Pippa Garner
{{Short description|American artist (1942–2024)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2025}}
{{Infobox artist
| name = Pippa Garner
| image =
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| birth_name = Philip Garner
| birth_date = {{birth date|1942|5|22}}
| birth_place = Evanston, Illinois, U.S.
| death_date = {{death date and age|2024|12|30|1942|5|22}}
| death_place = Los Angeles, California, U.S.
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| nationality = American
| field = Drawing, performance, sculpture
| training =
| movement = Funk art, Nut art
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}}
Pippa Garner (May 22, 1942 – December 30, 2024) was an American artist, illustrator, industrial designer, and writer known for making parody forms of consumer products and custom bicycles and automobiles.{{Cite web |date=2022-10-05 |title=The Boldly Queer, Proudly Off-Kilter World of Pippa Garner |url=https://www.vogue.com/article/pippa-garner-kunstverein-munich-exhibition-essay |access-date=2023-02-21 |website=Vogue |language=en-US}} Garner authored The Better Living Catalog (1982)Garner, Philip. Philip Garner's Better Living Catalog. New York, NY: Delilah, 1982. Print. and Utopia—or Bust! Products for the Perfect World (1984) and worked as an illustrator for the Los Angeles magazine and Car & Driver for many years.Garner, Philip. Utopia-- or Bust!: Products for the Perfect World. New York: Delilah Communications, 1984. Print. Garner exhibited internationally at STARS gallery in Los Angeles, Jeffrey Stark gallery in New York, the Kunsthalle Zürich in Switzerland, and the Kunstverein Munich in Munich, amongst other institutions.{{Cite web |title=Pippa Garner - Exhibitions - Kunsthalle Zürich |url=https://www.kunsthallezurich.ch/en/ausstellungen/7874-pippa-garner |access-date=2023-02-21 |website=www.kunsthallezurich.ch |language=en}}{{Cite news |date=October 2022 |title=PORTFOLIO: PIPPA GARNER |language=en-US |volume=61 |work=Artforum |issue=2 |url=https://www.artforum.com/print/202208/portfolio-pippa-garner-89268 |access-date=2023-02-21 |issn=0004-3532}}
Work
Born on May 22, 1942,{{Cite web |last=Merrick |first=Abby |date=April 15, 2024 |title=HE 2 SHE: Artist Pippa Garner Hacks Her Gender |url=https://publicseminar.org/2024/04/pippa-garner-hacks-her-gender/ |access-date=January 3, 2025 |website=Public Seminar}}{{Cite web |last=Duncan |first=Fiona Alison |author-link=Fiona Alison Duncan |date=October 28, 2023 |title=ACT LIKE YOU KNOW ME by Pippa Garner |url=https://novembre.global/bureau/act-like-you-know-me-by-pippa-garner |access-date=January 3, 2025 |website=NOVEMBRE GLOBAL}} Garner began her career in the 1970s as a performance artist in Los Angeles.{{cite journal |last1=Duncan |first1=Fiona |title=Interview Pippa Garner |journal=Spike |date=Autumn 2018 |issue=57 |url=http://www.spikeartmagazine.com/articles/interview-pippa-garner-fiona-duncan |accessdate=11 March 2020}} She had been a U.S. Army Combat Artist in the Vietnam War, and was drafted while working at an assembly line at a car plant. Garner was assigned to the 25th Infantry, the only division with a Combat Art Team (CAT).{{Cite web |date=2018-09-25 |title=Interview Pippa Garner |url=https://spikeartmagazine.com/?q=articles/interview-pippa-garner-fiona-duncan |access-date=2023-02-21 |website=Spike Art Magazine |language=en}} CAT tasked soldier and civilian artists with documenting the Vietnam War in the forms of sketches, illustrations, and paintings to be collected by the U.S. Army for (in their words) "the annals of military history". This is where Garner learned to draw, and, after a trip to Japan during which she purchased a camera, take photographs.{{Cite web |title=Pippa Garner |url=https://whitecolumns.org/exhibitions/pippa-garner/ |access-date=2025-01-09 |website=White Columns |language=en}}
Garner went to the Automotive Design department at ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles after she was discharged, but was expelled after her first year. For a year-end project, she submitted, Un(tit)led (Man with Kar-Mann), circa 1969–72, it was a sculpture of a classic 1960s-style silver and white sedan accentuated by a male body from the waist down in the car's back. One human leg is lifted like a dog urinating. The work was last seen in the 1970s, and only photographs of the work exist.{{Cite web |title=AUTO EROTICS Brit Barton on Pippa Garner at the Kunstverein München |url=https://www.textezurkunst.de/en/articles/brit-barton-pippa-garner-auto-erotics/ |access-date=2023-02-21 |website=www.textezurkunst.de}}
File:PippaGarnerDrawingSatireofHitchhiking.jpg
In 1974, Garner modified a Chevrolet automobile to appear to be driving backwards while it moved forwards and vice-versa. Titled, Backwards Car, 1974, the artwork-like-invention was featured in Esquire in 1975. Garner's work has often been described as a "critique of car culture", reflecting on the US fascination with overbuilt, supersized machines.{{cite news |last1=Diehl |first1=Travis |date=11 February 2022 |title=Pippa Garner's gender-bending satire on America's consumer culture |publisher=Financial Times |url=https://www.ft.com/content/5c007614-eb8d-445b-b922-0da38c8628d8 |access-date=11 July 2022}} The work was noticed by San Francisco artists such as Ed Ruscha, Chris Burden, Nancy Reese, and the collective Ant Farm. Following the promotional feature of the artwork in Esquire, she began a long-term collaboration with some of these artists, especially Chip Lord of Ant Farm.{{cite news |last1=Bush |first1=Bill |title=Paradise Notwithstanding: This Artweek.LA (December 5-11, 2011) |url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/artweek-la_b_1129762 |work=HuffPost |date=5 December 2011 |language=en}}
Later, she appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson wearing her infamous Half-Suit, 1982. Additional appearances included the Merv Griffin Show and several other talk shows where she showcased her satirical consumer product "inventions." Similar inventions and artworks were shown in publications such as Car & Driver, Rolling Stone, Arts & Architecture and Vogue.Artist Bio/Resume at Lois Lambert Gallery, http://www.loislambertgallery.com/index.php#mi=1&pt=0&pi=41&s=0&p=0&a=0&at=0 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150929083521/http://www.loislambertgallery.com/index.php#mi=1&pt=0&pi=41&s=0&p=0&a=0&at=0 |date=2015-09-29 }}
In the 1980s, Pippa transitioned to a different gender as part of what she considered an "art project to create disorientation in my position in society, and sort of balk any possibility of ever falling into a stereotype again."Ludwig, Tiffany, and Renee Piechocki. "Misc. Pippa Garner." Trappings: Stories of Women, Power and Clothing. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2007. 71–78. Print. In an interview musician and visual artist Hayden Dunham in 2021, Pippa expressed these sentiments around gender and transition: "There was something that always seemed odd about being saddled with a gender, or being isolated by your gender. Because the advertising, consumerism, in the background in my life, was very much gender-oriented. There were things for women and things for men. It was all-out masculinity or all-out femininity, macho or made up. And if you didn’t feel that yourself, you felt uncomfortable."{{Cite web |last=Barna |first=Ben |date=2021-05-19 |title=Pippa Garner and Hayden Dunham on the Struggle of Being Inside Bodies |url=https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/pippa-garner-and-hayden-dunham-on-the-struggle-of-being-inside-bodies |access-date=2023-02-21 |website=Interview Magazine |language=en-US}}
Garner has been noted as a predecessor to the Kardashian beauty industrial complex as well as Paul Preciado’s Testo Junkie, from navigating the psych medical system to purchasing surgeries abroad on her transition, which jump started with "black market hormones" in the 1980s. Garner says in conversation with writer and artist Fiona Alison Duncan, who as working on the artist's narrative biography, "The concept of sex-change as a form of consumer technology began to intrigue me".{{Cite web |last=marc |date=2021-05-14 |title=In Words |url=https://various-artists.com/in-words/ |access-date=2023-02-21 |website=Various Artists |language=en-US}}
Garner participated in Trappings, an artwork by Two Girls Working: Tiffany Ludwig and Renee Piechocki. During her interview for the project, she described her transition as a kind of artistic expression.[http://www.twogirlsworking.com/interview/59_durhamarts/interview59_2.html Her Trappings interview is available here.]{{cite journal |last1=Miller |first1=Nicole |title=Everything Is Objectification: An Interview with Pippa Garner |journal=X-tra |date=Fall 2019 |volume=22 |issue=1 |url=https://www.x-traonline.org/article/everything-is-objectification-an-interview-with-pippa-garner |accessdate=11 March 2020}} Pippa appeared on the show Monster Garage as a guest artist.{{Cite web |url=http://www.tv.com/shows/monster-garage/jet-boat-car-293090/ |title=Monster Garage: Jet Boat / Car |access-date=2017-04-06 |archive-date=2017-04-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170407145839/http://www.tv.com/shows/monster-garage/jet-boat-car-293090/ |url-status=dead }}
In 1997, Garner showed in Hello Again!, a "recycled art-focused" show which opened at the Oakland Museum{{cite web |title=Enviro-Friendly Art |url=https://www.waste360.com/paperglassplasticaluminum/enviro-friendly-art |website=Waste360 |date=1 December 2004}} and travelled throughout North America. The show, curated by Susan Subtle, featured Garner alongside Mildred Howard, Leo Sewell, Clayton Bailey, Claire Graham, Jan Yager, Remi Rubel, Mark Bulwinkle, and others.
In 2017, Garner had a solo show at Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles where she presented sculptures, drawings, and videos.{{cite web |last1=Knight |first1=Christopher |title=Pippa Garner at Redling Fine Art: Vehicles for clever satire - Los Angeles Times |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-pippa-garner-redling-review-20170506-htmlstory.html |website=Los Angeles Times|date=6 May 2017 }}
A selected retrospective was on view at JOAN gallery in Los Angeles in November and December 2021.{{Cite web |title=Fiona Alison Duncan - Grantees - Arts Writers Grant |url=https://www.artswriters.org/grant/grantees/grantee/fiona_alison_duncan |access-date=2023-02-21 |website=www.artswriters.org}}
=Immaculate Misconceptions=
Garner was known for her Immaculate Misconceptions projects that she created throughout her artistic practice. The series consists of hundreds of inventions, most of them involving repurposing household consumer products into gadgets or absurd devices. For example the ironic "Hurl-A-Burger" machine is a type of catapult designed to "promote cultural exchange" by launching fast food over international border walls.{{cite web |last1=Reizman |first1=Renée |title=Pippa Garner's Household Inventions Reimagine the World |url=https://hyperallergic.com/692737/pippa-garners-household-inventions-reimagine-the-world/ |website=Hyperallergic |date=15 November 2021 |access-date=30 July 2022}}{{cite journal |last1=Martinez |first1=Christina Catherine |title=Pippa Garner |journal=Artforum |date=January 2022 |url=https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/202201/pippa-garner-87459 |access-date=30 July 2022}}
Death
Garner died on December 30, 2024, following a battle with leukemia. She was 82.{{cite web|url=https://hypebeast.com/2025/1/pippa-garner-revolutionary-artist-known-for-subversive-humor-dies-at-82|title=Pippa Garner, Revolutionary Artist Known for Subversive Humor, Dies at 82|work=Hypebeast|date=2 January 2025|access-date=2 January 2025}}{{cite news|url=https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/pippa-garner-dead-1234729124/|author=Alex Greenberger|date=January 2, 2025|title=Pippa Garner, Inventive Artist Who Satirized Consumerism, Dies at 82|work=ART News}}
Published works
- Philip Garner's Better Living Catalog: 62 Absolute Necessities for Contemporary Survival, 1982 by Putnam Publishing Group{{cite book |title=Philip Garner's Better living catalog |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/607059699 |via=WorldCat |oclc=607059699 |access-date=21 October 2022}}
- Utopia—or Bust! Products for the Perfect World, 1984 by Putnam Publishing Group.{{cite web |title=Utopia - or Bust! Products for the perfect world |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/11785333 |website=WorldCat |access-date=21 October 2022}}
- Garner's Gizmos & Gadgets, 1987 by Perigee Trade.{{cite web |title=Garner's Gizmos and Gadgets |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/14819554 |website=WorldCat |access-date=21 October 2022}}
Exhibitions
- Pippa Garner: Act Like You Know Me, co-curated by Fiona Alison Duncan, Maurin Dietrich, Daniel Baumann, and Otto Bonnen at Kunstverein Munich (2022) and Kunsthalle Zürich (2023)
Collections
Garner's work is in the collection of the Audrain Auto Museum of Rhode Island, a selection of her photographs are held in the Contemporary Art Library archives.{{cite web |title=Pippa Garner |url=https://www.contemporaryartlibrary.org/artist/pippa-garner-7238 |access-date=30 July 2022 |website=The Contemporary Art Library}}
See also
References
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Category:American transgender artists
Category:Transgender women writers
Category:American transgender writers
Category:American LGBTQ artists
Category:American contemporary artists
Category:American queer artists