the inside—displayed side-by-side. The installation was organized with section wall plaques reading "Abortion," "Politics," "Racism," "Religion," and "Sexual Abuse," among others. Artforum's Patricia Phillips described the show as an assault "against the commercialization of feeling and our own complacency" that sought to "represent the space between silence and sensationalism."

Rothenberg restaged the exhibition in expanded versions in 2015–18 at Zolla Lieberman (Chicago), Charlie James (Los Angeles) and Susan Inglett (New York). The Los Angeles show included the new work, One World So Many Ways It Could End (2015), a pedestal-based sculpture whose wheel viewers could spin to see sixteen end-of-the-world scenarios ranging from global warming and nuclear war to zombie apocalypse or alien invasion.Zellen, Jody. [https://artillerymag.com/erika-rothenberg/ "Erika Rothenberg,"] Artillery, January 10, 2017. Retrieved March 14, 2022. Reviews characterized the ongoing relevance of the greeting cards as "dismayingly timeless" observations that testified to their original astuteness.

In 1991, Rothenberg also began creating mock church signboards. They often suggested droll indices of despair in the form of weeklong church activity listings (e.g., AA, teen suicide watch, and "parenting your clone" groups); the first, America’s Joyous Future, was exhibited at Documenta IX in 1992.Lovelace, Carey. "Girls, Girls, Girls," Art in America, June 2007, p. 89. Nancy Princenthal described the signboards as indictments of both organized religion and the growing role of disorders in American self-definition and social involvement. Rothenberg's work of this time gradually took on a more oblique position and included more sculptural elements.Yood, James. [https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/199201/erika-rothenberg-59413 "Erika Rothenberg,"] Artforum, January 1992. Retrieved March 10, 2022.Nesbitt, Lois. [https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/199401/erika-rothenberg-and-tracy-tynan-54430 "Erika Rothenberg,"] Artforum, January 1994. Retrieved March 14, 2022. Feeding Station (1992), for example, was a dense group of upturned, painted plywood profiles straining toward microphones dangling above them—a comment on country's growing need for public attention and psychic amplification.

Rothenberg’s later work has explored subjects such as death, fame and gender relations, often taking on a more open-ended, narrative dimension inspired by news articles. Her collaboration with Tracy Tynan, "Suicide Notes" (1993–5, Rosamund Felsen, P.P.O.W., Centre for Contemporary Arts), presented seventeen messages left by real-life suicides, which they acquired from an LAPD source.Jinks, Peter. "Goodbye Cruel World. Hello Glasgow Art-Lovers," The Scotsman, January 28, 1995. The artists rewrote the notes (also changing names) and attached them to body bags hung against the wall, accompanied by a booklet with assembled quotes and facts about suicide.Kaufman, Michael T. [https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/13/nyregion/about-new-york-value-free-examination-of-the-long-goodbye.html?searchResultPosition=4 "Value-Free Examination Of the Long Goodbye,"] The New York Times, October 13, 1993. Retrieved March 14, 2022.Kapitanoff, Nancy. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-02-28-ca-381-story.html "Pain and Grief Emerge in Exhibit of Suicide Notes,"] Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1993. Retrieved March 14, 2022. Reviews of the work were divided, with The New York Times calling it a "profoundly moving exhibit about a subject that most often provokes denial or a turning away," while others questioned whether it exploited or trivialized the subject.Kandel, Susan. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-02-25-ca-601-story.html "Theatrics Skew Intent of 'Suicide Notes,'"] Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1993. Retrieved March 10, 2022. Monument to a Bear (2002-3) was a concrete tombstone memorializing a bear cub burned in a fire, then rescued by firefighters and nursed back to health at a wildlife shelter before being released into the wild—only to be legally shot by a hunter. The sculpture re-created the cub's head and bandaged paws alongside a bronze plaque presenting the Associated Press story it derived from.

Several projects offered what Art Issues called a "more gentle understanding" of gender issues.Forgács, Éva. "Erika Rothenberg," Art Issues, January/February 1997, p. 38. Rothenberg's 1997 show at Rosamund Felsen included the Smoke Gets in Your Eyes series, which presented people's relationship stories—good, bad and ugly. "The Stravinskys" series (2005) explored fame and death through photographs of the gravesites of 20th-century composer Igor Stravinsky and his wife Vera—identical except that his is strewn with gifts while hers is marked only by a bunch of dead flowers at its foot.

Rothenberg has completed public art commissions for Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Hartford and Philadelphia.CRA/LA (Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles). [http://www.crala.org/internet-site/Other/Art_Program/artist_list/erika_rothenberg.cfm Erika Rothenberg], Art Projects. Retrieved March 10, 2022.Andy Avalos, Andy. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-08-11-ca-92-story.html They Get Message Across in a Big Way,"] Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1990. Retrieved March 14, 2022.Womack, Catherine. [https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-09-06/hollywood-highland-artwork-destroyed "Demolition begins on an acclaimed piece of L.A. public art,"] Los Angeles Times, September 6, 2021. Retrieved March 14, 2022. Notable projects in addition to Freedom of Expression National Monument (1984) include several billboard works (two for Art Against AIDS, 1989) and two City of Los Angeles-commissioned works: Wall of Un(Fame)(1995) and The Road to Hollywood (2001).Peterson, Thair. "Wanted: Names, Prints for Station," Long Beach Press-Telegram, August 17, 1993. The Wall of Un(Fame) was a play on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, immortalizing the names, handprints and footprints of over 650 residents of nearby communities. The Road to Hollywood consisted of fifty succinct, black and white marble mosaic-texts—funny, poignant and straightforward stories of how people got started in Hollywood—embedded in a winding "red carpet" at a shopping center adjacent to the Kodak Theatre, home to the Academy Awards. The path led up to an oversized, period-styled, fiberglass daybed on an open patio overlooking the mythic Hollywood Sign.Knight, Christopher. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-nov-30-et-galleries30-story.html "The 'Road' Daringly Traveled,"] Los Angeles Times, November 30, 2001. Retrieved March 10, 2022.Ryzik, Melena and Jim Rutenberg, Rachel Abrams. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/business/media/harvey-weinsteins-fall-opens-the-floodgates-in-hollywood.html?searchResultPosition=14 "Harvey Weinstein’s Fall Opens the Floodgates in Hollywood,"] The New York Times, October 16, 2017. Retrieved March 14, 2022. Christopher Knight ranked it "among the best public art projects in L.A.," one that gave "surprising new life" to pop clichés. In 2020, despite preservation efforts and press outcry, new owners demolished the work as part of a property makeover.

Rothenberg's work belongs to numerous museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago,I.C. Editions. [https://www.iceditions.com/artists/erika-rothenberg Erika Rothenberg], Artists. Retrieved March 14, 2022. FAE Musée d'Art Contemporain (Lausanne), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami,Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami. [https://mocanomi.org/2013/06/erika-rothenberg/ Erika Rothenberg], Permanent Collection. Retrieved March 10, 2022. Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, Orange County Museum of Art,Orange County Museum of Art. [https://ocma.art/2016-004-012-a-e_rothenberg-1/ Erika Rothenberg], Collection. Retrieved March 10, 2022. Rose Art Museum,Rose Art Museum. [https://rosecollection.brandeis.edu/artist-maker/info/3500 Erika Rothenberg], Artists. Retrieved March 10, 2022. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (Ghent), Tang Museum,Tang Museum. [https://tang.skidmore.edu/collection/artist/1762-erika-rothenberg?per=224&sort_by=artist-desc Erika Rothenberg], Collection. Retrieved March 10, 2022. and Walker Art Center,Walker Art Center. [https://walkerart.org/collections/artworks/americas-joyous-future America's Joyous Future, Erika Rothenberg], Collection. Retrieved March 10, 2022. among others. She has been awarded grants from Art Matters (1990), the Norton Family Foundation (1990), and the Getty Center (1993).

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• [http://www.erikarothenberg.com Erika Rothenberg website]
• [https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/373 Erika Rothenberg project], MoMA
• [http://lagunaartmuseum.org/erika-rothenberg/ Erika Rothenberg], Laguna Art Museum
• [https://www.cjamesgallery.com/artists/erika-rothenberg Erika Rothenberg] artist page, Charlie James

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Category:20th-century American women artists

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Category:American conceptual artists

Category:American feminist artists

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Category:The High School of Music & Art alumni

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Category:1955 births

Category:20th-century American artists

Category:21st-century American artists