Assignment 4 Creative Arts Today Louise Lawler Why Pictures Now?

Louise Lawler. Why Pictures Now. 1981. Gelatin silver print, 3 × 6" (7.6 × 15.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired with support from Nathalie and Jean-Daniel Cohen in honor of Roxana Marcoci. © 2017 Louise Lawler __

___ By Alyssa J. Maddalozzo 514783

Photography’s role in the art world has been questioned since the invention of the camera. Are pictures just an imprint of light, or are they a tool used by an artist to create art? In this assignment we were asked to explore an artist who uses photography as an element of their practice. I have decided instead to research Louise Lawler, a photographer who is considered an artist because of her pictures. In this essay I will explore why Lawler’s photographs are considered art, her relationship with the art world, and the themes of time and place. Lawler is a photographer from the “Picture Generation” whose work has transcended images, words, sound, scale and perception. In 1981, Lawler took a photograph of a matchbook printed with the words “why pictures now.” Nearly 36 years later, the photograph is the title of her new exhibition at MoMA which reviews her work in the present moment, retrospectively, by re- appropriating her own photographs. This exemplifies why Lawler thinks the question needs to be asked again. Lawler’s art would not exist without two things: her camera and the artists of her time. Her early work consisted of photographing iconic works such as Pollock and Warhol in unconventional ways, such as focusing on the location of the piece and standing to the side and changing the view, thereby shifting the power and questioning the influence of the original art work. In addition, Lawler’s titles talk back to the viewer, challenging their relationship with art as individuals, showing hints of Deconstructionists ideas1 for example using two different titles for the same piece. The image of the Warhol appears twice in the show, under two titles: “Does Andy Warhol Make You Cry?” and “Does Marilyn Monroe Make You Cry?” Because Lawler’s titles make you consider a larger context, they critique the art world and challenge the subject of art itself. In these early works, the question is: what differentiates Lawler from other photographers whose work wouldn’t be considered art? For example, Larry Qualls has taken over 100,000 photographs of works (including Lawler’s) shown in contemporary art exhibitions since 1980, but Quall is not considered an artist. For as Roger Scruton argues, “Photography cannot be art, since it merely 1 literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth presents rather than represents its subject matter.” Why then is Lawler not considered to be a documentary photographer like Quall?

One answer is given by Irvine,2 who argues that Lawler’s photographs, while they document artworks and the spaces in which they are displayed, are not merely documents. They are artworks in their own right because of Lawler’s intentions, the discourse with which she frames them, and the context in which they are exhibited and collected.

In photographing “ready-mades,” such as printed matchbooks and napkins, she echoes Duchamp by demonstrating that her pictures should be considered art, especially if a urinal can be3. Furthermore, Lawler uses her photographs to reveal the vulnerability of famous male artists, such as Jasper Jones photographing his monogramed bed-spread. Known as a liberal neo-dada4 artist, she questions his class and taste, showing her photographs to be more than documentation but rather artistic commentary.

Lawler’s relationship between the creative aspects of her art is one of reciprocation, i.e. how one interprets the other. Lawler invites the viewer to question how they see corresponding realities, for example, by enlarging a photograph to a monumental scale, then reducing the same image to a

2 Artwork and Document in the Photography of Louise Lawler, SHERRI IRVIN, 2012, The Journal of AESTHETICS AND ART CRITICISM 3 Fountain is one of Duchamp’s most famous works and is widely seen as an icon of twentieth-century art. The original, which is lost, consisted of a standard urinal, usually presented on its back for exhibition purposes rather than upright, and was signed and dated ‘R. Mutt 1917’. 4 Protesting against bourgeois aesthetic concepts because they pandered to commercialism peep-hole size in the form of a paper weight5. She also reforms her image in different formats, including mechanical reproduction of tracings, as in “Pollock and Tureen (Traced)” below. This shows how Lawler continues to re-invent her pictures making the viewer considering how we see them.

Louise Lawler,1984, Silver dye bleach print, 71.1 x 99.1cm (28 x 39in. © Louise A. Lawler, available at https://metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2000.434/ [8-5-18]

Louise Lawler Pollock and Tureen (traced) 1984/2013 © Louise A

John Berger explains in The Ways of Seeing6 that a painting on the wall, like a human eye, can only be in one place at one time. The camera reproduces it, making it available in any size, anywhere, for any purpose. Lawler explores this idea by looking past the usual borders “in which she gives special attention to all the connecting tissue that holds and frames it: walls, floors, hallways, storage units, workers’ hands.” 7 Lawler’s deconstruction of the usual borders is further evidence for how she uses photography as a tool for art.

So why is her new exhibition called “why pictures now”, besides being on the matchbook of one of her pieces? Lawler’s new exhibition is based on the present while echoing the past. She is catching up with the digital age and demonstrating how her pictures have changed by reformulating them in size, place, titles, digital format, and in black and white. Lawler’s work also portrays time within a history of reception. For example, Lawler’s photograph “War is Terror” is a response to President Bush’s “war on terror,” bringing it into the now. The 5 Louise Lawler, Untitled (Salon Hodler),1992, Paperweight (silver dye bleach print, crystal, felt) with text on wall, Paperweight: 2″ (5.1 cm) high, 3 1/2″ (8.9 cm) diam. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York 6 John Berger / Ways of Seeing , Episode 1 (1972) BBC series

7 Maria Lokke, 2012, The New Yorker. photograph is of a framed portrait of Julia Margaret Cameron hanging above a bed. Born in 1869, she was one of the earliest woman photographers to receive critical acclaim. Her niece Julia Jackson was mother to Vanessa Bell, the painter and anti-war author, better known as Virginia Wolf. In this way, Lawler uses contemporary photography as a tool to place an emphasis on the matriarchal lineage of a family of powerful women.

Through all of this, we see that Lawler’s photographs are art because of her intention of revealing artworks as commodities. She challenges the viewer to see art differently through her titles and questions the notion of what art actually is. Lawler shows us that art is created when an object is connected to other things in the world, thus changing our understanding of it. Lawler’s pictures are not documents; they shift our paradigms of how we view the art world, the artists, and the borders in which art exists. “Why pictures now” connects the pieces of time and place and expands on her explanations through re-appropriating and distorting her old images, thus bringing the past into the present and indicating the importance of looking back in order to see the whole picture and change the present itself. References: Douglas Crimp, (1981) Indirect Answers Douglas Crimp On Louise Lawler, why Pictures now. [online] Available at https://www.academia.edu/5599619/Louise_Lawlers_Why_Pictures_Now [Accessed 22-9-17] John Berger / Ways of Seeing , Episode 1 (1972) BBC series. [online] Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk [Accessed 6-5-18] Lawler, The Tate, Foreground [online] Available at http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/lawler- foreground-p79771 [Accessed 20-9-17] Maria Lock (2012). Louise Lawler’s Gerhard Richter, The New Yorker [online] Available at https:// www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/louise-lawlers-gerhard-richter [Accessed 28-9-17] Dr Marcus Banyan (2017). Louise Lawler, why pictures now, Art Blart [online] Available at https:// artblart.com/2017/09/08/exhibition-louise-lawler-why-pictures-now-at-the-museum-of-modern-art- moma-new-york/ [Accessed 5-5-18] Museum of Modern Art, Louise Lawler [online] Available at https://www.moma.org/artists/7928? locale=en [Accessed 17-9-17] Metro Pictures, Louise Lawler [online] Available at http://www.metropictures.com/artists/louise- lawler?view=slider [Accessed 23-9-17] Roxana Marcoci (2017). Louise Lawler | HOW TO SEE the artist with MoMA curator Roxana Marcoci [online] Available at https://youtu.be/hbrrrnXu4GI [Accessed 24-9-17] Sherri Irvin. (2012) Artwork and Document in the Photography of Louise Lawler, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism [online] Available at https://doi-org.ucreative.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2011.01500.x [Accessed 8-5-18]

Philosophy basics, Deconstructionism Movement [online] available at http://www.philosophybasics.com/movements_deconstructionism.html [Accessed 22-9-17] Tate Modern, (1972) Ducamp’s Fountain. [online] Available at http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ duchamp-fountain-t07573 [Accessed 5-5-18] The Pictures Generation, 1974, 1984 at The METROPOLITAN MUSEUM [online] Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftvSK-nx9WQ&t=207s [Accessed 16-9-17] Whitney Museum, America hard to see [online] Available at http://stevegiovinco.com/all- photographs-new-whitney-museum-america-is-hard-to-see-steve-giovinco/ [Accessed 29-9-17]