Introduction

Susan Bee plucks the ordinary and aberrant from pulp fiction, film noir and other genres, linking them together through the use of bold, dominant hues, Mondrian-like structure, and highly-stylized biological form. Bee's disrupted, profane and dysfunctional elements appear in her orbit-like compositions like riddled, zodiacal maps that can be read as well as seen. The micro-universes that Bee creates demonstrate the power of familiar pop-culture icons-as-signs, however dated or over-inflated they may seem.

Those writing on Bee's multi-media paintings and artist's books aptly tend to focus on her methods and materials. These include: the employment of collage; the artist's poetic use of imagery and her collaboration with poets; the appropriation of popular imagery that is alternately sentimental or hedonistic; her achievement as a colorist; and the formal resolution of her complex canvases. And yet, perhaps because Bee's critique of the depiction of women-a dominant thread in her work-is playful and open-ended, essayists and critics have tended to overlook or under-emphasize the feminist underpinnings of her work and career.

Most apparent in works such as Love is a Gentle Whip (1999) and Her Candle Burns Hot (1999), Bee quotes from an endless pantheon of novel and filmic narratives that repeat the staple of the seductive, mysterious femme fatale, and the saccharine, squeaky-clean all-American prom or beauty queen. Women, the continual object of cycles of attraction, passion, jealousy and violence in these illustrations, are typically cast as evil seductresses. If these images seem hopelessly anachronistic, we may query if Bee's use of them is simply an exercise in nostalgia. It may be argued, on the contrary, that Bee's quotation and recontextualization of these images work to effectively problematize and poke fun at them. Susan Bee is, indeed, well-grounded in the vital feminist debates of the past two decades. She is co-founder and co-editor (with Mira Schor) of the critical artist-run journal, M/E/A/N/I/N/G (1986-1996), a publication that was feminist in its foundational impulses, putting feminist theory into practice.

Susan Bee is an artist, editor and designer, based in New York City. Bee's solo exhibitions include: Columbia University; William Patterson College; and Virginia Lust Gallery. She has published five artist's books with Granary Books, including the following collaborations with poets: Bed Hangings, with Susan Howe; A Girl's Life, with Johanna Drucker; and Log Rhythms and Little Orphan Anagram, with Charles Bernstein.

Bee received her Bachelor's degree from Barnard College, and her MA in Art from Hunter College. She is a recipient of residencies and grants from Yaddo, The Virginia Center for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

-Dan Younger
Director