The Sign Painter

Decoder Ring

Slate Podcasts

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2021

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ilona Granet was a New York art-scene fixture who won the praise of the art world when she put up anti-harassment street signs in lower Manhattan in the mid- 1980s. Her career seemed like a sure thing, but three decades on, and so much more art later, it still hasn’t materialized, even as her contemporaries are now hanging in museums. This episode is not about the familiar myth of making it, but the mystery of not making it. What happens, to an artist—to anyone—when they’re good enough, but that’s not enough? If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you can binge the whole season of Decoder Ring right now, plus ad free podcasts, bonus episodes, and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before we start, I want to let you know that this episode contains multiple descriptions
0:09.6	of sexual assault and a reference to suicide.
0:18.8	Sorry, I-
0:19.8	You didn't do it.
0:20.8	Are you doing it?
0:21.8	Are you doing it?
0:22.8	I'm doing it.
0:23.8	Okay, my first words.
0:24.8	I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
0:25.8	That's the artist alone a granite.
0:27.2	He's greeting me in Ben, the coderings producer, as we arrive at her studio in New York's
0:31.6	East Village back in 2019.
0:34.2	Are you taping your name?
0:35.2	Yeah.
0:36.2	Apparently a rule of recording is your supposed to tape the whole thing.
0:40.9	Alone has lived and worked here since 1982.
0:44.1	When she moved in, she was in her 30s, a performance artist, a sign painter, and a part of what
0:49.2	everyone called the downtown scene.
0:51.6	I just want my voices again, you know?
0:53.8	The Bob gets there.
0:55.0	And the chocolate leaves long cigars, I'm like, you could die.
0:58.8	I think if you saw her today, a very petite woman strolling down second avenue, in blue
	...

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