Betty Tompkins

Tompkins was born in 1945 in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[6]

Tompkins received her B.F.A. degree from Syracuse University. She took a teaching job at Central Washington State College in Ellensburg, Washington shortly after marrying her first husband, Don Tompkins.[7] Don Tompkins had been one of her instructors at Syracuse University.[7][8] She completed her graduate degree at Central Washington State College, traveling between Ellensburg and New York City.[7]

When she married her spouse he had a collection of pornography that he had ordered from Asia in order to avoid US obscenity laws in the 1950s, these images had influenced her abstraction in to the first body of work, Fuck Paintings.[7][8]

In 2002, Jerry Saltz shared an image of one of Tompkins Fuck Paintings with gallery owner Michell Algus, who offered her a solo exhibition in his New York City gallery.[9] Tompkins had not had a solo exhibition in almost 15 years and this exhibition helped restart her art career.[9] As a result of the 2002 solo exhibition she was invited to the 7th Biennale d'Art Contemporain de Lyon in 2003, and a year later the Centre Pompidou purchased one of her works for their permanent collection.[10]

In 2019, Tompkins had her Instagram account deleted after she posted a photo of her Fuck Painting #1.[11] A few months later in 2019, Instagram held a closed meeting to discuss censorship, art, and nudity on their software platform, a few artists joined the meeting including Micol Hebron, Marilyn Minter, Joanne Leah, and Siddhant Talwar.[12] Betty Tompkins was unable to attend the meeting in-person but shared a written statement.[12]

Fuck Paintings (1969–1974, 2003–present)

Tompkins first major body of work was a series of paintings depicting a male and female figure engaging in sexual intercourse. She elected to render the images in extreme close-up, using vintage pornography stills as her source material. Rather than idealize the act of fornication, by having one body or the other exude dominance or beauty above the other, Tompkins equalizes both figures by showing only their genitalia, in congress.[13] Tompkins' first husband possessed a collection of pornographic magazines and images, amassed since the late 1950s (possession of these images was, at the time, illegal).[7] The works were produced using hundreds of layers of spray paint, using a finely-calibrated airbrush to build from underdrawing to final image. These early works were made solely with black and white pigments, with extremely high contrasting tonality.

Since returning to the series in 2003, Tompkins uses a base color combination to produce a more illuminated monochrome. She originally entitled the series Joined Forms, as a more modest way of describing the imagery. She would later call the collective series Fuck Paintings. Within this first series, until 1976, Tompkins produced a sub-set of works entitled Cow Cunt Paintings.[14]

Censored Grids (1974–present)

In 1974, Tompkins was scheduled to show her work in Paris. Once her painting had arrived, French customs officials had seized it, declaring it obscene and unfit for public exhibition. It would take Tompkins nearly a year to arrange for its return (by then, draining her financially and emotionally from the logistic and legal difficulties).[15][16] In response to this ordeal, Tompkins began to make paintings in the form of grids, where a set of white blocks with the word "censored" at the center, would block out all traces of genitalia or primary imagery in the composition. Tompkins has said she will continue to make these paintings, as there is seemingly no perceivable end to government/municipal censorship of visual art.

WOMEN Words (2002 and 2013)

In 2002 and 2013, Tompkins circulated the following email: “I am considering doing another series of pieces using images of women comprised of words. I would appreciate your help in developing the vocabulary. Please send me a list of words that describe women. They can be affectionate (honey), pejorative (bitch), slang, descriptive, etc. The words don’t have to be in English but I need as accurate a translation as possible. Many, many thanks, Betty Tompkins.” Over 3,500 words and phrases were submitted in seven languages, equally split between men and women.[17][18] In 2012, Tompkins was invited to create a performance in Vienna where 500 of the words and phrases were read aloud. Inspired by that performance, the artist then set out to create 1,000 individual word paintings, intending the series to be presented en masse once complete. On January 1, 2013, Tompkins created the first painting SLUT (#1). In an interview with Art in America, Tompkins says, "People sent stories, too. They made comments. It was very personal. But the same four words were the most popular. Actually nothing has changed."[19]

Tompkins work is held in many public museum collections, including:

• Fuck Painting #1 (1969), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France[20]
• Ayrshire Class D (1979), Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio, United States[21]
• Oberlin College, (Oberlin, Ohio)
• Paterson Museum, (Paterson, New Jersey)
• Museum of the City of New York, (New York City)
• Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, (Pennsylvania)
• Stamford Museum & Nature Center, (Stamford, Connecticut)

Tompkins work has been in many exhibitions, this is a select list:

• Official website