#formalist

With the pursuit and determination to become an artist, May Wilson left rural Maryland and a decades-long marriage for New York City, at the age of 61 where—as advised by her pen pal, mail artist Ray Johnson, she took up residence at the Chelsea Hotel. Largely self-taught and generations older than the avant-garde artists she was drawn to, Wilson acquired the nickname “Grandma Moses of the Underground”. 

Long before the term ‘feminist’ was commonly used, Wilson’s works commented on the sexism and ageism that existed in both popular and “fine-art” portrayals of women. Although May Wilson spoke about her works in formalist rather than political terms, her work accompanied the shifting cultural landscape as a result of the Women’s Liberation movement. In Wilson’s Ridiculous Portraits series, she gathers found objects that share relation to her early life, such as a nineteenth-century portrait of a woman, and embellishes them with glitter, small mirrors and red paint. Produced as personal mementos and often exchanged through the mail with other artists as gifts, Wilson’s portraits attacked sexism, ageism, and the cult of beauty with a wry sense of absurdity. 

See a pair of these Ridiculous Portraits, now in Out of Place: A Feminist Look at the Collection.