Inspired by her husband’s porn stash, the artist’s explicit work horrified galleries and customs officials. Now the world can’t get enough. We visit her New York studio
- Warning: adult content
Betty Tompkins sits slumped in her chair, knees wide apart, cheerfully reading from the phone in her hand with an attitude of scoffing amusement: “‘The venerable’, ‘the brilliant’, ‘the incomparable’, ‘the great living legend’ … ” She breaks off to frown and mutter: “How old am I?” Then she continues: “‘The famous and infamous’, ‘inimitable’, ‘iconic’, ‘pioneering’, ‘mega artist’, ‘the fabulous’, ‘coolest old lady artist did not come to play.’” She looks up, grins and says: “I’ve been collecting these.”
In the last year or two, Tompkins must have been written about more than she has in all the preceding decades put together. After half a century of being ignored, who can deny a woman her adjective collection? We’re in the 74-year-old’s New York studio, a crammed and agreeably shabby loft in SoHo that she bought back in the 1970s for the unthinkable sum of $20,000, long before Prada flagships and Apple stores claimed this enclave of Manhattan.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2SMWfNP
via
0 Comments