About Deborah Kass: Deborah Kass is an American artist whose work explores the intersection of pop culture, art history, and the self.
I am not alone in thinking that we are at a tipping point ecologically and morally and politically. Democracy cannot survive without a vibrant middle class, yet the policies of one of the parties has been committed to wiping it out for 30 years.
My work since the late '80s specifically questioned what was presented as the 'natural' order of things in the history of post-war-N.Y. painting.
Appropriation was the language of my generation in many ways. It came out of Duchamp, Warhol, Johns, Lichtenstein.
Social issues have been used to distract Americans from their own self interests since Nixon's southern strategy, and now people are paying the price.
Coming out as a Barbra Streisand fan was way more embarrassing than coming out as a lesbian. To be an artist of my generation willing to be unhip - artists were supposed to be like cowboys.
A lot of Broadway has that immigrant narrative of America as a place where you can become something else against all odds.
I have that memory of dancing on my father's feet to all the music my parents used to listen to.
