Tales from the Mogul Archive, a 36-panel “magnum opus”, blends 20th century visual culture with my personal history. This series of seven narratives, investigates matrilineal lineage, fashion, sexuality, and photography. Featuring photographs from my mother’s archive and mine, Tales is also a memoir about the creative impact my mother, a lifelong amateur photographer, had on her boomer feminist daughter. (Below are excerpts from three of the narratives.)

Look Alike

“Compare and contrast” is the first and still most effective tool of art history and visual studies. Mogul demonstrates the technique in “Look Alike”. But what begins as something of an academic exercise, quickly turns personal, ending in a candid and touching confession by the artist herself. (Tom Jimmerson)

Perfect Fit

“Perfect Fit” tells the story of how Rhoda Blate Mogul and her daughter Susan exchanged garments back and forth as if a generational divide never existed. Counterintuitive as ever, the unmarried artist locates her punch line at the beginning and in small print: “The only outfit of hers I could never get into was her wedding dress.” (Tom Jimmerson)

Lingua Franca

What is the common thread connecting an aunt and her niece across time and space? “Lingua Franca” offers an answer: hats. (Tom Jimmerson)

Tom Jimmerson is the gallery director of as-is.la in Los Angeles.

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.

 “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) 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.

“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”

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.

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
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 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.

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.

‘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.”

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

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

Despite the fact that Mom was an avid amateur photographer, I did not pick up a camera until I moved to Los Angeles, 3,000 miles from home in 1973. That’s precisely when I began documenting the family on my annual visits home to Long Island.

Mark, Pam, and Dad after Dinner – 1973
Photo: Susan Mogul

Mom Momentarily Reclining with Mending and Mylar Wall – 1974
Photo: Susan Mogul

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.

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.

My Brother Jess in Mom’s Living Room, 1980
Photo: Susan Mogul

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 for Music Video, and, a stand-alone image. The narrative connects mother-daughter reciprocity vis a vis clothing, photography, and interior décor.

“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 Mogul

Mogul Celebrates Mogul in Situ

When I was in elementary school the kids made fun of my last name Mogul, and called me “Mongol” and “Mobilgas”. But when I moved to Los Angeles the response was decidedly different. “Wow, are you a Hollywood Mogul?”

Punning on my own last name, “Hollywood Moguls”, is a series of black and white photo collages (1975–1979) about literally breaking into Hollywood and its iconic landmarks: the Hollywood sign, the Capitol Records building, the historic Pantages Theater. A blossoming feminist in the 1970’s, I took on the guise of numerous “personas” – Moses Mogul, Diesel Mogul, Mogul Queen. And, ultimately transformed these characters into an army of revolutionary women who ruled the city I now called home.

“Hollywood Moguls” were envisioned as billboards and movie posters plastered throughout this radical feminist’s “city of dreams.”

Sunset Strip Billboard, 1975

Mogul Billboard on Sunset Strip #1, 1975

Mogul Billboard on Sunset Strip #2, 1975

“Mogul Diesel”, 1975

Mogul Television Empire, 1976

Moses Mogul Parts the Hollywood Hills, 1977

Crisis in Capitol – 1978

Moses Mogul Receives the 11th Commandment, 1978

The Long March to Santa Monica, 1978

Wandering Moguls Invade the Promised Land, 1979

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