May Stevens

May Stevens on her Big Daddy series:
“In late 1967 and early 1968 I began working with an image which eventually developed into a series that continued for eight years. The image, which came to be known as “Big Daddy,” grew out of the experience of being a mother and a daughter in wartime – with a father who, typically, patriotically, supported his country’s foreign policy, and a son who, approaching college age, approached the draft and military service in Southeast Asia…

I projected these parodies of power in billboard format, using an iconography that drew on pop art, media cliches, and the history of western culture….

Women have a special role to play in the arena of political and social meaning. Our control over the affairs of men and women, our artmaking and question raising, our unheard viewpoints, make a whole out of what has been lopsided, basically unbalanced, skewed – but taken for whole.”

Title: Big Daddy Paper Doll
Artist: May Stevens (1924 – 2019)  
Date: 1971
Medium: silkscreen on paper
Dimensions: 26 ½ x 30 ½ inches
Accession Number: H77.70    

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