Greer Lankton Essay

After going over the “Between Archives and Aesthetics” art exhibition an looking up information about all the artists in the catalog. One of the artists that really stood out to me in both her life and art itself was Greer Lankton. Born in 1958 as Greg Lankton, Greer grew up in suburban Illinois. The youngest child of a Presbyterian minister and his wife. Greer's earliest desire was simply to feel pretty like a girl. As a baby, she liked to put a washcloth on her head and pretend it was long hair. When she was two years old she saw a psychiatrist for the first time. A few months later, lonely and looking for a friend, Greer made herself a doll out of hollyhock flowers. She started becoming her own work of art once she started dressing in drag …show more content…
Her dolls are created in the likeness of those society calls "freaks". Two of her artworks that address trans identity and or trans themes in her work are her doll of Candy Darling. An American transgender actress who starred in Andy Warhol’s films. This doll looks very elegant while at the same time a little gruesome. The doll is a recreation of Candy Darling being naked in with male genitals and breast which looks very elegant. While the face of looks like a man’s face wearing makeup and looks a little gruesome. Critic Roberta Smith described her works in the New York Times as “Beautifully sewn, with extravagant clothes, make-up and hairstyles, they were at once glamorous and grotesque and exuded intense”. The second art work was her final work “It’s All About Me, Not You” this is a doll recreation of her apartment in Chicago just before her death apart of this was a doll laying in a bed with multiple prescription bottles scattered throughout the area. I think this was her way of expressing how she and other transgendered people struggle with not being what society wants them to be so some people turned to drugs. While, at the same time recreating herself dying being buried by pill