Role Refusal: On Louise Lawler's Birdcalls Author(s): Stacey Allan Source: Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context, and Enquiry, Issue 20 (Spring 2009), pp. 108-113 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20711738 . Accessed: 18/08/2014 17:40 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context, and Enquiry. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 148.61.13.133 on Mon, 18 Aug 2014 17:40:38 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VITO ACCONCI CARL ANDRE RICHARDARTSCHWAGER JOHNBALDESSARI ROBERT BARRY JOSEPH BEUYS DANIEL BUREN SANDRO CHIA FRANCESCO CLEMENTE ENZO CUCCHI GILBERT and GEORGE DAN GRAHAM HANS HAACKE NEIL JENNEY DONALD JUDD ANSELM KIEFER JOSEPH KOSUTH SOL LEWITT RICHARD LONG GORDON MATTA-CLARK MARIO MERZ SIGMAR POLKE GERHARD RICHTER ED RUSCHA JULIANSCHNABEL CY TWOMBLY ANDYWARHOL LAWRENCEWEINER BIRDCALLS BY LOUISE LAWLER RECORDED AND MIXED BY TERRYWILSON This content downloaded from 148.61.13.133 on Mon, 18 Aug 2014 17:40:38 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Louise Lawler, Role Refusal: Birdcalls (1972/81), an early gem of an audio Birdcalls, 1972/81, On Louise Lawler's Birdcalls work in Lawler's largely photographic oeuvre, ? audio installation, Stacey Allan was first conceived in the early 1970s as a joke dimensions variable. between the artist and her friend Martha Kite. Courtesy the artist The two women were assisting artists with the and Metro Pictures, installation of a project along the Hudson River New York piers and, by Lawler's account, 'The women involved were doing tons ofwork, but the work being shown was only by male artists.'2 While walking home from the piers late at night, ? Lawler and Kite who called themselves the ? 'due chanteusies' would make loud noises and act crazy in order toward off any would-be offenders. After spontaneously warbling the name of the exhibition's organiser, Willoughby names The towering list of is impressive: Sharp ('Willoughby! Willoughbyi>) as a bird, Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Richard Artschwager, Lawler decided to develop a longer list ofmale John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Joseph Beuys, artists' names from which to create her calls. Daniel Buren, Sandro Chia, Francesco She remembers Birdcalls as an instinctively Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Gilbert & George, antagonistic response to the name recognition Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Neil Jenney, enjoyed by her male contemporaries but Donald Judd, Anselm Kiefer, Joseph Kosuth, afforded to very few women artists of the time. Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, The names she chose to include when she Mario Merz, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, recorded the piece in 1981 weren't those of Ed Ruscha, Julian Schnabel, Cy Twombly, distant masters such as Rembrandt, Picasso even Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner. Stacked one on or Pollock; they were her contemporaries, top of the other, the appearance of these artists' the male artists who dominated the market names might typically signal the inclusion at that time. Though some stars have faded of their works in a group exhibition, but (notably those of Transavanguardia painters here they serve as part of an audio-and-text including Chia and Cucchi) the alphabetised installation by an artist who literally buries list still reads as a roll call of blue-chip her name under the more recognisable names contemporary masters, a monolith as massive of her contemporaries. At the very bottom of and eternal as the canon itself. But what the the heap, a modest line identifies the work: addition of Lawler's name and voice continues 'Birdcalls by Louise Lawler'. Perhaps only tomake obvious is the homogenised state of after reading this acknowledgement is one this canon and, specifically, the frustrated able to connect the ambient audio track and its efforts ofwomen toj?in its ranks. incongruous cries with the names on the wall. The sounds are made by Lawler, who strains Many have written on the anti-authorial her voice to sing the names of twenty-eight nature of Lawler's practice, which, particu celebrated male artists as though they were larly in its earlier years and in works the songs of twenty-eight unique species of contemporaneous with Birdcalls, found her or bird. She calls the first, last full name of acting in 'secondary' roles that were atypical an each artist as indicated by the part of the name for artist but critical of the reception of that is printed in red or green, each name given an artist's works. Andrea Fraser, in a 1985 its own specifically nuanced call: 'Acconci' essay titled 'In and Out of Place', persuasively is sung in a shrill staccato ('acconCHEE!!'); positioned Lawler as a virtually anonymous a 'Gilbert & George' takes low-pitched chatter figure within her own production.3 Though ( 'Gilberengeorge, Georgengilber! Gilberengeorge!'); recent retrospectives have rendered her and 'Artschwager' has a manic squawk signature more visible than before, what one ( 'aa-arrRRRT-SCHWAGERRRR!!!'). Like the sees first in Lawler's works, both then and artists themselves, each name as performed now, are works by other artists. For her first by Lawler has its own imitable style.1 solo exhibition at Metro Pictures in 1982 she 1 A digital audio file of thework can be found at http://www.ubu.com/sound/tellus_5-6.html (last accessed on 26 November 2008). 2 Douglas Crimp, 'Prominence Given, Authority Taken', Grey Room 4, Summer 2001, p.80. 3 Andrea Fraser, 'In and Out of Place', Art inAmerica, June 1985, p. 123. This was both the first monographic essay published on Lawler in a major art magazine and the first critical essay by Fraser, an artist and critic who was then enrolled in theWhitney Independent Study Program. Birdcalls 1109 This content downloaded from 148.61.13.133 on Mon, 18 Aug 2014 17:40:38 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions a exhibited series of 'arrangements' of existing assumptions about natural-born artistic on works by other gallery artists including Cindy greatness, long assessed the basis of Sherman, Robert Longo and Allan McCollum conformity to a male-oriented professional ? these were to be sold for the combined price and art-historical ideology. The great artists of the individual works plus a ten-percent have always been male, and history has 'consultant's fee' for Lawler. Later photographs determined that their masterworks set the of blue-chip works in corporate and private standards by which new works are judged. collections, such as Arranged byDonald The notion of 'genius', then, was a constructed Marron, Susan Brundage, Cheryl Bishop at Paine myth, one that had long allowed the absence Webber (1982) and Arranged byMr. and Mrs. ofwomen and other minorities from the Burton Tremaine, New York (1984), further art-historical canon to be falsely attributed acknowledged the secondary players by to a lack of exceptional individuals rather naming them directly. As Fraser writes, than a surplus of social and institutional 'By abdicating this privileged place of disadvantages. 'The fault, dear brothers, lies artistic identity, Lawler manages to escape not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual institutional definitions of artistic activity cycles or our empty internal spaces, but in our as an our autonomous aesthetic exploration.'4 institutions and education....'7 As Nochlin so eloquently and convincingly argued, the In Lawler's symbolic reluctance to accept the language of 'Greatness' was crafted by and starring role, there is an implicit challenge to for men. the institution of authorship, the glorification of the individual artist evidenced by art So, to use a colloquialism that only serves to history's emphasis on proper names, biography, underline the dilemma of agency described ? authenticity conventions that locate the above: what's a girl to do? Here it might be value of a work in the name of its creator. useful to situate the anti-authorial motivation as In an often cited 2001 interview with Douglas of Louise Lawler part of a larger 1970s Crimp, Lawler explained, 'This question of postmodern, countercultural and feminist name recognition relates tomy feelings about push to destroy heroic models. In an essay titled interviews, to the credibility that is given 'New Wave Rock and the Feminine' (1981), a to statement because ofwho is speaking'; artist and critic Dan Graham ('daaangram!') anecdotally, she recalled, 'Along the same examined the gender divide within popular lines, I fantasised about being interviewed music and seemed to pose a question similar by Dick Cavett, but realising that no one would to Nochlin's: why have there been no women care about what I thought, I planned towrite rock stars? Long gazed upon as the passive a script and ask Marcello Mastroianni to play objects of paintings and sculptures, women me.'5 To summarise the sociologist Pierre were also the topics ofmost rock 'n' roll songs: Bourdieu who wrote extensively on the subject Barbara Ann, Sherry, Michelle, (Help Me) of artistic positioning, having a recognised Rhonda, Peggy Sue, Roxanne, (My) Sherona, ? name is the only way to have a legitimate voice Layla these were some of popular music's as a producer, to actually be an artist who can demoiselles.