User:Renaissancefeminist/sandbox

= Alexandra Rubinstein = Alexandra Rubinstein is a contemporary artist based in Brooklyn, New York, that mainly uses oil paints as her medium. She uses a feminist narrative to inspire and create her works and is helping to push third-wave feminism in the age of female oppression and the age of Donald Trump. She has recently gained fame for painting hyper-realistic works depicting celebrities from Drake to Barack Obama performing oral sex on women.

Early Life
Rubinstein was born in 1988 in Ekaterinburg, Russia, her mother is Russian and her father is Jewish. The family was given asylum after ten years of trying and accepted into the United States in 1997 and moved to Pittsburgh. Rubinstein took art courses at Carnegie Mellon University throughout her time in high school and was interested in art during this time.

Education
Rubinstein went to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to earn her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. After graduating she went to live in New York City and follow her dreams of becoming an artist and creating art for a living.

Artistic Career
Rubinstein works out of her studio in Brooklyn, New York creating all of her realistic oil paintings. She has done many small-scale exhibitions around the United States.

Looking for Mr. Goodsex (2013-)
Painted using oil paints, Rubinstein created this as one of her first large series, the images are stills taken from vintage pornographic films from the 80s, around the time of the pornographic film called “Deep Throat.” The women’s faces during sex are made the highlight of the imagery. A focal point like this is meant to point out the fact that women are rarely made the real focus of these videos, and by putting the focus on women, makes the viewer question how far has pornography progressed, and whether or not female pleasure is seen as important. Over time the series branched out into stills of men as well as stills of men and women kissing, keeping the aspect of vulnerability within the imagery and focusing on the nature of sexual pleasure and romance.

A Dream Come True: Celebrity Cunnilingus (2014-)
This series is hyper-realistic oil paintings of a variety of different male celebrities performing cunnilingus on a faceless women. The celebrities she portrays are mainly seen as heartthrobs in society, a couple of the celebrities that she shows are, Justin Bieber, Ryan Gosling, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Franco, as well as Barack Obama. Having the women be faceless does not make the image objectifying but rather makes it so the male gaze is removed from the equation since the viewer is placed in such an aggressively female point of view. The male gaze is turned back onto the viewer in a way. Rubinstein puts the women first in these portrayals, making it acceptable for women to feel pleasure while viewing the imagery rather than discomfort. The images eroticize the male in order to target a female audience, giving women more power. The artist decided to create this series after realizing there was a real lack of focus on women in pornography, which helps promote the idea that heterosexual sex is about men and their pleasure. Rubinstein figuratively puts herself in a lot of her works, especially this series, her personality can be seen in the eyes of the celebrities she depicts, each image tells a story.

Thirsty (2015-)
This series puts a focus subverting heterosexual female sexuality through oil on panel images of 1970s male porn stars with a conveniently placed bottle opener on the area where the genitals would be. Once again this imagery is meant to turn the art world around, making women be the consumer of nude male imagery rather than women being the object that is consumed. The paintings use the bottle opener to mimic the usual decorative use of the female form, but instead, the men are made into objects and the ‘thirst’ for them comes after the thirst for beer.

The imagery also pushes the idea that women are not only here for their sexual desire for vintage porn imagery but are mainly there to drink a beer, a stereotypically male beverage. The paintings push the idea that women are independent beings that can have sexual desires and can enjoy a beer every now and then too.

HOTTER THAN JULY: Hands off my Cuntry (January 11th, 2017)
This exhibition was curated by Savannah Spirit and put on at Undercurrent Projects in New York City. This show was the third in Spirit’s HOTTER THAN JULY series and this one was specifically put on a week before Donald Trump’s inauguration. The entire show is a collective of artists that focus on erotic imagery and it was chosen to poke fun at Trump’s conservative cabinet. Spirit was moved to create the show because of the impending presidency and Trump’s relationship with women. She chose to have contributions from 12 different artists and 20 percent of the profits from the show would go towards Planned Parenthood. The show, like the past shows, focused on the celebration of female sexuality in a playful and often a provocative manner.

This exhibition gave Rubinstein a lot of publicity because her well-known painting called Thanks Obama (2016, oil-on-panel) was used on the posters and flyers for the event. The image is a photo-realistic painting of Barack Obama smiling and about to perform cunnilingus on a faceless woman. The show received a lot of backlash, especially Rubinstein’s painting, hers was deemed to be offensive and disrespectful. One of Rubinstein’s paintings from her Thirsty series was featured in the exhibition as well.

The show was focused on erotica because that is what captures people’s attention, and is what brings people in. The erotic nature of Rubinstein’s works is what makes many people uncomfortable or may even cause an uproar, but the imagery brings attention to what she believes in and that is why her works were featured in the show.

Style
Rubinstein’s style is very contemporary in her choice of subject, although nudity stems centuries back to Renaissance art and imagery. The oil-on-panel is what helps to create the realism of her paintings, the soft pastels and the bright colours all combine to create a very real image that makes many feel uncomfortable. Rubinstein paints mainly human figures, sometimes she uses more expressive imagery that is meant to represent something, like using puns in her title etc.

Reception
Rubinstein’s art has not been welcomed with open arms, many art critics, mainly of older generations, find it offensive and too revealing. The mainstream media have found that her art is eye-opening and needed for more female representation of female pleasure, finally, an artist playing into woman’s wants and needs. Rubinstein gained fame because she is bringing attention to an issue through the use of sex, and since sex sells, many online communities have started paying attention to her. Rubinstein's work is praised by liberal online news source Buzzfeed, and mainly for her use of celebrities within her works, rather than the point behind her works. Other news sources have praised her for her fight against the patriarchy through art.