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Writings on Kilimnik often raise the question of naïveté, as pose or reality: "Her fierce charm is deemed delightfully faux naïve by observers who, it seems to me, evade the truth: Kilimnik really is naïve, self-abandoned to ingenuous obsessions not always comfortably distinguishable from madness" [Peter Schjeldahl, "Kilimnesque," Village Voice, December 12, 1995]. The funniest and most pointedly satiric, i.e., self-aware and political, elements of her work are the elaborate titles of her paintings: Hunting season opened yesterday. Jane goes for a walk in the woods. She is wearing a lovely fawn color jacket with matching hat & deerskin boots, Prince Desiree on a Break from Sleeping Beauty out at Petrossian’s for Dinner—Raymonda is loved and respected by everyone because of her merry and carefree spirit—My Pony Arriving to Pick Me Up at the Glitter Theater after Giselle, 1841, Paris, Now the Palais Garnier, or Me—I forgot the wire cutters getting the wire cutters from the car to break into Stonehenge, 1982 (1998).

This use of language enhances her classification as a conceptual and postmodern artist by stressing the importance of text beyond the frame of the autonomous individual artwork and by marking her consciousness of the ironic potential of her subject matter; yet, paradoxically, her titles are also one of the things that makes her work seem like that of an outsider artist. . . .

To play with the identity of outsider artist is a luxury of surplus and opportunity enjoyed by contemporary women artists. It is indeed a paradox that the long feminist struggle for professional excellence, parity, and its revaluation of the forms and tropes of femininity would lay the foundation for work that plays with “degradation,” although Kilimnik’s play with the abject and her acute awareness of where, in our culture, femininity becomes excess or madness, which represents something disturbing about the culture, may also be yet another instance of the unconscious representation of a woman artist’s conflicted negotiation of societally imposed codes of femininity. It certainly is open to conflicting interpretations. It may be that the very excess of her focus on the signs of marketed femininity successfully effects a systemic critique. Or, its miming may be so close as to risk complicity, as Guy Debord suggests in comments about the rebel within the “Society of the Spectacle.”

—Mira Schor

Just then, an obviously American woman, who looked spiritually as well as physically a mere twenty-five years old (numerically she was thirty-nine), came hurrying past, and stopped at this very store. She was, of course, “my sister Karen,” dressed in a black velvet mini-shift, wearing a tight black leather jacket and knee-high, stiletto-heel, black leather boots. Sister Karen’s hair was long, dark, straight, and stringy. The entire Look was not really her own. It was just for fun. Or just for business. Or just because. Mother Teresa cared not for such things, but suddenly and completely she loved Karen with all her heart.

Mother Teresa longed to catch her eye, but Karen was a jittery woman. When sister Karen scampered into the shop, Mother Teresa followed. Astonished, she murmured, “For the love of God, turn around . . . I love you, child.”

Sister Karen was enchanted and dazzled by all the pictures of Mother Teresa with the princess. She slung her little black handbag around by its strap to pick open its clasp. The bag was bursting with scraps of paper and candy wrappers, and lire notes, too.

“Oh, how I love this picture!” said Karen. “I love Mother Teresa. Look at her tiny feet! I love Princess Di. Look at her downcast, ultra-mascara eyes. Megacelebrity slicing through my brain. How much for all fifty?”

—Jeanne Randolph

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