The Addison's collection numbers over 20,000 objects. While the galleries can only accommodate a fraction of the collection, virtually the entire collection is accessible through the Museum Learning Center.

Placeholder Text

Click here to download Museum Learning Center Portfolio Guides.

Collection

Exhibitions: The Body: Concealing and Revealing

<<first <previous
next> last>>


View larger image
Bookmark and Share
Artist(s): David McGee (Lockhart, LA, 1962 - )
Title: Corporate Girl / Side B
Date: 1997
Dimensions: 96 in. x 99 in. (243.84 cm x 251.46 cm)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Credit Line: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, Partial gift of John Axelrod (PA 1964) and museum purchase, 2000.17
Location: On view in Gallery 208

This object is a member of the following groups (click any group name to view all objects in that group):

Exhibitions: Past Is Prologue: History in Contemporary Art
Exhibitions: The Body: Concealing and Revealing
Themes: MLC Portfolio: American Identity
Themes: MLC Portfolio: Race and Otherness

Object Information

Dramatic in scale and loaded with historical association, McGee’s painting Corporate Girl/Side B is a deftly painted, multi-layered image of an African American woman who is presented in elaborate garb that alludes to the 17th-century portrait of the Infanta Margarita Teresa by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. In McGee’s painting, the subject’s face is obscured by tribal paint and she is armed with boxing gloves. As one reviewer has noted, “The works may look like court paintings but they act like unruly political satire.” McGee pays homage to old master paintings while subverting these traditions with commentary on the challenges that contemporary African Americans confront. Inspired by a friend’s morning makeup ritual, in Corporate Girl/Side B the artist has transformed the subject into a warrior, readying herself for the corporate battlefield many women face.

Exhibition History

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Déjà Vu: Reworking the Past, Katonah Museum of Art, 1/16/2000 - 4/2/2000
New Work: Recent Additions to the Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/21/2001 - 7/31/2001
Art, Artists, and the Addison: Building a Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 3/30/2004 - 7/31/2004
Inside, Outside, Upstairs, Downstairs: The Addison Anew, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/7/2010 - 3/27/2011
One Thing Leads to Another…Selections from the Collection , Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/30/2016 - 3/20/2016
The Body: Concealing and Revealing, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/1/2018 - 3/31/2019
Past Is Prologue: History in Contemporary Art , Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/16/2022 - 7/31/2022

Your current search criteria is: Portfolio is "Exhibitions: The Body: Concealing and Revealing"