Two Women, Two Striped Robes, Two-Hundred Lemons, Anemones and Lipstick

Two Women, Two Striped Robes, Two-Hundred Lemons, Anemones and Lipstick was a performative response the Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore. Exploring notions of collection, excess and the visual language of leisure, luxury and femininity, the performance took the form of a looping cycle of prop play that took place before a live audience for 3 hours. Utilizing performative strategies of endurance, repetition and hyperbolic characterization, Milton and Travis mirrored and animated a tableaux vivant of Matisse’s Striped Robe, Fruit, and Anemones, 1940 that highlighted processes of accumulation and consumption. Through cycles of mundane narrative that focus on the act of collection and display, the performers attempted a playful synchronicity in the perpetual arrangement of flowers, biting of lemon wedges, painting-on of lipstick and dramatic flourishes with endless fabric.