Tag: louise lawler

While studying MoMA’s Louise Lawlers the other day, this little snapshot-sized print loomed larger than it does in real life. At first Truck (1978) seems like basic street photography, out of step with the art-in-the-wild practice Lawler became known for.

But then you realize the truck that gives the photo its name is in front of MoMA. And that MoMA has Sol LeWitt banners on it. Because LeWitt’s first US retrospective opened on February 3rd. Those Lines in Four Directions read immediately as LeWitt, but they don’t map immediately onto any works in the show or the catalogue. Combined with the Museum’s name along the top, I expect these were ads, not works in themselves.

The stripes sure reflect in the Harrison & Stone building’s glass panels, though. And for a second, it seems like they’ve gotten picked up by the protest signs on the street. Did LeWitt get picketed? No. Those are Daniel Buren stripes. And so 31yo Lawler has caught two of her [older] contemporaries in one shot on the street. Or, rather, two, since there’s a related picture called Volkswagen.

In fact, though, it was a setup. By Lawler herself. In 1978 Lawler and artist Chris D’Arcangelo helped organize and document ten performance works Buren staged in New York City, Twelve Ballets: Ballets #8 à #19. A continuation of his 1975 performance, Seven Ballets in Manhattan, the first two, Ballets Nos 8 & 9, were staged by Buren himself in late 1977. After Buren left, John Weber Gallery managed the rest of the project, which involved a group of five performers holding Buren-striped signs walking—and getting photographed—along various routes through town. Ballet No. 11, which went through midtown, happened on Febrary 2nd. Lawler’s photos of each performance are on Buren’s website—except for the two she made for herself, I guess.

Because now that we know they passed it, it seems like a choice that Buren’s photos don’t include MoMA, Even though 53rd Street & Sixth was the northwest corner corner of their route [a loop, I think, from 42nd & 6th, across 53rd to Lex, and then down to 4nd. Except Buren talks about walking along Fifth Avenue. idk] They do include the art protestors showing solidarity with some electricians picketing a jobsite, though. It’d be interesting to see Lawler’s contact sheets.

Until then, artist book dealer-turned-MoMA curator David Platzker does shed some light on Lawler’s process. His catalogue essay for MoMA’s 2017 Lawler show explores the development of the artist’s use of ephemera as an artistic medium. These two pictures—which he dates to Feb. 1st—were first printed as Kodak postcards, snapshots, then Lawler had them printed commercially. The examples Platzker and Susan Inglett donated to MoMA are from this offset run. With just the one word title and her name, date, and copyright on the back, they look like the barest definition of a postcard, and she apparently sent them out to people as such. Love that for her.

Louise Lawler’s Pollock and Tureen (Traced), 1984/2013, is installed magnificently at MoMA right now, with three of Lawler’s paperweight photos round about. It’s a vinyl adhesive print of a vector file of an illustration by Jon Buller of Lawler’s iconic 1984 photo, Pollock and Tureen Arranged by Mr & Mrs Burton Tremaine, that invites consideration of all the mediations and transformations between an artwork and a viewer.

Continue reading “Tracing Louise Lawler Traced”

At the New York preview for Christie’s Contemporary Evening Sale in May 1999, Louise Lawler made a photograph of a ghostly male figure with his hands behind his back, in front of Robert Gober’s Crib (1986) and Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #48 (1979), and next to Charles Ray’s Ink Drawing (1988). [lots 7, 10, and 12, respectively, btw]

She titled the photo, It could be Anthony d’Offay, wrapping the presence of one of the 20th century art market’s most recognizable and powerful figures with a bit of ambiguity.

1999 turns out to be the period of time when two different women who worked for d’Offay’s gallery in London said he subjected them to repeated, unwanted sexual advances and abuse.

One woman, then 25 and hired in 1998 as d’Offay’s assistant, who received an undisclosed settlement after leaving the gallery in 2000, described her experience on what could even have been the trip photographed by Lawler:

“He started taking me for meetings and appointments outside the gallery. He would hold on to my arm or put his arm around me. I thought it was not quite right, but dared not voice my discomfort,” she said. Her concerns deepened when he informed her that he would like her to accompany him to New York. “That’s when things escalated. He grew more touchy, and would put his hand around my waist, very close to my bum. There was no sense of boundary in respect to personal space.”

This quote, the report of these two women, plus another who complained of sex pestery and professional coercion and retaliation by d’Offay in 2004, were first made public in 2018 by The Guardian. D’Offay denied the accusations.

2018 was when Trevor Traina, the collector who purchased ed. 3/5 of Lawler’s photo, began serving as Donald Trump’s ambassador to Austria. Traina’s grandfather had also been an ambassador to Austria, in the Eisenhower era. His mother Dede Wilsey, a noted San Francisco socialite and longtime Republican donor, famously took control of the deYoung and Fine Arts Museum in 2011, after the director’s death. Traina’s Lawler was exhibited at the FAMSF in 2012, in a show titled, Reel to Reel: Photographs from the Trevor Traina Collection.

Next week Traina is selling 132 works from his collection, including the Lawler, in a single owner sale at Christie’s. “As part of an exciting and innovative partnership,” Christie’s effused, “all lots from this auction will be presented on the blockchain and offered with an associated digital certificate of ownership exclusively included with a Kresus wallet.” Traina is the founder and CEO of Kresus.

Part of the genius of Lawler’s work stems from her sensitivity to art’s context, and her ability to capture fleeting moments as it moves through the world. I think it’s hard to imagine another Lawler photo—or another example of this one—accruing as much 21st century history has this one has, even before it got put on the blockchain.

[update: estimated at USD10-15,000, it did not sell, but I presume the certificate was minted on Base as announced.]

It was a favorite in the Met’s Pictures Generation show. And I liked her recent, similar show at Metro Pictures. But hey-ho, how awesome does Louise Lawler’s show at Sprüth Magers look??
I mean, I might have been content to stop at the enlarged-to-fit, distorted vinyl mural of the oblique view of Gerhard Richter’s Staffel. But not Lawler.
From now on, I think the question demanded of any installation should be, “Why are you taking the giant disco ball out?”
No Drones, Louise Lawler, at Sprüth Magers in London through Dec. 23, 2011 [contemporaryartdaily.com, thanks andy]
Sprueth Magers London [spruethmagers.com]
Previously: last days of disco balls
Part disintegrating Deathstar, part disco ball

Of all the work in the Met’s Pictures Generation show, Jack Goldstein’s surprised and intrigued me the most, but I liked Louise Lawler’s the best. That Pollock/soup tureen photo that’s been making the marketing rounds for the show is smart and sublime.
But I was annoyed enough by the smugness of this wall text on another Lawler that I had to write it down. [And my iPhone typing technique was so bad, it’s taken me until now to decode what I wrote–and it turns out to be published on the Met’s site anyway]:

Arranged by Donald Marron, Susan Brundage, and Cheryl Bishop at Paine Webber, Inc. is both deadpan and poignant. Unlike the trophy paintings and sculpture hung proudly in reception areas, this trio of Lichtenstein multiples is lower down on the value scale and thus suitable for the decor of an office. The pictures hover like flies vying for the attention of a pair of anonymous bankers who ignore the “art” while struggling to send a fax. Lawler’s diminution of her role as an “author” is meant both to highlight the collaboration of others (here, Paine Webber CEO, Castelli Gallery rep, and corporate curator) and to direct the viewer outside the boundaries of the image and toward the real life of which art is always a part. It is unlikely, however, that any of the arrangers appreciated the irony that Lichtenstein’s pictures, originally meant to acknowledge (with a wink) their own status as commodities, now adorned the walls of an office copy room. What Lawler reveals is that the meaning of the artwork lies not in its origins but in its destiny. [emphasis added on the condescending, insidery part]

Really? And why, exactly, is that unlikely? I don’t know Brundage or Bishop, and I’ve only known Don Marron a bit over the years through my fundraising work at MoMA. But it doesn’t take a masters in curatorial studies to appreciate the ironies at play here; if anything, there are several layers of irony that seem to have been invisible from within the privileged wall text scriptorium at the Met.
First, there’s that wink. When Lichtenstein put Benday dots on a painting, it was an ironic commentary on art’s commodity status. When he cranked out prints for sale in editions of 250, not so much.
[One unintended irony: the two Lichtenstein comic panel prints, from 1965, are among his earliest and most important works. The artist himself considered “Sweet Dreams, Baby!” which was produced for the Original Art portfolio, “11 Pop Artists, vol. III,” to be among his first successful “Pop prints.” So while prints generally are considered to be “lower down the value scale” monetarily, these prints by this artist are in fact, quite significant art historically. Not that anyone at the Met is likely to appreciate that (wink).]
The fact that there are labels next to the works tells me they were selected and installed by Bishop or her Paine Webber staff, and that makes sense for a space that is probably not an office, but a common area or trading floor. But in the art-collecting corporations I’ve worked in, the commoditized nature of art–and viewer–was made exquisitely aware to you.

The Met’s curator may not know this, but it’s not unusual for employees to be permitted to choose the artwork for their office, and to have the value of the artwork be based on his seniority or profitability. First pick from the corporate collection can be as much of a perk or as the view or number of ceiling tiles you get.
But none of that is the reason the Met’s wallquote bugged me so much. As awesome as I’m sure it is to be there, or to have your work shown there, or in the collection, the Met–any museum, really–is still a mausoleum for art. Lawler’s work is so fascinating precisely because it explores the life [sic] of art outside of the white-glove, white cube of the museum, and it gains power from the unexpected resonance between the autumnal colors of a Pollock and the Qing porcelain; between a Lichtenstein print and a fax machine. It should be a reminder of what gets lost when art’s only presumed destiny it do end up in a museum. But it’s unlikely that anyone at the Met can appreciate that irony.
update: Louise Lawler, on the other hand, sounds awesome. As does the late Mrs. Burton Tremaine, whose tureen and Pollock that was. In conjunction with a 2007 show in Geneva reuniting the Tremaine Series, Andrea Miller-Keller, the Wadsworth Atheneum curator who gave Lawler her first museum show and who introduced her to the Tremaines, has compiled a pdf of articles, interviews, and documentation about the series and the people. [2026: updated link] Mrs. Tremaine provided the subtitle, “You’re going to love the thermostat next to the Miro.”