Lucy Lippard, Get the Message?: A Decade of Art for Social Change (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1984) Contents AUTHOR'S NOTE viii I. THE DILEMMA Prefatory Note z The Dilemma 4 The Art Workt'rs' Coalition: Not a History ro Charitable Visits by the AWC to MOMA and Met 20 II. ACTING OFT 23 Prefatory Note 24 (I) Some Political Posters and (II) Some Questions They Raise Ahout Art and Politics 26 Community and Outreach: Art Outdoors. In the Public Domain 36 The Death of a Mural Movement 45 The Artist's Book Goes Public 48 The Geography of Street Time: A Survey of Streetworks Downtown 52 Dada in Berlin: Unfortunately Still Timely 67 This Is Art?: The Alienation of the Avant Garde from the Audience 73 Raising Questions, Trying to Raise Hell: British Sociopolitical Art 79 vii vi Contents Contents III. TO THE THIRD POWER: FEMINISM, ART AND CLASS VI. COLLABORATE! DEMONSTRATE! ORGANIZE! RESIST! 299 CONSCIOUSNESS 87 Prefatory Note 300 Prefatory Note 88 Cashing in a Wolf Ticket, with Jerry Kearns 303 The Pink Glass Swan: Upward and Downward Mobility in Long-Term Planning: Notes Toward an Activist the Art World 89 Performance Art 34 Making Something from Nothing (Toward a Definition Activist Art Now, a picture essay 324 of Women's "Hobby Art") 97 Past Imperfect 105 INDEX 339 Setting a New Place: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party 109 Some Propaganda for Propaganda Il4 Issue 123 Issue and Taboo 125 Sweeping Exchanges: The Contribution of Feminism to the Art of the 1970s 49 IV. HOT POTATOES 159 Prefatory Note 160 Hot Potatoes: Art and Politics in 1980 161 Rejecting Retrochic 173 Real Estate and Real Art a l:a Fashion a,~Moda M o ,A A 178 Sex and Death and Shock and Schlock: A Long Review of "The Times Square Show" by Anne Ominous 183 Propaganda Fictions 191 Print and Page as Battlegr0t1nd: A Slide Lecture 200 The Ten Frustrations, or, \Y:aving and Smiling Across the Great Cultural Abyss m V. VOICING OPPOSITION 229 Prefatory Note 230 Beyond Pleasure 230 Power Plays 234 Acting Up 238 Color Scheming 242 Who's on The First? 245 A Child's Garden of Horrors 249 The Collective Conscience 253 Rx-Rated Art 255 untitled collaboration with Jerry Kearns 259 Open Season 261 They've Got FBEyes for You 265 All Fired Up 269 Happy Newsyear from Lucy Lippard and Jerry Kearns 274 Making Manifest 276 Visual Problematics 28! Out of Control: Australian Art on the Left 286 Hotter Than July 294 I THE DILEMMA Author's Note This book is the third collection of essays I've published in a little over a decade. Each of my books has marked the beginning of a specific phase of my life, though not necessarily its end. Changing (1971)was the product of my "formalist" or art­ educational period; it consisted primarily of essays written from 1965to 1968,with a few late additions foreshadowing my next book-Six Years: The Demateria/iza­ tion of the Art Object . (1973).From the Center (1976) and Eva Hesse (1976) documented my developing conversion to feminism, which expanded all the possibilities that had seemed to be closing down in the "cultural confinement" of the early 1970s. Get tbe Message? is the result of a need to integrate the three sometimes contradictory elements of my public (and often private) life-art, feminism, left politics. Owing to publication delays, only two essays from the last two years are included. I would like to thank the Heresies Collective, Joan Braderman, Carl Andre, May Stevens, Rudolf Baranik, Elizabeth Hess, Suzanne Lacy, Judy Chicago, Jerry Kearns and the members of PADD for everything I've learned while working with them (among many others); Lanie Lee for assistance in preparing the manuscript, Jan Hoffman for editing the Voice pieces and Agnes Zellin for photographic assistance. This book is dedicated to my son, Ethan Ryman, as he leaves home for a world the artists in this book are trying to change. Prefatory Note of the Art Workers' Coalition (AWC) and became an activist myself. In th llUl two or more years I learned more about the relationship of art ~nd artists to~1dal structures than I had in college, graduate school and ten years m the ai:t w<r,<l al­ together. Like many others, I could never again pretend ignorance (or mno.ocncc) of the way art is manipulated by greed, money and power. The AWC came at just the right moment for me. I already sens~d ti,c ;A.ft world was an unhealthy place for art and artists, but had no progres~•v~ tllE"<lry with which to analyze my discontent. By 1968 I was indirectly radicahZ!t.l, or alienated, by the competitive careerism that dominated the art ~orld. I_sa,H~folt was happening to old friends who had "made it" and I was afraid of bemg kicked upstairs into the ivory tower. After publishing prolifically for four yea~s, . rral­ ized that if this was success, I enjoyed it, but it wasn't enough. I was loSmg,,amc of my starry-eyed idealism about art and I worried about its in~olun~a~y s1r.ir:i­ tion from daily life. I had long been an adversary of Greenberg1a~. eltttsm;l !ud learned a good deal about "political art" since the 1930sfrom wntm~ ~ bolt on Philip Evergood, and about the artworld commodity system ~rom wntmg a::ook Prefatory Note on Pop Art. Since 1966, I had been writing a book on Ad Remhardt _(self~dt.llt'.U "last artist on the picket line") and was much influenced by hts ~itr ~md The dilemma is, of course, how to integrate art and politics-those two crucial jaundiced view of the New York art world. In 1967,I became unduly ex~•t~d Jtwut elements of our culture that have been called oil and water (by those who fear the Conceptual Art's potential for a politicized populism, partly becaus~ tt tnCl•1" 0 · merger). I personally came late to the Left. I was raised a caring liberal with no rated words with images and seemed to deny the primacy of the obJeC~.. real political education. What social consciousness I gained from my parents, and i have always identified with artists rather than with other cr~ue and from the revelatory experience of working for several months after college in a curators, a fact I attribute to a life of free-lancing which in turn is rooted 10 a>1~~1C Mexican village with the American Friends Service Committee, was buried when I "authority problem"; I don't like being told what to do, and art has a re~UlUlln immersed myself in the New York art world in 1959.It surfaced again on a jurying for some mythical "freedom." I've always lived with and among arttSts and trip to Argentina in 1968, when I was forced to confront and reject corporate when talking about artists organizing in the essays below, I often say "we." ha\'<'. control and met for the first time artists who had committed themselves to mili­ written fiction off and on since high school, but in 1969 I began to_ n2 kt· tant social change, feeling tllat isolated art for art's sake had no place in a world so streetworks and in 1970 I wrote the first of three novels. I ~m _occasicitally_ full of misery and injustice. "accused" of being an artist. I used to deny this adamantly and it sttll ~akt, 111'­ When I returned to New York from Latin America, I fell belatedly into that feel funny, since I am primarily a writer. Words are my medium. But_I dis~oit:rec~ pocke~ of the art comm~nity that was actively protesting injustices. In October, in Conceptual Art a "third stream" that has allowed me to work at umes 10 (i~ll~ the pamter Robert Huot mvolved me and antiwar activist Ron Wolin in organiz­ blurred area between art and criticism. Now, having urged everyone el~e to lr:e.lk ing a "peace" exhibition at the Paula Cooper Gallery, for the benefit of the Stu­ out of boundaries I find myself wandering in a well-deserved no-one s lam. dent Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. If I do say so, this was In the AWC I' was first exposed to activist art and to Marxism. · P u t off b the. the best "Minimal show" I e-ver saw. Andre, Baer, Flavin, Judd, :r.eWitt, Mangold, high-flown· rhetoric' and apparent hypocrisy· of some w h o su b s~n.b e d to M,·x1~t, . Ohlson an~ Ryman, among others, rose to the occasion and made or gave major chic (but disavowed social action to support their supposed behefs), 1 onl} Jr'd~l­ works for 1t. The organizers' statement read: ually began even to call myself a socialist. (Feminism, of course, t~rew anctli r, ' h' tmgs I leannl constructive, wrench into that process.) In the AWC s anarc IC mee . Thes_e 14 n~m-objec~ive artists are against the war in Vietnam. They are sup­ to speak in public· in the Action Committee I learned to take my rage mt, the ' · · th DecentrJ· zi- p~rtu~g this. commitment in the strongest manner open to them, by con­ streets, to leaflet, picket and fight back in person and 1~ ~nnt; e · • tnbutmg ma1or examples of their current work. The artists and the individual tion Committee gave me a glimpse of community orgamzmg.