Kass's work is in the collections of the
Museum of Modern Art;
Whitney Museum of American Art;
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Jewish Museum (New York);
Museum of Fine Art, Boston;
Cincinnati Museum of Art;
New Orleans Museum;
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution;
Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums; and Weatherspoon Museum, among others. In 2012 Kass's work was the subject of a mid-career retrospective
Deborah Kass, Before and Happily Ever After at
The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. An accompanying catalogue published by Skira Rizzoli, included essays by noted art historians
Griselda Pollock,
Irving Sandler, Robert Storr, Eric C. Shiner and writers and filmmakers Lisa Leibmann, Brooks Adams, and
John Waters. Kass's work has been shown at international private and public venues including at the
Venice Biennale, the
Istanbul Biennale, the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, the
Museum of Modern Art,
The Jewish Museum, New York, the
National Portrait Gallery, and the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A survey show,
Deborah Kass, The Warhol Project traveled across the country from 1999 to 2001. She is a Senior Critic in the
Yale University M.F.A. Painting Program. Kass's later paintings often borrow their titles from song lyrics. Her series
feel good paintings for feel bad times,
Art History Paintings 1989–1992 In Kass's first significant body of work, the
Art History Paintings, she combined frames lifted from Disney cartoons and panels of
Charles Schulz comics with slices of paintings from
Paul Cézanne,
Jasper Johns,
Robert Motherwell,
Pablo Picasso,
Jackson Pollock,
David Salle,
Andy Warhol, and other contemporary sources. Establishing appropriation as her primary mode of working, these early paintings also introduced many of the central concerns of her work to the present.
Before and Happily Ever After, for example, coupled Andy Warhol's painting of an advertisement for a nose job with a movie still of Cinderella fitting her foot into her glass slipper, touching on notions of Americanism and identity in popular culture. The
Art History Paintings series engages critically with the history of politics and art making, especially exploring the power relationship of men and women in society. Deborah Kass's work reveals a personal relationship she shares with particular artworks, songs and personalities, many of which are referenced directly in her paintings.
The Warhol Project 1992–2000 In 1992, Kass began
The Warhol Project. By appropriating Andy Warhol's print
Triple Elvis and replacing
Elvis Presley with Barbara Streisand’s
Yentl, Kass is able to identify herself with history’s icons, creating a history with powerful women as subjects of art. The work embodies her concerns surrounding gender representation, advocates for a feminist revision of art, and directly challenges the tradition of patriarchy.
America’s Most Wanted America's Most Wanted is a series of enlarged black-and-white screen prints of fake police mug shots. The collection of prints from 1998–1999 is a late-1990s update of Andy Warhol’s 1964 work
13 Most Wanted Men, which featured the most wanted criminals of 1962. The “criminals” are identified in titles only by first name and surname initial, but in reality the criminals depicted are individuals prominent in today's art world. Some of the individuals depicted include
Donna De Salvo, deputy director for international initiatives and senior curator at the
Whitney Museum of American Art;
Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the
Studio Museum in Harlem, and
Robert Storr, dean of the
Yale School of Art. Kass's subjects weren't criminals. Through this interpretation, Kass show's how they are wanted by aspirants for their ability to elevate artists’ careers. The series explores the themes of authorship and
the gaze, at the same time problematizing certain connotations within the art world.
Feel Good Paintings for Feel Bad Times 2002–ongoing In 2002, Kass began a new body of work,
feel good paintings for feel bad times, inspired, in part, by her reaction to the Bush administration. These works combine stylistic devices from a wide variety of post-war painting, including
Ellsworth Kelly,
Frank Stella,
Jackson Pollock,
Andy Warhol, and
Ed Ruscha, along with lyrics by
Stephen Sondheim,
Laura Nyro, and
Sylvester, among others, pulling from popular music, Broadway show tunes, the Great American Songbook,
Yiddish, and film. The paintings view American art and culture of the last century through the lens of that time period's outpouring of creativity that was the result of post-war optimism, a burgeoning middle class, and democratic values. Responding to the uncertain political and ecological climate of the new century in which they have been made, Kass's work looks back on the 20th century critically and simultaneously with great nostalgia, throwing the present into high relief. Drawing, as always, from the divergent realms of art history, popular culture, political realities, and her own political and philosophical reflection, the artist continues into the present the explorations that have characterized her paintings since the 1980s in these new hybrid textual and visual works.
OY/YO In 2015, Two Tree Management Art in Dumbo commissioned of a monumentally scaled installation of OY/YO for the Brooklyn Bridge Park. The sculpture, measuring 8×17×5 ft., consists of big yellow aluminum letters, was installed on the waterfront and was visible from the Manhattan. It spells “YO” against the backdrop of Brooklyn. The flip side, for those gazing at Manhattan, reads “OY.” An article and photo appeared on the front page of the
New York Times 3 days after its installation in the park. An instant icon, OY/YO stayed at that site for 10 months where it became a tourist destination, a favorite spot for wedding, graduation, class photos and countless selfies. After its stay in Dumbo it moved to the ferry stop at North 6th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for a year, where it greeted ferry riders. Since 2011, OY/YO has been a reoccurring motif in Deborah Kass's work in the form of paintings, prints, and tabletop sculptures. Kass first created “OY” as a painting riffing on
Edward Ruscha’s 1962 Pop canvas, “OOF.” She later painted “YO” as a diptych that nodded to Picasso's 1901 self-portrait, “Yo Picasso” (“I, Picasso”). OY/YO is now installed in front of the Brooklyn Museum. Another arrived at Stanford University in front of the Cantor Arts Center late 2019. A large edition of OY/YO was acquired by the
Jewish Museum in New York in 2017 and is on view in the exhibition
Scenes from the Collection.
No Kidding On December 9, 2015, Deborah Kass introduced her new paintings that incorporated neon lights in an exhibition at Paul Kasmin Gallery entitled "No Kidding" in Chelsea, New York. The exhibition was an extension of her Feel Good Paintings for Feel Bad Times, but it sets a darker, tougher tone as she reflects on contemporary issues such as global warming,
institutional racism, political brutality, gun violence, and attacks on women's health, through the lens of minimalism and grief. The series is ongoing.
Louises Deborah Kass has spoken about creating an “ode to the great Louises,” a space dedicated to her works inspired by famous Louise's which she would call the “Louise Suite.” The earliest of these odes is “Sing Out Louise,” a 2002 oil on linen painting from her
Feel Good Paintings Feel Bad Times collection. “Sing out Louise” is driven by her fondness for Rosalind Russel and the fact Kass feels it is her time to “Sing Out”. “After Louise Bourgeois” is a 2010 sculpture made of neon and transformers on powder-coated aluminum monolith; it is a spiraling neon light with a phrase inspired by French-American artist Louise Bourgeois. The neon installation reads “A woman has no place in the art world unless she proves over and over again that she won’t be eliminated.” Kass changed the quote slightly to better represent her beliefs but it was derived from Bourgeois. “After Louise Nevelson” is a 2020 spiraling neon work of art that reads "Anger? I'd be dead without my anger" a quote from American sculptor, Louise Nevelson. == Personal life ==