Good afternoon.
I'd like to welcome you
to the Diamonstein-Spielvogel
Lecture Series, which provides
a forum for distinguished
artists to discuss the genesis
and evolution of their work
in their own words.
Dr. Barbara Lee
Diamonstein-Spielvogel
and Ambassador Carl Spielvogel
generously endowed these series
in 1997 to make
such conversations
available to the public,
and I'd like to thank Ali Peil
and her team
for organizing the event.
American artist Zoe Leonard
is this year's speaker.
Zoe, who was born in Liberty,
New York, in 1961, is acclaimed
for the sculpture
and photography she has made
over the past three decades.
While the subject matter
in her photography
ranges widely, it's informed
by an incisive, critical
scrutiny of the conventions,
protocols, and politics of image
making and display.
Her work has been featured
in numerous solo and group
shows,
including a 2007 retrospective
that toured in Europe,
exhibitions at the Dia Art
Foundation in 2010,
and the Museum of Modern Art New
York in 2015, Documenters 9
and 12,
and the Whitney Biennials
in 1993, 1997, and most
recently, 2014
when she won the Bucksbaum
Award.
Her show, Zoe Leonard Survey,
will open at the Whitney Museum
of American Art in early
March 2018--
so very soon-- and then travel
to MOCA, the Museum
of Contemporary Art in Los
Angeles.
Today's lecture will take
the form of a discussion
between the two of us.
Please join me in welcoming Zoe.
[APPLAUSE]
So in 1997, in the Whitney
Biennial, you exhibited the Fae
Richards Photo Archive-- a work
comprising, say, some 82
photographic prints together
with notes and captions.
And I thought you might begin
talking about it,
partly because it's here and so
people can see it,
and partly because of the way
it offers an entry
into your practice,
to thinking about issues
and ways of working that have
run
through your work
over the past several decades.
So how did it come about?
Well first, I just really want
to say hello.
[LAUGHTER]
And thank you, Lynn, for--
I'm so incredibly honored
to be part of the show
and to be here today.
So thank you.
[INAUDIBLE]
I feel like there's going to be
crying.
[LAUGHTER]
Hopefully not.
But happy tears.
But it's just incredible to see
one's--
to have one's work put
in the context that's
so wide-ranging and profoundly
questioning of who we are
and how we build societies
and what it means to be
American.
I keep hearing people say, oh,
it's amazing,
it's extraordinary--
the show-- and I feel like I
haven't found the word yet
that encompasses just how big it
is.
So it's been great to come
and walk through the show.
This piece, to bring it back
to my work for a moment,
this piece I made--
I was requested to make it.
The film filmmaker Cheryl Dunye,
who was a young filmmaker
at the time,
had an idea for a film she
wanted to make in which
the protagonist gets
interested in a character
actor in a few Hollywood films,
and someone who's only credited
with the nomer "Watermelon
Woman."
And she becomes
interested in this character,
and she researches her.
So it was going to be kind
of like a faux-documentary,
but this person didn't exist.
So Cheryl came to me and said,
you know, "Could you put
together a body of photographs
that would make this character
believable-- like,
make her seem historically
as if she had lived?"
And first we were like, "Oh,
can we scrabble together things
from flea markets?"
But of course, that wouldn't
work.
I kind of sat down with Cheryl
and put together a timeline
of Fae Richards' life
and then thought
about the instances at which she
could have been photographed.
And then we figured out how,
with absolutely no money
and just a lot of friends
and all their borrowed clothes
and furniture and expertise,
over the course of about a year
we sort of developed
the storyline that would be
these photographs.
And then I shot them and worked
with a few assistants,
and actually the cast and crew
list are part of the artwork.
So within the artwork,
it's evident that it's a fiction
and that it was made
collaboratively.
So everyone who was part of it
is sort of also
part of the artwork.
And after the shooting,
I was going to head
in the darkroom,
and I was like, this is a lot
of work.
And I know that I have,
as every photographer does,
my own printing style.
And I didn't want it to look
like it was all shot by one
person.
So I asked a number of friends--
I think we had a group of seven
or eight people,
including Al Steiner, Jack
Louth, other people that people
in the room know--
and asked each person to sort
of embody the character of one
of the photographers.
And so one person printed like,
all the glamor shots as if they
were that photographer,
and someone else
was like the news photographer,
and someone else was
like the snapshot photographer.
So we sort of distributed them,
printed them all separately
in editions,
and then had these kind
of parties
where we handled them and left
them out in the rain
and spilled tea and coffee
on them and wrinkled them
and walked on them, until they--
so that they would resemble
photographs that had actually
been out in the world.
So yeah, in a nutshell, that's
it.
So there are
many different types
of photographers.
You said film stills, publicity
pictures, family snapshots,
casual images,
shot with and printed so they'd
look differently.
Yeah.
You obviously have a very deep
knowledge
of photographic histories
and traditions,
technical processes,
but you don't have
a formal academic training.
And I understand you left school
early on-- high school--
but you started making art
quickly.
Do you think it's necessary
for an artist working
in photography to have this
knowledge, to acquire these
kinds of in-depth technical
skills and to know the history
of the medium--
not, do they need to go to art
school?
You've found other ways-- you go
to museums often, you had older
friends who are photographers,
I understand, so--
That's such a great question.
I don't think anyone's ever
asked me that before.
It's a tough one, because I
think rendering an image
on your phone,
or even on an analog camera,
is really easy.
But making a good picture
is something else entirely,
and figuring out what you want
your pictures to mean
means that you have to figure
out what you want them to look
like.
Like, that's how you communicate
meaning.
It's not just the image
material.
It's, is it dark or light?
Is it color or black and white?
Is it soft or sharp?
Is it-- does it have a lot
of depth of field?
Is it big?
Is it small?
Is it digital?
Is it analog?
So I think, as in any other art
form,
you have to learn your medium.
And whether that's
through formal training
or through accident
or through trial and error,
I think, in order to develop
your voice as an artist,
that's what artists do.
That's actually what art is.
I read this really great--
there was a section in this very
well known--
Linda Nochlin essay, "Why Have
There Been No Great Women
Artists?"
The whole other conversation,
but not unrelated to this one.
But there's a section where she
talks
about a public misunderstanding
of what art is,
and I'm paraphrasing wildly
and loosely right now,
but that art is not
an experience or a feeling
or an idea.
It's a practice where something
is actually materially realized
in a certain--
with a certain language that
is developed and honed and made
specific to what it is
you want to say.
And so photography, yeah.
Can anyone take a picture?
Absolutely.
But if it's a practice,
you've got to get to know--
you've got to get to know
the range of it.
And that's not about it being
a traditionally high-quality,
fine art print.
That doesn't mean it's a better
photograph.
It can be the rattiest, just
shittiest, most blurriest,
blown-out, nastiest thing,
if that's what you want to talk
about.
That's what the picture should
look like.
So yeah.
And really, from the beginning,
when we look back to early work,
it's often double-dated,
and it's dated with the year you
took the image, and it could be
four years later
and it has a second date.
Mm-hmm.
And that's because over four
years, you thought about which
paper, what size,
how dark the print,
and so forth.
And maybe context.
That's pretty unusual, Zoe.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, so I hear.
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, it can be--
sometimes it can be a matter
of months.
Sometimes it can be
as long as 10 or 12 or 15 years.
And a lot of that
is figuring out the print.
I think one could say--
I've said this before--
but that maybe your negative is
your score, and the print is
the performance.
So you have the bones of what it
is that you want to make or say.
But then the performance
is something you really have
to think about.
Sometimes, it's also that I
don't--
sometimes you just don't know
what to do with something.
I like these,
these are interesting,
but I really don't know what I'm
trying to say with them,
and they go back in the drawer.
And they keep coming back out
and your like, eh.
And some of them,
you just eventually are like,
that's actually just terrible.
And others keep coming back
and asking you to resolve them.
And at some very surprising
later moment, you're like, "Oh!
Yeah!
Remember that--" scrounge
around in the drawer till you
find those negatives.
So perhaps there
is a real affinity with writing,
where the generating material
and then the kind of editing
process and the honing process--
there's a real relationship
there, to that kind of--
the stages of work.
And you look at a lot
of photography, very widely.
Yeah.
As much as I can.
And so some of what you're
looking at
is amateur photography,
one could say.
Some of it's
like topographical shots
from airplanes,
scientific photography connected
to astronomy.
It's not just
different techniques-- they're
made for different purposes.
And they usually have--
the aesthetics are not foremost
in the photographer's mind.
Do you see those as somehow
in a different category?
Is it that photography
so broadly based in the culture
and its so many different ends?
What happens when work like that
enters the art museum?
OK, wow, that was a lot
of different questions.
OK, so I think this sort
of dovetails with something
really, I think, important
about the role the photography
plays in this show,
and the fact that photography
has always been a kind
of outlier within the museum
and within fine art.
Photography came
from like a bunch of--
I mean, there's a naturally
occurring phenomenon
of the camera obscura
that this thing happens
with light,
when there's a small aperture.
But then a bunch of, like,
kooky guys in the 19th century
who were burning mercury
in their basement and, like,
dragging glass plates
down canyons
and fixing the image.
So it wasn't really--
it never had, and I don't think
it ever will,
have the status of painting--
the kind
of serious, cultural high-art
value of painting.
And that's what I love about it,
actually.
I don't mean
to diss photography.
I think it's a fundamentally
different kind of practice.
Photographs are used--
they're a vernacular,
they're utilitarian,
they're popular, they're--
now we've all got it
in our pockets.
It's a whole other kind
of language that hasn't ever
been really sanctified
within the museum,
although I think there's
a certain amount of respect
for it.
I think it's always been
a little bit of a shaky ground,
of like, where does it actually
belong in the museum?
And there have been--
there's sort of an early turn
of last century movement--
the pictorialist movement--
where the highest compliment was
like, oh, that's so painterly--
where the photographs were
trying to sort of mimic a kind
of painting.
And, whatever-- if you want
to go that route, why not just
paint?
Although there's some great,
great work done in that field,
and I've never been interested
in that.
I've always kind of been
fascinated by the practitioners
that wanted to really have
the camera in the world,
doing what the camera does.
And there's the whole, kind
of, middle of last century--
well, there's all
the experimental, European--
and then the middle of last
century where street photography
came into its own and came
into the museum--
Friedlander, Frank, Lisette
Modell, Arbus.
But there is still always
this argument of, like,
is this really art?
And I think what's so great
about our moment and some
of the proposals in this show is
that it's just, we can kind
of skip over that whole argument
and kind of look at it for what
it is and what it does, and love
it on those terms and not try
to make it into something that
it isn't.
Does that make any sense?
Mm-hmm.
So yeah.
And do you think
that's reflected in the fact
that many contemporary artists
who use photography,
either exclusively like Cindy
Sherman, or a great deal,
as you do, but not exclusively,
tend to self-identify as artists
who use photography,
and not Thomas Struth,
I would think.
In many ways, they're not--
the ones who call themselves
photographers
often tend to come out
of that very refined, modernist
practice strand and moving
forward,
and that the point
of the broader term artist
is that the medium is in service
to a vision of whatever that
might be.
Do you think that's just,
like all the problems, what I
call "term warfare" that
dominates this field?
People deciding this is folk,
no, this is outsider,
this is isolate-- where,
in the end, they're historically
determined, and they shift
constantly.
But it's the frame that makes
the meaning--
the context in which the word
occurs and when it's coined
or when it has currency.
Yeah, I think that's a really--
yeah.
That's super interesting.
And the parsing out of terms
in your essay for this show
is so clarifying.
And I think the only way
to present this work, there had
to be a new term,
because each and every one
of those other terms,
whether they were laudatory
or whether they were dismissive,
had baggage.
And so this allows it
a new frame that suits
the proposal of the show,
or the proposition.
In photography, you know, I sort
of--
I am not against being called
a photographer.
There was definitely a time
in the '90s--
early '90s-- which is kind
of when I really started showing
seriously as an artist who uses
photography, and I think that
was a way to--
I began showing in art galleries
that were not photography
galleries.
They're, like, dedicated
photography galleries.
And there's this sort
of photo-photo world.
I know there are people here who
know about that--
Andrea Geyer, front and center
here.
And then there's
a sort of large field
of contemporary art,
and the galleries and museums
that are interested in that.
So it communicated
that your work could be shown
in a different kind of context,
and it allowed one's work
to be considered on peer
with other people that weren't
working in photography.
And I was always
more comfortable in that kind
of wider-ranging
and more promiscuous
kind of pairing.
And one thing I wanted to say
about that, when you were
saying, oh, I look at a lot
of photography
and lots of different kinds
of photography--
I also look at everything else.
And I think this is another one
of the amazing things
about the number
of different mediums
that are in this show, but very
much the way that artists live
their lives.
Often, art historians
or academics or the sort of,
the process of art history,
draws clean lineages
for artists.
Like, oh, painters come
from this painter
and this painter
and this painter,
and then you're the heir
to this blah, blah, blah.
And the fact is that artists'
lives, for the most part,
have a whole other kind
of horizontal or oblique set
of relationships and influences
that are about going to poetry
readings
and watching television,
and the range of influence
is way outside your medium.
But now I've lost the question
I was answering before.
I have, too.
Whatever.
Well--
It was terminology and category.
Yeah.
But I think, yeah.
I'll take either.
I say I'm an artist usually
because I work in a number
of different medium,
but when I work in photography,
it's not something that I
consider ancillary.
When I'm a full-on photographer,
and I think it's my home--
my artistic home.
The sculptures that I make,
the installations that I make,
the other work that I do,
I think is deeply committed
to the ideas
of photographic seeing.
And the terms of observation
and recording and understanding
and temporality
and all the things that I learn
and think
about through photography--
those same principles,
they travel around with me
to these other medium.
And does that include writing?
There's a text of yours that's
out there that's getting
a lot of attention now--
"I Want a President--"
but I'd also look at an essay
you wrote a couple of years
back for James Castle's show.
A really wonderful catalog
essay.
So they're two very different
forms of expression.
But the amount of time
and effort and crafting
that goes into them, seems to me
it's comparable to making
a work, whether or not you call
it a work.
Is that part of your, just--
the kind of highly
responsible, committed way
you approach what you do?
In a broader sense.
I mean, I would love to consider
myself
responsible and committed--
[LAUGHTER]
And I'll take that, too,
along with artist
and photographer.
But it started much more
organically than that.
As a teenager, I was like one
of those kids that knew I was
an artist.
But I wasn't sure if I was
an artist or a writer.
And I always had the notebook,
and it was, like, in the coffee
shop all night long,
writing in the notebook.
You know, like moody and just
writing in the notebook.
[LAUGHTER]
And then there was the camera.
So it was-- they're really,
they're very different,
but they're really
good companions.
The camera and the notebook
are these two kind
of small things
you can carry with you
and record what's happening,
record the world.
But also sort of intercede
or have a way to understand.
Looking and feeling the world
is such a big thing.
We're all doing it, all
the time, and it's kind of
overwhelming.
And so processing that material,
thinking about it, for me it was
always writing about it
or taking pictures of it
were ways to look more closely
or to give myself the space
and time to think about what I'm
seeing, what am I experiencing,
taking a little note.
It's about remembering it.
But I think it's more than just
about writing something down
to remember it.
It's actually in that moment,
you're helping yourself process.
People do that in museums, too.
You're like, oh-- you know.
Are you ever going to look
at that scrap of paper again?
Probably not.
But in that moment,
it's sort of giving you
the space to--
something was
special about that, and I wanted
to take note of it.
So the writing
and the photography sort of
came up together.
And there was definitely
a moment when I was
in my precocious teens
where I thought maybe
I was a writer.
And I'm definitely not.
I mean, I'm friends with really
good--
I read a lot, and like Eileen
Myles, who's the person who ran
for president the year that I
wrote "I Want
a Dyke for President,"
she is a poet.
And she thinks it's hilarious
that I'm being referred to as
a poet, and that that's referred
to as a poem.
And it's great-- I'll take that
too.
I'm like, yeah, I'm a poet.
But you know-- but I'm not,
I'm not like a poet,
like a serious poet.
They know, you know?
They know poetry in a way that I
don't.
I read it, I love it.
And I wouldn't call myself
a writer.
But writing is an important part
of thinking and making for me,
and it's something I do
in the studio a lot.
I also draw in the studio a lot.
It's a way to start diagramming
and thinking and parsing ideas
out, and to do something active
when you don't know what to do
in the studio.
And I know every artist here--
right, you're in the studio,
and you're like, "Oh my god.
What am I doing here today?
I've got to stay here
for at least a few hours
to make it look like I'm real."
But you're like, "Ugh!"
You know.
So you do something.
Sketch out the ideas,
write out the--
just start gathering material.
Count postcards.
Try it.
It has all
these different functions,
and every once in a
while there's a request
or a charge to make a finished
essay.
And Castle is just one
of those artists
that, the second I first saw
his work, I was like,
who is this person
and what are they doing
and what are they making?
And so it was really
exciting to be asked to write
for that catalog.
But it's long.
And to all the writers--
oh my god.
It's hard.
You people really work.
It's-- writing is so hard.
Yeah.
Maybe we can look at an image--
and I want to look
particularly--
you've used postcards
in a number of works,
but I'm particularly
interested in this
because this is a postcard rack
at Mass MOCA, and here are some
of the cards.
And we talked at one point about
including this in the show.
Yeah.
And in the way that things
evolve, it didn't happen.
But can you say something
about it?
Its genesis, and maybe how you
think it might have fitted?
OK, yeah.
I made this piece--
there are very few times when
I've made a work specifically
for a show.
This is one of those times.
I was invited to participate
in a show called Yankee Remix;
Ann Hamilton was also
in that show
and made an incredibly beautiful
piece.
It was at Mass MOCA, and they--
Mass MOCA was doing
a collaboration
with a local historical society,
the Society for the Preservation
of New England Artifacts-- it
was like, SPNEA, is what I
remember.
Anyway, we were-- perhaps
a dozen artists were invited
to go through the really
substantial holdings
of this historic society.
They owned a number
of historical houses, including
one modernist one and the rest
were sort of more colonial
houses.
Lorna Simpson was also
in the show--
made a knock
out video, two-channel video
piece,
in using two
of the historical houses.
So we were all invited
to respond to or use, or somehow
work with, the holdings
of this historical society.
And they had this--
there were the houses
and the furniture in them,
and you could work with that.
And then they had
this crazy, gigantic, freezing
cold warehouse in, I think,
Reading, Massachusetts, where
you could paw
through an enormous amount
of inventoried Americana
and make something.
So I went through a bunch
of different ideas,
as one does, and then decided
that I wanted to make this--
it sort of started, I think,
where I was photographing
objects I was interested
in or attracted to.
But it began to hone down more
to things that the rack--
I think there were 36
different postcards,
and the piece was called,
For Which It Stands.
And I thought about how,
in their totality,
they could be some kind
of composite set of notions
about what it is to be American.
I think the year was--
I think it was the year we were
going to the Iraq war.
And so there were objects that
were either,
like, interesting or funny or
tragic, but that seemed somehow
loaded in a specific way.
Some of them were just,
like, the Scholl's sandals.
They were, like,
things I remembered from being
a teenager.
But there were a few items
that I found in the collection
that began to drive the work
and that changed the work.
The embroidery on the right
was an embroidered fire screen.
It's something you put in front
of the fire
so it wasn't too hot.
And it says "We's Free,"
and there are two
African-American or dark skinned
people dancing.
And I was like, whoa.
OK.
This is changing the project.
And then this painting
of a child with those books
where you learn the alphabet,
and you can see in the close
up it says "C is for cat
and D is for darkie."
And I thought, "OK," again.
The project is taking
a little bit
of a different spin.
And then I asked about flags,
and they had this amazing flag.
And there was a lot of cowboys
and Indians.
So I sort of--
I photographed different things.
I've always loved, I really love
post cards.
A lot.
And I've always loved
that really old-fashioned kind
of museum
postcard that's just
like a color background
and then, like, the object.
Like, this is the Ming Vase,
or this is the whatever.
And some of those from the '50s
and '60s, it's like,
oh my god, the pinks
and the greens!
Or sometimes there's
like a shelf, but they put
fabric over it so you can't see
the shelf, even though you can
see the shelf.
But it's like, this is
my object.
And it's very
different than advertising.
It's not like food styling.
It's like-- it's this very
particular kind of presentation
of an object that's supposed
to be classy.
It's like, this is museum
worthy.
So I was like, yeah.
I want that.
And I don't really know anything
about lighting.
I've never-- I always use
available light.
So the Mass MOCA had a kind
of north--
in their work spaces upstairs,
a kind of north window gallery.
So we just set up a table,
and Jocelyn Davis, who I don't--
did Jocelyn make it down here?
Oh, Jocelyn, who is, like,
beloved--
has worked with me for 20,
some 20 years now.
She was like, the steaming--
because she knows how to sew,
and so was steaming the fabric.
And so we had this whole crazy
set up with her.
And then it was a museum,
so it was
like the puffy slippers
and the gloves
and like a trolley of objects.
The objects we're pulling
from the collection.
And we had a blast.
And we're like, oh, OK.
Bring me that Burger King crown
now, please.
[LAUGHTER]
Oh, yeah-- "Oh, put your gloves
on!"
[LAUGHTER]
So the way photography, again,
can be moved from being "this is
an artwork,"
but the use of photography
is as documentation,
and it's taking on a really
specific style of photography
that communicates something
about the relative value
of different kinds of objects.
And by putting all
these different kinds of objects
on a horizontal plane,
in terms of their treatment,
the piece asked the question
about their relative value
and what they mean cumulatively
in the museum,
and what they mean
dispersed in the world
as individual items.
There was also a thing where you
could buy the postcards.
There was, like, an honor box
there, and you could just put
in, I think it was $0.50 a card
or something.
And there was some math about,
like, once the things were sold,
we could print them again.
Of course, that never happened.
But I was thinking about how,
then, these images, separated
from their other constituent
parts,
and separated from the museum--
what would this image mean when
it ended up on someone's
refrigerator somewhere else?
The way the postcards traveled
through the world,
or how they did then.
I mean, it's not as much so now,
but I don't know.
Ideas of, kind of,
commerce and democracy.
Ideas of class and distribution,
which I think
are very much at play here.
All the different kinds
of objects, and what
does it mean to wrestle them
free from their category
and put them next to each other
and re-evaluate them for what
they are,
and how they were made,
and what they look like?
And their meaning shifts when
you give them space.
It's interesting,
because the photograph
with the neutral, monochrome
background and the object
purports to be a documentation
of the object.
But given the way photographs
like that--
or, postcards like that--
are not current,
that's the signifying system
of the whole visual language.
You've just described is what
dominates.
And what I find interesting
is how it opens up a discussion
we were having yesterday, which
goes back to an earlier
discussion.
And that's in the first gallery
of the exhibition,
there are two Charles Sheeler
photographs of a house
in Doylestown
that he rented and photographed
in 1917.
So they're very
early in Sheeler's career,
and they're amongst the earlier
works in the show.
And they're the only photographs
for the first eight galleries
or so.
I mean, there's no photography
until we get to Fae Richards.
And we talked about the Sheeler
a lot, and whether these two
photographs would be anomalous,
and why start a conversation
about photography when it's not
going to be played through,
or seemingly not being played
through for a while.
But in that room, there's also
the Index of American design,
which is some 18,000 watercolor
renderings, which were made
as part of a New Deal project
beginning in 1937.
And as a New Deal project,
it was partly generated
to provide jobs
for commercial artists
and illustrators
and other artists who were
out of work
as a consequence
of the Depression.
But it had multiple purposes.
And one of the others
was to make a kind of archive
of representative but fine
examples of decorative objects
and applied arts objects
and religious artifacts and so
forth nationwide.
As it happened, the Index didn't
set up offices in the South,
and so there are very few
objects from the South.
But they are pretty widespread,
and the watercolor renderings
are made to very
strict conventions,
in terms of representation,
the size of the page,
the angle at which a piece
of furniture
is represented and so on.
So the people working
on the project were vetted,
and then they were given
strict instructions,
and in fact, sometimes,
if the work was thought not
to measure up, it was rejected.
But the choice of watercolor
for this vast project--
Amazing.
Over photography, and you think,
this is 1937--
watercolor was chosen
because the organizers
of the Index
asked the advice
of archaeologists
and Egyptologists
about watercolor
versus photography.
And they were advised
that watercolor would be
a better medium to use,
because it provided more
information.
And that's so interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so we have the Sheeler
photographs, which one might
think--
though, probably not-- that they
document the building
because they don't.
They're clearly something else--
the poetic truth
and the formal resolution.
Take them into another kind
of arena, and that's obvious
immediately.
But reading it back in relation
to these postcards
and your interest in postcards
more broadly, as you've used
them in other projects, the idea
of truth and representation
and how the vernacular plays
into that,
I know it's a huge question,
but say something about some
of it.
I know.
How much time do we have?
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, it sounds so
absurd to say
that the watercolors would give
you more information.
But in a funny way,
I can see that that's true.
Like sometimes, if you're going
to build something,
it's like drawing a diagram--
there's something diagrammatic
about the emphasis
that you can give, the details
that can sort of inform--
texture, or you're not bound
by the specific lighting
conditions that a photograph.
As to the larger question,
I think Sheeler is such
an interesting figure
in this show,
partly because he is recognized
as a mainstream fine
American artist.
But he had a hybrid practice
and was working in photography
as much as in painting.
And I think you could argue
that the photographs are
every bit as important
as the paintings.
And then in the paintings,
there's this abundance of folk
art objects and shaker objects
and textiles, and so there's
also a kind of inventorying
that's happening
in these paintings, too.
We were having a sort
of broad conversation
with a group of friends,
and sort of these ideas
of a clean or perfect modernism,
or the myth of the kind
of clean and perfect modernism,
versus one that is more complex
and still
has to do with the uses
of the hand.
And it's not all about machine
production and industry.
But that, you know, Sheeler
would stand alongside Strand
and a number
of other modernist photographers
as kind of paramounts.
But there is this, all
this other kind of material,
because of the way that he's
switching back and forth
and because of the way that he
so clearly shows you and tells
you
about his love
of these historic objects,
and these folk
objects, and the baskets,
and the quilts, and the rugs.
And he has definite areas
of concentration, but it's also
pretty broad.
Like, he's looking at a lot
of different things.
And showing both sides,
I think it starts to open up
another axial possibility
for the show, which is that even
within the categories
that we think are known,
there are also surprises
and other hinges out.
And then there's the way
that, when you come all the way
around to the end of the show,
the last photographs in the show
are Greer Lankton.
And so Greer is someone who's,
like, making things
with her hands.
She's drawing,
she does
these incredible notebooks
and watercolors that depict
a lot.
There's a lot about her surgery,
and there's a lot of writing.
And then she makes these sort
of amazing dolls, figures,
mannequins.
But she also gets
into photography.
And as far as I know,
David Wojnarowicz taught her how
to print, and David was living
in Peter Hujar's old loft
because Peter died of AIDS.
And David used to use Peter's
dark room when Peter was alive,
but he took over the loft
when Peter died, and I think,
essentially, helped Greer learn
how to print.
And I love Greer Lankton's work.
I've been a fan since I first
saw show when I was in my 20s.
But when I saw the photographs,
I kind of-- like, it sort of
bumped her up in my estimation
a whole other level,
because there is this way
that she's making the object,
and then she's photographing.
And it adds this whole other set
of questions about glamor
and beauty and representation,
and representations of the self
and the way that a photograph
can glamorize.
And the whole, there are all
the uses of photography
you talked about before--
kind of utilitarian, vernacular,
popular--
and then there's this other kind
of extraordinary history
in photography, which
is about the self-portrait
and the portrayal
of the creation of identity
through self portraiture.
And I think self portraiture can
be extended to cover photographs
of oneself, but also photographs
of one's circle and one's
immediate surroundings.
And it's a way of kind
of creating a social identity--
not just a self-contained
identity, but, like what you
want to show of yourself
to the world.
And so, like Cindy
Sherman's move, Lorna
Simpson's move, and then
Greer's, it's--
she's kind of working across all
of these different ways
of thinking and making.
And something about seeing,
and these photographs, they're
really beautiful, and sometimes
they're spooky and sometimes
they're seductive.
But when you sort of see them
along with the icons like Jackie
or, you know--
there's a whole kind
of construction of how we
construct an appearance
in the world,
and the enormous significance.
Like, you can write it off
and say, oh, it doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter how you look
or whatever.
But this is like, a really --
this runs through our culture
at a really profound level.
I hope that answered
some question.
It was asked in there somewhere.
How are we doing on time?
You brought up the question
of class earlier, and one
interview, great interview early
on in your career with Anna
Blume, you're discussing the Fae
Richards Archive.
And she talks about this work
as quite an intervention
against silencing.
Wonderful way of describing it.
It seems to me that could be
said of a great many
of the works in your practice
which address questions,
processes of erasure in relation
to gender, in relation
to race and ethnicity.
What doesn't come up so much
in the writing,
and I think it doesn't come up
very much in the writing
of American art history
or at all in the--
almost at all-- in the writing
around the work
by a self-taught artist
in the broader sense,
is questions of class.
And you obviously think very
deeply about it.
Can you say something about both
where you see it as being
a galvanizing force
in your practice,
and how you see it more broadly
here in the show?
Yeah.
I just saw Florida Project
last week, and Tangerine
right before that.
And I'm not going to go off
on all of that.
But I just wanted to mark that,
because I think it's a--
those two films are thinking
about class in a different way.
And it's so refreshing.
Yeah, I think maybe it rests
as an identity a little bit
differently, because you can
sometimes pass.
It's maybe easier to pass
with on class
than on some
of the other identities.
And I also think it's,
in some ways,
politically in this country, one
of the hardest things to talk
about, because it's what keeps
all the other ones running.
(LAUGHS) You know,
it's like the economic interests
that sort of maintain the status
quo.
I was a poor kid,
but I loved museums and art.
And I felt really comfortable
around art and literature,
and I read books.
And I didn't really understand
that they weren't--
like, they felt like they were
for me, even though there is
a kind of a problem,
I think, in how a lot of art
is presented are registered
in this way--
that monetary value sometimes
gets confused
with cultural value
or social value,
or the value of beauty
or meaning or experience.
And so that kind of confusion
I think is often read that one
hears--
that contemporary art
is elitist, or that it only
speaks to a certain class,
or that it's exclusionary.
I think there are
enormous issues that we could
talk about for a really long
time
about institutional exclusion, I
think, that are still at play--
that are not only in the past.
You've been using this quote
a lot
in the last couple of days,
that the past is never past.
And where does that come
from again, Lynn?
From Faulkner.
"The past is never past."
So I think maybe what happens
in my practice--
not necessarily intentionally.
Like, I don't wake up
in the morning, like, mm.
I want to make some work
about class.
Like that-- that doesn't happen.
[LAUGHTER]
It's just what happens out
of my making,
because it's how I think
about the world
and how I feel about the world,
and how the world inflected
for me what I notice
in the world.
And I think there is a--
the Fae Richards is a really
specific work, in that it's
really what Huey Copeland
beautifully called
a "fabulation."
It's imagining into a space that
has not been filled yet.
So you're imagining what might
have been.
And the piece attempts to be
historically accurate, as much
as possible.
The space that is imagined
is actually a possible space.
She could have lived.
She is-- her story is composed,
and many of those images
are composed, from bits
and pieces
of many different lives
of actors, from Dorothy Arzner
to Butterfly McQueen to Billie
Holiday.
So these things could have
happened.
So that was a very specific kind
of gesture that I don't know
I would have made if Cheryl
hadn't approached me
and asked me to make that work.
But in my practice more
generally, I think it's often
about just noticing things that
are already there that hadn't
been considered.
They don't fall
into conventional definitions
of beauty, but that they've been
there all along.
It's not like, "Oh my god!
All of a sudden, wow!
Bubble gum on the street!"
There's been bubble gum
on the street.
But it's like noticing that--
being like, yeah.
What neighborhoods does that
happen in?
What does that mean?
Like, what are these signs
of life, these pink discs
on the sidewalk?
And I think if I could sort
of parallel into the show, some
of what this show does-- and I
think, what is so inspiring--
is it's not a reconstruction,
or, as Josiah was saying last
night-- we were talking about
the word "revisionist"--
and it's not a revisionism.
It's just actually acknowledging
what's been there all along.
It's been there all along.
And it's just saying,
let's stop showing this
over there, and this over there.
That or this 1942, 1942.
(WHOOSHING NOISE) What does it
do when you show them together?
So that's something
that
both conceptually and
artistically I identify with,
and I find deeply inspiring.
Because it also reflects,
I think, the way that I work
and that many artists work.
We're not looking categorically,
like, I'm only looking
at (BABBLING SOUNDS).
You're watching television,
and that inflects your work as
much as, you know.
Thank you so very much.
[APPLAUSE]
