8/03/2007

Lee Lozano

74 comments:

Painter said...

Lee Lozano @
MoMa
11 West 53 Street,
between Fifth and Sixth avenues
New York, NY 10019


Group Show
"what is painting"

Steppen Wolf said...

I do not know much about Lee Lozano, but it seems that what Jenny Saville does to flesh is what Lee Lozano does to metal (although from what I have read she had three of four distinct phases of experimentation with the arts until giving it up all together and the metal/screws phase for one of these)..

I think Lee Bontecou and Richard Pettibone make a better case for the premise of this show than Lee Lozano, but I could be wrong.

youth--less said...

This is the best of the 3 underappreciated women artists (Jaffe, LB, Lozano)

Power is a tool, and we all have it. Action.

zipthwung said...

Hammertime!

"Lee was very moody, drinking a lot of cheap wine and smoking lots of dope. I was raising my young son and had to ask her to leave after a few days. I remember thinking that she was a kind of warning about what could happen if you mixed art and life too closely, that it could get very dangerous if you had no boundaries.

-David Reed

Fuck Yeah!

The thing about not speaking with women went way beyond an art project. I remember sitting in a restaurant with her once and a waitress came to the table; not only would Lee not talk to her, she would hide her eyes. She had an extreme dislike for the company of women, thought they were evil. When she came to my studio, if my girlfriend opened the door, Lee would turn on her heels, run down the stairs, and be gone. Her wounds were self-inflicted; the withdrawal from the art world and the anti-feminism. Eventually she stopped making artworks altogether. She became a spirit who would appear and then vanish, but her work was saved by friends and those who had faith in her vision.

-Sol Le Witt

Hard Core.

A tremendous number of people were thinking about how to get art out of the commodity market, and General Strike belonged to that milieu. But Lee was extraordinarily intense, one of the first, if not the first person (along with Ian Wilson) who did the life-as-art thing. The kind of things other people did as art, she really did as life--and it took us a while to figure that out.

-Lucy Lippard

Can't touch that!

zipthwung said...

Anthropomorphism in the form of personification consists of creating imaginary persons who are the embodiment of an abstract concept such as lust, war, or death.

See Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

In classical rhetoric, personification is a figure of speech, or more specifically, a trope, that employs the deliberate use of anthropomorphism, usually in attempt to make an emotional appeal. In rhetorical theory, a distinction is often drawn between personification (anthropomorphism of inanimate, but real, objects) and figures such as apostrophe, in which an absent people or abstract concepts are addressed.

An example of rhetorical personification:

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet-flowing breast.

– Joyce Kilmer, Trees

An example of rhetorical apostrophe:

O eloquent, just, and mighty Death!

– Walter Raleigh, History of the World

Using anthropomorphized caricatures or projecting human qualities on conceptual entities or inanimate objects in reasoning is also known as committing a pathetic fallacy (in logical reasoning, this is not a pejorative term).

youth--less said...

Sound like Valerie Solanis without the actual trigger pull.

I didnt know Tylenol and Southern Comfort would kill you. I know it wouldnt kill me...

milf-magic said...

It's just a painting. jeez.

zipthwung said...

Thor's Balls!!!!

One or two wont kill you its the eight or ten that does it.


By the early seventies, Lozano had stopped making art except (perhaps) for some of these drawings. "This is now the age of information" she told my friend, "the most important work that will happen in the future will be the exchange of information between people; I see no real future for studio art". She got money by selling work from her collection of drawings by Judd and Andre. Lozano was taking a lot of LSD. When she was seen around SoHo she had the faraway look. When I met the Bruttens a few years after that time, they were selling her drawings for her and would send her the money. They told me that she was mostly living on the street.

-Joe Fyfe

Yes-
I got a cold, cold feelin'
Yeah-
Dancin' on hell's ceilin'
I move to the side, I lengthen my stride
I saw the big one comin'
Oh-
Right now, I'm scared and runnin'
I don't wanna be, I don't wanna be
I don't wanna be--there
When the hammer falls--down
Yeah, when the hammer falls--down
When the hammer falls down
Nails your balls to the ground
When the hammer falls--down
Yeah-
You got away with that one
Oh--you listen
You got away with nothin'
'Cause when the pendulum swings
A new dawn brings light of day

CAP said...

Do The Claw!

CAP said...

Why didn't they just call this show Anything We Could Lay Our Hands On?

zipthwung said...

1+1=2

so what else is new.

blue?

glue?

chew?

brew?

zipthwung said...

players at the game of people

Anonymous said...

hammer me home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5dTlg2cyls

CAP said...

Phew!

zipthwung said...

jesus was a Carpenter

zipthwung said...

we were so much older then I'm younger than that now

nat said...

Her biography changes my opinion of the paintings... My local medium says Lozano and I were an item in a previous life, and she was a narcisstic bitch back then too.

Reading the David Reed Interview(google it) Zip mentions...made me think that I have no effing idea what he's talking about. But at least painting is still a mystery as is why one painting is good and another bites. I think it is personality, in one way or another, that makes a painting and that's why a biography matters, even if obliquely. Take Warhol or Prince or Richter, e.g.

As if the painting and the painter's "soul" were connected--oh boy, I'm a romantic-- pooh-pooh away!

Michael Cross said...

"Anything we could lay our hands on"... I like that. Sounds like the summer shows at most galleries. "Group Show of Gallery Artists" (i.e., buy it now before it rots).

Art is a seasonal thing only for the jaded rich artists who can afford to travel and avoid seasons. I think. (My dry cleaner can't get paint out of my tux. Do I need a new tux, or a new dry cleaner? I'm doing digital art from now on.)

poppy said...

why is anyone confused about what a painting is?...ie.. Lee below.. its paint on stuff on a wall. does anyone really need their boundaries pushed?
This Lee has made a painting and its a hammer...It may be a little wonky but I can't be certain..

zipthwung said...

Reed: One thing that I’ve noticed about younger painters is that the writers and teachers who discuss their work often don’t know enough about the history of painting.

-David Reed

Siegel: At the same time there is the opposite problem, which is there’s too much history, but always the same old history.

Katy Siegel

here

Booya!!!

I've said before that history is getting longer, and that this means it takes more and more effort to sustain the knowledge/taxonomy (like remembering the all the presidents of the US) so then this requires folding history in on itself - telescoping it into a denser taxonomy. This reveals the essential redundancy f most art makeing, as categories develop.

In another sense taxonomy is dehumanizing, eliminating the nuances that make each new wrinkle unique. In another sense this creates archetypes, or mythological constructs that are synthesized "types".

The current problem then is what do you do with the type and how do you act against type to create something interesting?

A lot of (Cheslea) artists are rewarded for filling the role well but few are rewarded for going against type.

Thats life.

CAP said...

I hear Anne plans some follow-up shows:

Other Stuff I Just Unpacked Out Back
If It Hangs on a Wall - We’ve Collected It!
Don’t Ask Me – It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time
How Would I Know – I Only Work Here
When Is A Painting, Not A Painting?
Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?
How Deep Is Your Love?
Where Have All The Flowers Gone?
What Kind of Fool Am I?

webthing said...

right on zip, well put.

the revolution will not be podcast.

redundancy is inevitable, and in some ways necessary to define the 'against type' in its form. to break open type maybe photography and painting need to get over themselves and become megatron. leaving books and computers to become optimus prime.

round 1...

FIGHT!

webthing said...

poppy: "why is anyone confused about what a painting is?...ie.. Lee below.. its paint on stuff on a wall. does anyone really need their boundaries pushed?"

it's not just paint, so far til now it has been grass stains, urine stains, printer ink, scalpel cuts... need i say more?

nobody decides to push boundaries, it's just what happens here on earth where inherent animation is the rule and time is its cloak.

zipthwung said...

" Hypersigil

A ‘hypersigil’ is an extended piece of artwork, be it a novel, song, dance etc, that is created with a similar intent as a sigil. People attempting to create a hypersigil optimally want it to allude to and be referenced by multiple other artworks to reinforce its ’strength.’ The term was possibly coined by Grant Morrison. He used the word to describe his purpose in writing the comic book series The Invisibles. Morrison considers it the key to a memetic complex created with magical intent.

What the article doesn’t say, and I have yet to understand, is intent to do WHAT? "


here

This blog entry is somewhat facetious (I assume) not to ruin it for you or insult your intelligence - but it is kind of long and I know somepeople have better things to do like go to overheated outdoor concerts or some shit.

But the idea of intersubjectivity as a means of acruing stength to an idea is not new, and i think its interesting when people talk about context or knowledge of art history (the story) as being fragile and that art often can't exist outside of the aaaart world - well then you have to ask yourself how do you strenghten the web of meaning so that art becomes life (or sellable) - or also, do you want that to happen?

DarthFan said...

Avril Lavigne is wearing a skull t-shirt on SNL. Does she know that was so last 2005?

Im not wathcing SNL really - it ceased to be good a while ago - soem peopel say that happened when everyone stopped dong coke. I dunno, I think you can make good work without being unbalances - the myth of the artist si weird.

she moves in mysterious ways

toe to toe.

DarthFan said...

rye

webthing said...

Guess i always understood art as a mirror, it serves to reflect or be reflected upon. Depending on where the view is directed, you may see the sunrise first in the reflection before the sky (Picasso- some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others a yellow spot into the sun). Any meaning derived from the reflection is i guess something most commonly tied to 'the gaze', Lacanian or otherwise. Art begs of itself one thing, that to be appreciated or valued someone has to be willing to ponder/engage with it, ie: the artworld (it can expand and contract, is probably expanding). Anything, dare I say it, high, is likely not to be "life", as life implies something colloquial, or at least necessary (soon to be packaged). It is arguable whether art is necessary. Certainly not daily, but in larger terms of scale, civilizations? That art operates independently is shared in other pursuits, couture fashion, architecture etc. The higher each ascends individually the more indivisible they become. We may try to differentiate the top by the clear disparity of each in its more common or functional form, in "life", a place where the theatre often stakes itself. But everything must stem from there. Discordian practice to me is emulation of powerful structures to vehicle some form of hazy alternatives, by parody, called art because of its similar reflective means. Apparently the Principia Discordia was recovered in the JFK archives.

webthing said...

2 much art history causes...

CAP said...

My boundaries could do with a little exercise.

zipthwung said...

power of the pyramid

I like my air conditioned and my beer refrigerated.

amy boras said...

this lee and the other lee are connected i think. sculpture to paint. greys. browns. if the lozano was turned the other way i might feel like i'm looking into the bontecou again. interesting to post these two next to one another.

no-where-man said...

i enjoyed the show quite a bit, i would say a 3.

This Lee Lozano was presented in such away that "monumental scale" and time line contributed quite a bit to understanding it.

zipthwung said...

It was all chess back then. Now its about who your publicist is.

ISABELLE GRAW: Historically, the situation was very different. There have been women artists involved in movements defined around painting (think of the number of women artists taking part in "Abstract Expressionism"), but when it comes to the status of the work in the marketplace, the principle of the "exceptional woman" operates. In other words, that there is perhaps one woman per artistic movement who gains the institutional and economic recognition equal to that of the very successful male artists of the same movement. This changed in the beginning of the '8os in the wake of appropriation art. Women artists were the leading figures--but, with the exception of Levine, as Elisabeth points out, they deliberately didn't paint, because it would have been too easy to exclude their work with arbitrary references to "quality." This happened in Germany with many women painters who were pushed to the margins of the "junge Wilden" and never arrived at the "center" until today. One of the few exceptions was Rosemarie Trockel, but again, she deliberately decided not to paint.

zipthwung said...

Danto the Neo-Marxist says of the eighties:

The Death of Painting was in part an expression of ressentiment against the painting that was causing so much excitement in the early '80s, neo-expressionism. But it seems evident that the target must have been, in part, the form of life in which the affluence of the Reagan years expressed itself in collecting art, in "getting in on the ground floor" through acquiring paintings that were certain to appreciate in the way that Abstract Expressionist paintings had done--so that "bad painting" was a kind of willed uglification, a refusal to be complicit in the agenda of painting-as-luxury. I am not a social historian, but it seems to me, if I am right in these speculations, that the true art history of the '80s has not yet begun to be addressed.

CAP said...

I'm sort of curious why Sunil thinks Pettibone makes such a good case for the 'thesis' of this show? (in as much as it has one)

zipthwung said...

maybe?

zipthwung said...

Mr. Pettibone's work has always been vulnerable to some of contemporary art's most popular pejoratives: cute, twee, teensy and craftsy; minor; unoriginal. It is also called "art about art," which probably hasn't helped. It can't be said that these adjectives don't sometimes apply. But with large quantities of his work, something else prevails: formal rigor, the personalizing effects of scale and touch, faith in materials as carriers of artistic meaning and, above all, hard-nosed, even hypercritical reverence.

In addition, under cover of cuteness and pitch-perfect downsizing (note the infinitesimal nails on the plain wood strip frames), Mr. Pettibone has persistently asked some nagging questions. Who owns artistic ideas? And what have materials and craft got to do with them? What, really, is originality? Why does so much art have to be so big? And tangential to this: What is the essence of miniaturization? What happens to visual experience when previously large, famous paintings are reduced to the size of the viewer's face, while, at their best, looking mind-bogglingly like the real thing? An answer that touches on several of these questions is: A new, transformative, maybe original sense of intimacy and ownership that is unusually empowering. It is rather amazing to see art cut down to size with its integrity intact. In most cases cuteness gives way to an unsparing yet radiant sense of craft.

says RS

zipthwung said...

director Paul Thomas Anderson to artist Jeremy Blake: "Man, why do artists have their heads so far up their asses sometimes?"
Blake: "They like the smell... But seriously, it's introspection. Contemplation. You should try it sometime."

CAP said...

Not that I actually saw it, but the Zwirner show A Point in Space.. seemed to cover much the same territory with far better research and focus.

A Lee Lozano there also.

zipthwung said...

here

Semper Fi.

zipthwung said...

here

Failure!!!!!

James Gillispie said...

it is nice to see gestalt, what fascinates is that it is painted by a woman. painting has to defy expectation, destroy it!

zipthwung said...

One year later.....

In late July 1970, while Manson was on trial, three persons were hacked, two fatally, on the beach near Santa Barbara, California. One of the Manson girls spoke of this incident as "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," an Abbey Road song that plainly is about homicidal madness.[150]

Coincidence? You be the judge.

Im a big fan of cloisone gillz. What is that peacefull easy feeling you got going over there? Do you know wendy white or her husband or whatever? SHe quotes the past like some people quote the Necronomicon and her husband or whatever makes piles of lumber still life as well. Not cloisone though.

Maxwell's Demon says entropy can decrease if you work hard enough.
Keep on truckin`!!!!

"Maxwell's Silver Hammer" is a song by The Beatles, from the Abbey Road album, with Paul McCartney singing lead. It was written by McCartney, though the songwriting credit is Lennon-McCartney.

George Harrison described it in 1969 as "one of those instant whistle-along tunes which some people hate, and other people really like. It's a fun song, but it's kind of a drag because Maxwell keeps on destroying everyone like his girlfriend then the school teacher, and then, finally, the judge." In 1977, Harrison would be less charitable, stating "I mean, my God, 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' was so fruity."[1]

zipthwung said...

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind [3x]

Way out in the water
See it swimmin'

I was swimmin' in the Caribbean
Animals were hiding behind the rocks
Except the little fish
But they told me, he swears
Tryin' to talk to me, coy koi.

Where is my mind [3x]

Way out in the water
See it swimmin' ?

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
If there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind [3x]

Oh
With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Oh
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Oh
Oh

zipthwung said...

James Kalm

youth--less said...

I know that all the emo girls have started collecting cloisonne jewelry--the uglier and cheesier the better. It's going to be the turquoise of their generation! So you're inn like flynn zip

David D'Andrade said...

Thanks to PaintersNYC and James Kalm, I'll never have to leave my home again.

no-where-man said...

awe, anyone see the charming dks (douglas kelly) around? is his tv show still on? a man before his time.

zipthwung said...

i was just looking through an issue of art fair international or whatever and I saw some near direct rip offs of some stuff - I know its been a discussion - plagiarism - if you go over to ed winklemans blog youll see a bunch of crap about a bruhah and related boondoggles. WHat is up with this originality stuff anyways? Is it a youth thing?

also in n+1 magazine (the literary section) theres (i skimmed at the newstand) a delio on "anaesthetic ideology" which was jsut a thing here. which relates to Lee Lozano's art n life thing (too close to far not enough too much).

Anaesthetic Ideology
---
Mark Greif

I see: Severed heads. The Extra Value Meal. Kohl-gray eyelids. A holiday sale at Kohl's. Red seeping between the fingers of the gloved hand that presses the wound. "Doctor, can you save him?" "We'll do our best." The dining room of the newly renovated house, done in red. Often a bold color is best. The kids are grateful for their playroom. The bad guy falls down, shot. The detectives get shot. The new Lexus is now available for lease.

zipthwung said...

dk had the same camera technique. One does wonder.

webthing said...

NEARLY 5 MILLION VIEWS!

zipthwung said...

GREATEST "HITS"!!!

surfkook said...

Greatest garbage!!!

youth--less said...

Would it be too much to ask for books in which there is no conflict and no disaster but mere daily occurrences, strung together by the calm being who notices them; teleision shows on which people sit around silently noticing one another, watch sunsets, type, chat, cook meals without teaching the viewer how, and go about their business in the dull but reassuring knowledge that nothing is going to be very different than the day before? Could there be repetition in a state of grace? could there be “aesthetic” representation, for those for whom the worldly anaethetic had worn off, while the systematic ideologies seemed to inhuman and restrictive? Could people live a life in the garden, in our world with its many technologies?

Anaesthetic Ideology--Sofia Coppola had that nailed years ago. Is that what LL was after? What about those of us with a need for drama? Habit just wont do. Drama with a wink is what I like.

CAP said...

Before Sofia there was Robert Bresson.

I see LL as kinda Mouchette Goes Idol.

Michael Cross said...

after the blown tire and the melted hammer... next blockbuster exhibit, "What is NASCAR?"

Tornadoes are caused by dogs chasing their tails. It's just a theory I have. More to follow if the grant comes through.

Whats next? (opening September '07)

CAP said...

I'm getting Lee Losano and Lindsay Lohan mixed up.

LL is starting to feel like MM with a bigger brush.

youth--less said...

Marilyn Monroe?

zipthwung said...

metonymy

really gets me hot.

minimalism

is fine too.

poppy said...

Things get wonky when they're big,..
that's just a part of life I'm happy with...

poppy said...

just playing catch-up here...
to webthing - maybe I should've said "at this point" meaning no shit,..people have pissed over it all, we get it..Nothing really surprising now about definition,..let us say yes together?

CAP said...

MARLENE MOCQUET!

Oh how quickly they forget painting!

DarthFan said...

why was her name all caps? I assumed it was a cut and paste dealio.

CAP said...

CAPS?

MARLÈNE MOCQUET

Maybe needed the grave accent, wanted to accent the accuracy.

But now I’m starting to think of her as MARILYN MOCQUET:
Getting hammered
Being Nailed.

zipthwung said...

mar lay nuh

Darlene would be a good artists name

Are names still class signifiers?

I'm fond of

Ezekiel and Jezebel.

zipthwung said...

Art institutions share this assumption or they wouldn’t be writing didactic material that makes viewers feel as though they have Alzheimer’s. If museums spoke with another kind of voice, one that elicited and valued an experience-based response to works of art rather than a information-based one; if underlying the planning, design, and interpretation of exhibitions was the assumption that there is no one way to look at art and no single correct interpretation of it, the visual arts might seem a lot less alienating to lay people. But this requires a radical change in institutional attitudes.

-Marcia Tucker

webthing said...

Exercise 2

How do you think your parents or grandparents viewed artists--people who said they were painters, writers, musicians, etc. How do you view them? How do you think they should be viewed in the future?

Exercise 5

What would you like to see in the future of art in society? What would you like to see in the way of new forms of art or further developments of old forms? Write a half page on each question.

Exercise 1

Do a star jump. Now pick up a brush. Snap it. Walk over to your dealer and say "it's over Larry". Go back to the studio. Stop past Moma on the way. Leave half of the brush outside. Once back in the studio, read an incisive text. Do a star jump. And read more. How do you feel?

webthing said...

the cd keeps on skipping...

the true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths

(Lozano, Bontecou) diverge and depart

a hammer builds, and unbuilds. it is a potent symbol. but when the claw is stuck on the handle? is it trying to remove its handle? is it phallus? does it have long hair? is it useless, only a tired smash away from the end?

a hole is a passage, it takes in, and throws out. but when the flare is real, and the hole is only implied, and actually not a real hole, is it holy? can there be birth? or only fantasy?

Bontecou, a frame upon the infinite. Lozano, the hammer that cannot remove the nail.

youth--less said...

I always think of Bontecu and Ursula LeGuin together. The "only" women in 60s sci fi. I've never really liked the genre myself. The fanstasy elements always seem tacked on--novels, movies or painting.


Nailed on a bed of nails. That's a cool fantasy.

zipthwung said...

The master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house.
-Audre Lorde

"The hammer cannot discover within itself the power which makes it strike,"
-Carl Jung

“You must either conquer and rule or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer”
-Goethe

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
-Maslow

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
- Bernard Baruch

“Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up”
-Terry Pratchet

“It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.”
-Emily Dickinson

Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.
-Mao Tse-Tung

The burning sermons consecrate their sin
Between the hammer and the anvil
-Judas Priest

Hedge fund art

zipthwung said...

Exercise 2
My ancestors didn't think about fine art much,. They were into woven goods, pottery, ceramics, indian artifacts, book illustrations, engravings and newspaper photographs and mystery stories. They thought the makers of such objects were interesting.

In the future people who make the world more interesting should be revered and cherished as anachronistic inefficiencies.

Exercise 5

What would you like to see in the future of art in society?

No

What would you like to see in the way of new forms of art or further developments of old forms?

No

Write a half page on each question.

No

Exercise 1

What is a star jump?
I feel good.

Anonymous said...

Roma got great group near Bacon,
Serra is more painter than your picks.
looks like a massive invasion of kid books covers over here

Idon'tbathe said...

n

bobbabe said...

Old Guy said...

I'm getting Lee Losano and Lindsay Lohan mixed up.

LL is starting to feel like MM with a bigger brush.

I Old Guy knows nothing about either of them. Lozano had an interesting and complex life. Her parent's certainly didn't approve of her art or lifestyle, even before it went south. Much is written about her without taking into account her family.