{"data":{"id":"1290","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":1290,"topgoose_id":784,"tms_id":1290,"display_name":"May Stevens","sort_name":"Stevens May","display_date":"1924–2019","begin_date":"1924","end_date":"2019","biography":"\u003cp\u003ePainter, poet, and political activist May\nStevens imbues her work with a\nsociopolitical consciousness. In the wake\nof the civil rights movement and the\nVietnam War, Stevens developed a symbolic\nfigure that would feature prominently in\nmuch of her work of the late 1960s\nand early 1970s: Big Daddy. According to\nStevens, Big Daddy is modeled after\nher father, “who represented to me an\nauthoritarian and closed attitude . . . towards\nculture, towards politics, towards Black\npeople and towards Jews. He was a person\nwho had stopped thinking when he\nwas twenty and hadn’t opened his mind\nto anything since.”\n\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/3001\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eBig Daddy Paper Doll\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003efeatures\nthe outline of a naked, bespectacled, and\nmustachioed man holding a bulldog in\nhis lap. Exuding a sexual and militarized\ndominance, his head appears bullet-shaped\nand phallic. His wrinkly features echo\nthose of his canine companion, a visual\nallusion implying bestial alpha-male instincts.\nStevens presents him as a mere paper\ndoll with four potential guises—a masked\nexecutioner, an army sergeant, a policeman,\nand a butcher with a bloodstained apron,\neach one a manifestation of violence and\npower. Presenting these roles as\ninterchangeable costumes hints that the\nsame white patriarchal spirit runs through a\nwide range of American institutions. The\nrepresentation of Big Daddy as a paper doll,\na widely available commercial product,\nalso ties the painting’s style and content\nto Pop art, and asks the viewer to consider\nhow authoritarian mindsets are being\npackaged and sold to the American public.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":false,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500005241","wikidata_id":"Q6796587","created_at":"2017-08-30T15:51:59.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-27T07:02:17.905-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/1290/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/1290/exhibitions"}}}}