Mogul is Mobil Volume III Redux

1975/2022

video/film

Looking like a 1970’s “Rosie the Riveter”, Mogul takes on the persona of an artist who makes a living posting billboards on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. As Mogul recounts her climb up the billboard “ladder”, she realizes that the only way to truly make a “name” for herself is to create her own billboard. And so she does. “Redux” tackles a recurring theme throughout Mogul’s work – a female artist’s anxiety about fame, fortune, and survival in the art world. Revisiting the 1975 version of Mogul is Mobil in 2022, Susan decided to cut its’ ten minute running time by half, enhance the sound, and voilà Redux.

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/752313132

Length 4 min
Excerpt 28 sec

Solo Exhibition at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland

2022

installation

August 4 – October 30, 2022

The first solo museum exhibition of my work, “What becomes a Legend most?”, was presented in three galleries at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland. Curated by Michal Jachula, the exhibition included videos, films, objects and works on paper from 1971–2022.

Gallery One

“What becomes a Legend most?” (2022), “An Artist of a Certain Time” (2019), “Mogul Shopping Bags” (2019), and “Body Sculptures” (1971) were displayed in gallery one.

Gallery Two

Gallery two featured the installation, Tales from the Mogul Archive (2022) alongside two monitors that screened four of my videos from the 1970’s.

Tales from the Mogul Archive, a 36-panel installation, blends 20th century visual culture with my personal history. This series of seven narratives, including Birth Control, Woman with a Camera, and Look Alike, investigates matrilineal lineage, creativity, fashion, feminism, photography and Jewish identity. Featuring photographs from my mother’s photo archive and mine,Tales is also a memoir about the creative impact my mother, a lifelong amateur photographer, had on her boomer feminist daughter.

Graphic Designer Christina Huang was crucial in bringing Tales to fruition.

Gallery Three

Film Projection and Wallpaper Installation (2022)

I designed wallpaper patterns to frame two film projection areas in gallery three. The pink and blue wallpaper pattern (on the left), comprised of images of birth control pills, was designed for my film about women who are childless by choice or chance titled “Sing O Barren Woman”.

The black and white wallpaper pattern (on the right) is comprised of two photographs my mother shot in 1965: “Mom’s Self Portrait as Pregnant Photographer” and a tongue and cheek photograph of me mimicking Mom being pregnant. The pattern was designed for my film about Mom and our creative connection through photography titled, “Mom’s Move” (2018).

Photo credits for all installation shots: Daniel Rumiancew.

What becomes a Legend most?

2022

photographic works

I pose this question at the top of each photograph, “What becomes a Legend most?” And then proceed to answer it at the bottom with a characteristic mix of self-aggrandizement and self-mockery: “Susan Mogul, the septuagenarian, anticipates her first solo museum exhibition.” My “Legend” ad campaign, comprised of three semi-nude portraits with multi-lingual text, confronts the status of a female artist in her seventies. It is also a take off on the mid-20th century ad campaign for Blackglama that featured older female celebrities wrapped in the company’s mink coats. Thus far, I produced this series in English, Polish, Yiddish and Spanish.

Photo Credit: Julie Shafer

Yiddish

English

Polish

The Zacheta National Gallery of Art transformed my “Legend” series into a poster to advertise my solo exhibition at their museum. Thus my take-off on an advertisement was appropriated by the museum to promote my exhibition.



Tales from the Mogul Archive

2022

photographic works

Look Alike

Perfect Fit

Lingua Franca

 

Graphic Designer Christina Huang was crucial in bringing Tales to fruition.

Less is Never More at as-is la gallery in Los Angeles

2019

installation

“Less is Never More”, an installation designed as a showroom, mingles personal memoir with visual culture proposing a feminist critique on art, home and modernism. It is comprised of twelve shopping bag prototypes, two digital prints, a grid of seventy-two images, and mid-century furniture and apparel from my home. Each shopping bag in “Less is Never More” is adorned with a significant object from my personal history on one side, while the other side of the bag recounts a relevant anecdote or commentary.

“Less is Never More”, (2019), 16″ x 16″ x 20″
Paper Shopping Bag, Digital Prints & Custom Plastic Handles.

Installation View

 “Free Association” (2019), A Grid of 72 – 5 x 7 in. Digital Prints

“Free Association” (2019), A Grid of 72 – 5 x 7 in. Digital Prints, Detail

Installation View

Barbarella Dress, 1968 and Marimekko Flannel Dress, 1969
Mogul’s Vintage Apparel branded with Mogul Tag.

Marimekko (2019), 16″ x 16″ x 20″
Paper Shopping Bag, Digital Prints & Custom Plastic Handles.

Colombo, (2019), 16 x 20 x 6 in.
Paper Shopping Bag, Digital Prints & Custom Plastic Handles.

Installation View

Photo Credit for all installation shots: Julie Shafer

Less is Never More

2019

photographic works

 “Less is Never More” (2019) 36″x 50″ Digital Print

“A Designer’s Survival Index”, a 1972 poster depicting chairs, tables, and couches designed by well-known 20th century modern­ists, served as my point of departure for my poster, “Less is Never More”. “Less” is comprised of modernist furniture that either I purchased or that Mom gave me. However, under each item I provide a brief text, inflecting commercial language with personal recollection.

An Artist of a Certain Time

2019

photographic works

“An Artist of a Certain Time”, (2019) 36″ x 50″, Digital Print

The 1972 modernist furniture poster Mom gifted me, “A Designer’s Survival Index”, serves as the backdrop for a satirical “resume” of a seventy-year old woman. “An Artist of a Certain Time,” grapples with Mogul’s career as an artist, feminist, daughter and a Jew.

Mom’s Move

2018

video/film

When Mom sold her house in 2012 at the age of 88, it was both a closure and a point of departure. Mom’s loss of both home and memory was my loss as well. This propelled me to excavate her archive of photography, and ruminate upon our enduring connection through the photographic image.

Part bio, part memoir, “Mom’s Move” portrays the relationship between two artists: an unconventional fifties housewife, and myself, her boomer feminist daughter. Housewife and mother of six, Rhoda Blate Mogul, was a lifelong avid amateur photographer. Her creative drive – though confined to the home – had a major influence on my public life as an artist and filmmaker.

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/590746685

Length 25 min
Excerpt 4 min 30 sec

A Daughter’s Survival Index – An Interdisciplinary Work

2014–2017

photographic works

“A Daughter’s Survival Index”, an interdisciplinary project, investigates creativity, female identity, and modernism through the mother/daughter bond. These “studies” grew into two separate installations, “Less is Never More” (2019) and “Tales from the Mogul Archive” (2022).

Collages, Diptychs Patterns and Photographs from the “Daughter’s Index”

Mom_Susan_Pregnant-_Diptych

Rhoda /Susan Pregnant Diptych
Diptych was digitally created in 2014 from two analog photographs Mom took in 1965. An iconic image in the project, it represents the fertile creative banter between mother and daughter.

Index_Detail_1

A Daughter’s Survival Index – Detail #1
“The Daughter’s Survival Index”, a series of digital prints, is comprised of artifacts from an archive I share with Mom: furniture, textiles, photographs, and interior décor. And is also a “key” to the project in its entirety. Focus photography.

Mogulmannekko_Pattern_CU

Mogulmannekko
Design for wallpaper pattern. Pattern derived from: Mom’s 1965 proof sheet, a wallpaper swatch, and a Marimekko housedress. As with most components in this project, the historic artifacts were selected for their resonance between mother and daughter.

Echoes_Muybridge_Whistler_Pattern

Echoes of Muybridge and Whistler’s Mother
Design for wallpaper pattern. The pattern was derived from a 1965 photographic proof sheet composed of Mom’s pregnant self-portraits, and, me mimicking Mom pregnant. The form and content of this pattern echoes images from art and photo history: “Whistler’s Mother” and Muybridge’s photographs.

Double_Mirror-Camouflage

Camouflage in Mom’s Montage
This collage was digitally created from a 1987 analog photograph of Susan in the Marimekko dress she gave Mom in the sixties, as she looks at a photo collage produced by Rhoda from the seventies. The background pattern is derived from the same collage.

Susan_Phone_Diptych

‘Hi Susan, Hi Susan’, Diptych
Diptych was digitally created from two analog photographs Mom took in 1964. The title references a musical sequence in the 1964 film, “Bye Bye Birdie.”

Princess_Rollers

Sleeping Princess in Rollers and Acne Cream
Pattern was created from one analog photograph Mom took of Susan in 1964.

Dad_Susan_Phone_Diptych

Susan Dad Diptych
Diptych was digitally created from two analog photographs Mom took in 1964.

Dinner_Table_Mark_Pam_Dad_1973_Fix

Mark, Pam, and Dad after Dinner – 1973

Mom_Mylar_1974

Mom Momentarily Reclining with Mending and Mylar Wall – 1974

Index_Detail_2

A Daughter’s Survival Index – Detail #2
“A Daughter’s Survival Index”, a series of digital prints, is comprised of artifacts from an archive I share with Mom: furniture, textiles, photographs, and interior décor. And is also a “key” to the project in its entirety. Focus plywood and plastics.

Index_Detail_3

A Daughter’s Survival Index – Detail #3
“A Daughter’s Survival Index”, a series of digital prints, is comprised of artifacts from an archive I share with Mom: furniture, textiles, photographs, and interior décor. And is also a “key” to the project in its entirety. Focus patterns and color.

Jess_Living_Room_Sun

My Brother Jess in Mom’s Living Room, 1980

Redec._Mom_Living_Room

Redecorating Mom’s Blue Living Room
An intervention, aka Photo Collage, of a 1980 analog photograph I took of Mom in the living room. This collage utilizes a wallpaper pattern from Mom’s bedroom, her rug, a dress pattern transformed into curtains, and my self-portrait on the wall.

This_Dress-is_Like_Storyboard

This Dress is Like…
Storyboard for Music Video, and, a stand-alone image. The narrative connects mother-daughter reciprocity vis a vis clothing, photography, and interior décor.

The Artist and Her Mother

2012

video/film

In 2011, I interviewed several female artists and asked them to expound upon their mother’s creative influence upon them. My intention was to make a film on the subject.

I didn’t know it at the time, that these compelling interviews were preliminary research. And just a year later, I would embark upon a large-scale interdisciplinary project about my own mother’s creative impact on my private and public life as an artist.

Rough Cut

https://vimeo.com/137846263

Length 6 min

Mogul Celebrates Mogul

2011

photographic works

Mogul Celebrates Mogul”, was a satirical response to the Getty’s male centric “Pacific Standard Time” ad campaign posted all over Los Angeles. I plastered Mogul Celebrates Mogul”, in various Los Angeles neighborhoods, guerilla style, next to the Getty’s “PST” posters, where young male celebrities “celebrated” older male artists, such as John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha.

Mogul_Celebrates_2011

Mogul Celebrates Mogul

Mogul_Celebrates_In_Situ_2011

Mogul Celebrates Mogul in Situ

Susan Mogul Front and Center

1973–2011

catalogs

Susan Mogul’s Woman’s Building

2010

video/film

Funny, joyful, playful informative, seductive, ironic – yet brimming with a rightful desire to turn the sorry state of things upside down. —Kino Magazine.

Susan Mogul’s short film captures the energy, passion and radical spirit of the Los Angeles Woman’s Building (1973–1991), a groundbreaking center for women’s culture.

https://vimeo.com/135642050

Length 9 min
Excerpt 43 sec

Susan Mogul Documentaries

1991–2010

catalogs

Driving Men

2008

video/film

Mogul looks at the men in her life, starting with her tragic first love and ending with a road trip with a new boyfriend forty years later. The often funny video tackles sex, desire, loss, family and the twisted threads of identity, as Mogul ponders being single and fifty. —LA Weekly

Length 68 min

Trailer

https://vimeo.com/135690487

Excerpts

https://vimeo.com/93681023

Excerpts 5 min

DVD Cover

2008DVD-Driving-Men-Poster

2008Driving-Men-Poster-Quotes

Press

Holly Willis, “Mini Mogul“, LA Weekly, August 15–21, 2008

Annie Buckley, “Movie Mogul“, www.artforum.com, August 15, 2008

Sing, O Barren Woman

2001

video/film

“Giving voice to ten women who chose not to have children, Mogul’s video simultaneously offers a hilarious and poignant meditation on all manner of life choices and the necessity of living with their consequences.” —David Pagel, Los Angeles Times

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/136441838

Length 11 min
Excerpt 48 sec

Interview

This interview of Susan Mogul was broadcast on the on the award winning and long running daily news magazine show, “Life and Times”, May 8, 2001, on KCET (PBS Los Angeles).

https://vimeo.com/136447084

Length 1 min 51 sec

Home Safe Home

1997

video/film

Ensconced in her urban Los Angeles bed, Mogul recounts growing up “safe” on suburban Long Island. Commissioned by and co-produced with KCET, Los Angeles PBS station, for their daily magazine program “Life and Times”.

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/752268329

Length 6 min.
Excerpt 44 sec.

I Stare at You and Dream

1997

video/film

Tender and unflinching, four characters’ struggles, wounds and romantic entanglements are gradually revealed in the context of their everyday lives. Filmed in Mogul’s Highland Park neighborhood, a predominantly Latino area of Los Angeles. Produced in association with the Independent Television Service for public television with major funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Length 56 min

Excerpt 1

https://vimeo.com/135700586

Excerpt 48 sec

Excerpt 2

https://vimeo.com/135701451

Excerpt 1 min 17 sec

Interview

https://vimeo.com/136450404

Interview 2 min 43 sec

Promo CardStare-Promo-Card_-1997

 

Press

Program Notes, Southern Circuit, by Linda Dubler

Howard Rosenberg, ‘I Stare at You’ an Intimate, Fresh Journey, Los Angeles Times – TV Review, May 2

Everyday Echo Street

1993

video/film

“… an insider’s journey through a Los Angeles neighborhood that you seldom see on television … a highly personalized film threaded by the filmmaker’s self-effacing wit and candid introspection about her life as she settles into middle age.” —Howard Rosenberg, Los Angeles Times

Length 32 min

Excerpt 1

https://vimeo.com/135695171

Excerpt 1 min

Excerpt 2

https://vimeo.com/135696032

Excerpt 35 sec

Interview of Susan Mogul by Alexandra Juhasz

https://vimeo.com/136444140

Interview 49 sec

Promo Photo

1993_Echo-Street_Promo_Photo

Press

LA-Times_1993

Pages from the Diaries of Children

1991

installation

video/film

Pages from the Diaries of Children, Mogul’s collaboration with gifted and deaf children at an L.A. public elementary school, resulted in a set of ten books, drawings, and a video diary, We Draw – You Video. Exhibited at LACE, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

1991_Kid-Diary_Promo-Card

Promo Card

1991_Howard-at-40

Howard: Life at 40

1991_Lily-the-Terror_2

Jennifer: Lily the Terror – 1

1991_Lily-the-Terror_-Mother

Jennifer: Lily the Terror – 2

1991_Mother-Sleep-Soft

Mother Sleep Soft

We Draw – You Video

https://vimeo.com/135798618

Length 26 min
Excerpt 46 sec

Press

Susan Kandel, Dark Side to Children’s ‘Diaries’, Los Angeles Times, November 20

Prosaic Portraits, Ironies and other Intimacies

1991

video/film

“With wonderful footage, great interviews – she chronicles a changing political and artistic scene in Poland…she titillates, outrages and always knows when to move on.” —Sally Stein, art historian

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/135641527

Excerpt 45 sec
Length 46 min

Promo Card

1991ProsaicPromo

Five East

1990

video/film

As an artist-in residence for three months at Childrens Hospital, Los Angeles, Mogul produced a series of portraits of chronically ill adolescents. These children were in a section of the hospital known as Five East.

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/135800649

Length 7 min 33 sec
Excerpt 51 sec

Dear Dennis

1988

video/film

A videoletter to Dennis Hopper inspired by the fact that both Mogul and Hopper have the same dentist.

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/135803099

Length 4 min
Excerpt 58 sec

News from Home

1985/87

performance

News from Home was performed nationally at museums, underground clubs, colleges, and universities for two years. A comedic cabaret performance, News was based upon twenty years of correspondence from Susan Mogul’s mother. (“Saw Barnett Newman’s paintings and got some good ideas for Kim’s room.”). Looking just like mom, Mogul modeled her mother’s cocktail dresses and commented on her letters, as the struggle to individuate was explored in the context of the mother/daughter bond.

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/135630621

Excerpt 22 sec

Promo Card

1985_Hollywood_Mogul

One Woman Performance, Central Park SummerStage, New York City

1986

performance

Mogul’s untitled performance was an amalgam of comedic “shticks” from the “Last Jew in America” and “News from Home.” Sponsored by Creative Time, this SummerStage event took place at Central Park’s band shell in New York City, in front of one thousand people.

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/135806246

Excerpt 1 min 20 sec

The Last Jew in America

1983/84

performance

In this performance Mogul gives a “history lesson” on the conflicts and contradictions of Jewish American assimilation. This one woman show was performed at small theaters, alternative art spaces, and on cable television.

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/135630960

Length 60 min
Excerpt 38 sec

Images

Last-Jew_Flashcard_1983_84-copy

Jewish Flashcards

Last-Jew_Second_Cmndmnt_1983_84-copy

The Second Commandment

Press

Gloria Ohland, “The Last Jew in America?”, L.A. Weekly, November 25 – December 1, 1983

 

Design for Living

1980

performance

Susan Mogul makes a salad that gradually takes over the stage. While she yaks about iceberg lettuce and lemons, Jerri Allyn rushes around Mogul setting a scene – with wallpaper, aprons and tablecloths – in an absurd attempt to color coordinate Mogul with each vegetable she slices and dices. Performed at 626 Broadway, in New York City.

Design-for-Living_Lemon_Cut_1

Documentation of Performance

Design-for-Living_scan_2014_2

Documentation of Performance

Design-for-Living_scan_2014_Red_Frame_3

Documentation of Performance

Press

Sally Banes “Consciousness Razing”, Village Voice

Waiting at the Soda Fountain

1979

installation

performance

This installation and performance at Columbia Coffee Shop in Hollywood was a culmination of the “Hollywood Moguls” series. The “Hollywood Moguls” hung on the walls, and, in addition, placemats were designed and utilized at the coffee shop for the duration of the exhibition. In the closing performance at the coffee shop – women were given video screen tests- at the counter or in a booth. Waiting at the Soda Fountain was a feminist parody about getting discovered in Hollywood.

Placemat

Poster

Performance Documentation

1.WSF_Screen_Test_1979-copy

Performance documentation, Screen Test One

2.WSF_ScreenTest_1979-tif-copy

Performance documentation, Screen Test Two

3.WSF_Screen_Test_1979

Performance documentation, Screen Test Three

Hollywood Moguls

1975/79

photographic works

Punning on her own last name, “Hollywood Moguls”, is a series of photo collages (1975–1979) about literally breaking into and/or breaking open Hollywood: the Hollywood sign, Capitol Records, the historic Pantages Theater.

Sunset-Strip_Billboard-1975-copySunset Strip Billboard – 1975

Mogul-Empire-6-30-07-copy

Mogul Television Empire – 1976

Hollywd_Mogul_Crisis-in-Capitol_1978-copy

Crisis in Capitol – 1978

_Moses-Mogul-Receives-11th-Commandment-1978-copyMoses Mogul Receives the 11th Commandment – 1978


“Mogul Billboard on Sunset Strip #1”, 1975


“Mogul Billboard on Sunset Strip #2,” 1975

Skiing the Soaps

1977

photographic works

News from Home

1976

photographic works

Big Tip/Back Up/Shut Out

1976

video/film

Her extroversion is so extreme that her story leaps from the vacuum around her, over the camera and off the screen entirely. —Artforum 1976

“Big Tip” was Mogul’s first work to grapple with the economics and anxiety of being an artist.

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/135703794

Length 10 min
Excerpt 44 sec

Mogul’s August Clearance

1976

installation

Mogul’s August Clearance was an exhibition at Canis Gallery at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. Mogul as “shopkeeper,” transformed the gallery into a discount store. Her photos and photo collages were priced according to degree of finish, for example: Work prints at cost plus. Photos hung on clothing racks and were stacked in bins. Large price tags dangled from the hangars. Finished prints were mounted pristinely on a wall in an area titled, “The Back Room.”

1.-August_Clearance_Storefront_1976-copy

2.August_Clearance_Shopping_1976-copy

3.August_Clearance_Work_Prints_1976-copy

4.August_Clearance_Shopper_1976-copy

Feminist Studio Workshop Videoletter

1975

video/film

The Videoletter is a “tour” of the Woman’s Building, produced and directed by myself, Pam MacDonald and Sheila Ruth, active participants in the FSW and the Building.

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/135708935

Length 30 min
Excerpt 1 min 34 sec

Mogul is Mobil

1974

photographic works

Mogul is Mobil is a postcard (mail art) that Mogul produced after she received her first driver’s license and purchased her first car.

Mogul_Mobil_1974

Mogul-is-Mobil_Back_Postcard_1974

Take Off

1974

video/film

“In ‘Take Off’ Mogul has struck a fine balance between the tellable and the untellable. Her most remarkable action, the use of her vibrator ‘in public’ borders on being taboo (yet) is so ridiculous that ultimately ‘women’s polite language’ is mocked as incisively as is Vito Acconci.” —Afterimage

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/135643779

Length 10 min
Excerpt 33 sec

Laurel & Susan

1973

video/film

Laurel Klick and I were members of the feminist art program at CalArts. Laurel is behind the camera as I recount my one-sided flirtation with a guy who worked at CalArts in the equipment “cage” – the cage where I checked out the video Portapak – the Portapak we utilized to record “Laurel and Susan”. My story about an everyday interaction would become a trademark of my work. “Laurel and Susan” is not edited and was not presented publicly until 2022.

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/752323155

Length 3 min
Excerpt 18 sec

Dressing Up

1973

video/film

“(Dressing Up is one of) Susan Mogul’s very funny video stories, in which she proceeds from disrobed to robed, reminiscing about the history of each item of clothing.” —Lucy Lippard, “From the Center”, Feminist Essays on Women’s Art

Excerpt

https://vimeo.com/135696744

Length 7 min
Excerpt 49 sec

Self Portraits as Effeminate Man

1973

photographic works

Self_Portrait_1973

Mother Venus

1973

performance

Mother-Venus-Promo-Card-Front_1973

Mother-Venus-Promo-Card_Back_1973-

Promo postcard for performance at Womanspace Gallery in Los Angeles.

“Mother Venus” was a collaborative performance by Laurel Klick, Suzanne Lacy, and Susan Mogul.

Body Sculptures

1971

outlier


Body-Sculpture_1971

Body sculptures constructed of canvas, zippers, and/or foam. They were exhibited for the first time in 2022 at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland in Mogul’s solo exhibition.