Lucy R. Lippard
Lucy R. Lippard (1937, New York City) is an art historian, curator, writer and activist. As a critic, Lippard is best known for her study of conceptual art in Six Years: the Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 and for her writing on feminist art and politically engaged art. Lippard has curated over 50 exhibitions and currently resides in Galisteo, New Mexico.
Lippard was an active member of the Art Workers Coalition, an open coalition of artists and art workers founded in 1969 to pressure cultural institutions to take a stand on political issues of the day, including the Vietnam war. She was one of the founders of Printed Matter established in 1976 by Sol Lewitt and others to distribute artists' books. Lippard has written on artists' publications, particularly in connection to conceptual art's strategies of "dematerialization". She was an early proponent of the concept of the artist's book as a "democratic multiple" and famously called for artists' books to appear in "supermarkets, drugstores, and airports" rather than artistic venues.[1]
In 1979, Lippard founded the Political Art Documentation/Distribution archive, which was donated to the MoMA Library in 1989; the PAD/D collection features materials related to ACT UP, Guerrilla Girls, Keith Haring, Gregory Sholette, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, among others.
Publications
Books
- Lippard, et al., Pop Art, New York: Praeger, 1966, 216 pp. With contributions by Lawrence Alloway, Nancy Marmer, and Nicolas Calas.
- Pop art, trans. Wim Gijsen, The Hague: Gaade, 1966, 216 pp. (Dutch)
- Pop art, trans. Roberto Sanesi, Milan: Gabriele Mazzotta, 1967, 256 pp. (Italian)
- Pop Art, Belgrade: Jugoslavija, 1967. Review: Rus (ZU). (Serbo-Croatian)
- Poppu āto [ポップ・アート], trans. Atsushi Miyakawa, Tokyo: Kinokuniya Shoten, 1967, 216 pp. (Japanese)
- Pop art, trans. Wolfgang Längsfeld and Margarete Längsfeld, Munich: Droemer Knaur, 1968, 236 pp. (German)
- Le pop art, Paris: Hazan, 1969, 216 pp. (French)
- Pop art, trans. Giōrgos Tassopoulos, Athens: Ekdoseis Hypodomē, 1984, 248 pp. (Greek)
- El pop art, trans. Nicolas Calas, Barcelona: Destino, 1993, 216 pp. (Spanish)
- 팝 아트 : 예술과 상품의 경계에 서다, 2011. (Korean)
- editor, Surrealists on Art, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970, 213 pp.
- editor, Dadas on Art: Tzara, Arp, Duchamp and Others, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971, xii+178 pp. [2]
- Changing: Essays in Art Criticism, New York: Dutton, 1971, 320 pp.
- Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972; A Cross-Reference Book of Information on Some Esthetic Boundaries, New York: Praeger, 1973, xxii+272 pp.
- Seis años, trans. Luz Rodríguez Olivares, 2004. (Spanish)
- Eva Hesse, New York: New York University Press, 1976.
- From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women's Art, New York: Dutton, 1976.
- I See / You Mean, Los Angeles: Chrysalis Books, 1979; new ed., afterw. Susana Torre, ed. Jeff Khonsary, Los Angeles: New Documents, 2021, 224 pp. Experimental novel. [3]
- Yo veo / Tú significas, trans. Paloma Checa-Gismero, Bilbao: Consonni, 2016, 233 pp. [4] (Spanish)
- Ad Reinhardt, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1981, 216 pp.
- Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory, New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.
- Obeorei, trans. Hyeongmin Yun, Seoul: Hyeonsil Munhwa Yeongu, 2019. (Korean)
- Get the Message? A Decade of Art for Social Change, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1984, 343 pp.
- Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America, New York: Pantheon Books, 1990, vii+278 pp; new ed., New York: The New Press, 2000.
- A Different War: Vietnam in Art, Bellingham, WA: Whatcom Museum of History and Art, 1990.
- The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Essays on Feminist Art, New York: The New Press, 1995, viii+342 pp.
- The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, New York: New Press, 1998. Part 1 of 5.
- On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place, New York: New Press, 1999.
- Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West, New York: New Press, 2014.
- Pueblo Chico: Land and Lives in Galisteo since 1814, Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2020, 304 pp. Review: Warzel.
Catalogues
- "Number shows"
A series of four exhibitions named for the populations of the cities they were held in. Their catalogues are made up of collections of loose black-and-white index cards containing statements, documentation, and conceptual works by each artist, to be rearranged, filed, or discarded at will.
- 557,087, Seattle: Contemporary Art Council of the Seattle Art Museum, 1969, [95] cards. Consists of 95 10cm x 15cm index cards. Exh. held at the Seattle Art Museum Pavilion, 5 Sep-5 Oct 1969. About. [5]
- 955,000, Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1970, [137] cards. Consists of 95 10cm x 15cm index cards from the previous show in Seattle with 42 new index cards added; in total 71 artists from North America and Europe participated. Exh. held at the Vancouver Art Gallery, 13 Jan-8 Feb 1970. [6] [7]
- 2,972,453, Buenos Aires: Centro de Arte e Communicacion, 1970, [43] cards. Consists of 43 cards; included only artists that were not part of the first two exhibitions held in Seattle and Vancouver. Exh. opened 4 Dec 1970. [8] [9] [10]
- c.7,500, Valencia, CA: California Institute of the Arts, 1973, [30] cards. Included only women artists. (incl. Wadsworth Atheneum, ICA Boston, Smith College, and Walker Art Center). Exh. held May 1973-Feb 1974 at the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA. Afterwards traveled to six other venues: ICA Boston; Moore College of Art, Philadelphia; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Royal College of Art, London; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA. [11] [12]
- 4,492,040, ed. Jeff Khonsary, afterw. Lucy R. Lippard, Los Angeles and Vancouver: New Documents, 2012. Facsimile reprint of all four of the catalogues, with a new afterword by Lippard. [13]
- Other
- Sniper's Nest: Art That Has Lived with Lucy R. Lippard, ed. David Frankel, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: Center for Curatorial Studies/Bard College, 1996, iv+104 pp.
Editor
- co-editor, Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, New York: Heresies Collective, 1977-93.
Essays
- "Eccentric Abstraction", Art International 10:9 (Nov 1966); upd. in Lippard, Changing: Essays in Art Criticism, 1971, pp 98-111.
- "Change and Criticism: Consistency and Small Minds", Art International 9:9, New York, Nov 1967; repr. in Lippard, Changing: Essays in Art Criticism, 1971, pp 23-34.
- with John Chandler, "The Dematerialization of Art", Art International 12:2, New York, Feb 1968, pp 31-36; repr. in Lippard, Changing: Essays in Art Criticism, 1971, pp 255-276; repr. in Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, eds. Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson, MIT Press, 1999, pp 46-50. Written in late 1967. [14]
- "La desmaterialización del arte", trans. Jaime Arrambide, in Sistemas, Acciones y Procesos, 1965-1975, ed. Rodrigo Alonso, PROA, 2011, pp 106-116. (Spanish)
- "The Art Workers' Coalition: Not a History", Studio International 180, Nov 1970. [15] [16]
- "Give and Take: Ideology in the art of Suzanne Lacy and Jerry Kearns", in Art & Ideology, New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984, pp 29-38. Catalogue essay.
- "The Artist's Book Goes Public", Art in America, Jan-Feb 1977; repr. in Lippard, Get the Message? A Decade of Art for Social Change, E.P. Dutton, 1984, pp 48-52; repr. in Artists' Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook, ed. Lyons, 1985, pp 45-48.
- "Conspicuous Consumption: New Artists' Books", in Artists' Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook, ed. Lyons, 1985, pp 49-59.
- "Skärningspunkter / Intersections", trans. Tua Waern, in Flyktpunkter, Stockholm: Moderna museet, 1984, 11-29. (Swedish)/(English)
- "Andres Serrano: The Spirit and The Letter", Art in America, Apr 1990, 238-245.
- "Escape Attempts", in Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965–1975, eds. Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorimer, Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, and Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995. [17]
- "On and Off the Map", in Lippard, The Lure of the Local, 1997, pp 75-82.
- "Time Capsule", in Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader, eds. Will Bradley and Charles Esche, London: Tate Publishing, 2007, pp 408-421.
- "Curating by Numbers", Tate Papers 12: "Landmark Exhibitions", London: Tate, Autumn 2009.
- "In the Cards", in Lippard, 4,492,040, ed. Jeff Khonsary, Los Angeles and Vancouver: New Documents, 2012.
- "Introduction", in Kate Bonansinga, Curating at the Edge: Artists Respond to the U.S./Mexico Border, University of Texas Press, 2014.
Interviews
- Julie Ault, "Interview with Lucy R. Lippard on Printed Matter", Dec 2006.
- "Number Shows: Process of Attrition. Lucy R. Lippard in Conversation with Antony Hudek", Flash Art 281, Nov-Dec 2011.
Literature
- Materializing Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, eds. Catherine Morris and Vincent Bonin, MIT Press, and New York: Brooklyn Museum of Art, 2012.
- Julia Bryan-Wilson, "Still Relevant: Lucy Lippard, Feminist Activism, and Art Institutions", pp 70-92.
- Sabeth Buchmann, "Curating with/in the System", OnCurating 26: "Curating Degree Zero Archive: Curatorial Research", Oct 2015. On Lippard's 'Number shows'.
- Genese Grill, "Re-Materialization, Remoteness, and Reverence: A Critique of De-Materialization in Art", Georgia Review 70:3, Fall 2016, pp 563-581; repr.," Caesura, Sep 2020; repr. in Grill, Portals: Reflections on the Spirit in Matter, Splice 2022.
- Karen Benezra, "Introduction", in Benezra, Dematerialization: Art and Design in Latin America, University of California Press, 2020.