Linder at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France

Robert Barry, Frieze, June 16, 2013
On the eastbound platform of the Parisian Métro station Alma-Marceau this April, an advertising poster displayed a photo of a naked woman coyly crossing her legs, with only a €500 handbag to preserve her modesty. On the right side of the poster, in black marker, someone had written ‘Marre des femmes objets’ (roughly: ‘Fed up with women depicted as objects’). I mention this because, just around the corner from Alma-Marceau, a lavish retrospective of the work of British artist Linder Sterling had opened at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris with the title ‘Femme/Objet’. This photograph was exactly the sort of image – commercial, but at the same time thoroughly implicated in the codes and gestures of pornography – that Linder would use in one of her collages. Except she probably would have covered the handbag with a massive, garishly lit picture of a cream-filled bun.