Suzan Pitt
New York: Suzan Pitt, 1984.

Beginning in 1984, Suzan Pitt (1943-2019) painted a series of one-of-a-kind wearable artworks for The A. More Store, a project of the New York artists’ collective COLAB. Later that year they were sold through Patricia Field’s East 8th Street boutique alongside works by Keith Haring and Stephen Sprouse. Pitt described the coats as unique artworks that could be either worn or hung on the wall, combining imagery drawn from popular culture, her animated films, and her watercolours into layered visual narratives of free association. Pitt is thought to have produced between fifty and one hundred painted coats during the 1980s before concentrating on the production of her animated film Joy Street. She returned to the format in 2016 in collaboration with House of Byfield. Sexuality was a persistent subject in Pitt’s work well before the coats. Her early film Crocus (1971) established a recurring association in her animation between sexuality and vegetal and floral forms, carried further in Asparagus (1979), a film noted on release for its frank sexual imagery and remembered for its pairing with David Lynch’s Eraserhead on the midnight-movie circuit. The present coat, its title taken from the painted text across the upper back, extends this preoccupation into wearable form, setting sexually explicit illustrations and lettering against appropriated cartoon imagery of Mickey Mouse and Goofy. This example belongs to the original 1984 series and is signed and dated by the artist.