Forty years ago, artist Ida Applebroog, mother of 4 took refuge at night in the one place of solitude: the bathtub.  As she soaked for several hours each evening, she drew her body, specifically her crotch in a series of sketch pads. The endeavor resulted in more than 160 vagina drawings. The year was 1969, she was  turning 40 years old, known by her married name Ida Horowitz, and unhappily living in San Diego. When she and her family returned to NY in 1974, the drawings were packed away and never meant to be seen by anyone else. As recounted in a recent NY Times article, Applebroog and her assistants in early 2009 were rummaging around in the basement of her home and studio near Broome Street and opened a box containing a blue 69-cent Strathmore Alexis drawing pad full of her bathroom sketches.

A selection of these drawings form the central element of Applebroog’s new installation Monalisa on view at Hauser & Wirth New York. They were scanned into the computer, digitally manipulated, printed on translucent Japanese gampi paper and occasionally enhanced with washes of pale pink, grey, and yellow. More than a hundred skin-like panels are stretched over the wooden frame of a structure referred to by the artist as “Monalisa’s house” but more accurately it’s the scale of a room. As the press release proposes, “Applebroog’s architecture - an updated ‘little sanctuary’ conceived through the lens of 80 years of life - makes home and body interchangeable analogs, containing the terrors and pleasures of existing in both.”

As you circle the structure, consider that you can’t enter the space but peer between the vagina images to see the inside. In the catalogue essay, Julia Bryan-Wilson writes, “… the home is not a stable location but an unfixed nexus of sexist violence, perversion and thwarted safety, as well as tenderness, secret stolen moments, bodily pleasure, and honest labor.”

The back wall of the interior features a large-scale blood red woman who the artist calls Monalisa and the only other figure appears at the “front door” and Applebroog calls him Brian. To understand how Applebroog creates these creepy figures watch these 2 videos from ART: 21.

Visit upstairs to see a selection of Applebroog’s original india ink drawings made with a crow-quill pen. The sketches, some water-stained, are grouped together by the notebook they came out of or as the artist describes it the “family” they are a part of. Notice the range of representation from highly detailed to minimal abstractions. How do they compare with their digital cousins downstairs?

Don’t miss Applebroog’s self-portraits that are part the 1969 sketch pad drawings and on view in the first room at the entrance to the gallery. Throughout her career, Applebroog has been characterized as making unsettlingly dark work but as she said in the NY Times article, ” I don’t see my work as particularly tough. But we live in a world that’s tough, and this is what happens. It just comes out of my head, and it’s there.” It’s inspiring to see that at almost 81 years old, Ida Applebroog hasn’t compromised one little bit!

For more information about Ida Applebroog, check out her website and ART:21.