Louise Lawler: Receptions - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1633450236 ISBN 13: 9781633450233

Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017

Synopsis

A major exhibition on the 40-year career of the Pictures Generation pioneer, whose work engages conceptualism and institutional critique

Published in conjunction with the exhibition Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW, at The Museum of Modern Art, this volume charts the creative practice of one of the most influential artists working in the fields of picture-making and institutional critique. For the past 40 years, Louise Lawler has raised questions about art―about the circumstances that produce it, its circulation and the societal frameworks in which it appears. Many of the ideas that arise out of her work relate to theories of reception, the belief that the meaning of an artwork shifts and morphs depending on who looks at it and where it is seen. As the title of this publication suggests, many kinds of reception are possible.
In the eight essays in Receptions, renowned cultural thinkers unpack Lawler’s witty and provocative art, while a generous plate section comprehensively documents her images, installations and films. A selection of the ephemera she has designed, ranging from gallery announcements and posters to magazine covers and matchbooks, reflects her interest in how art reaches viewers beyond the museum and gallery system. The design of the book’s jacket is a typically ingenious Lawler production: when turned inside out, it becomes what she calls an “adjusted to fit” work―one of her photographs reformatted to fill the space available.
In our contemporary atmosphere of political theater, shocking wealth disparity and commodity culture, the insight, resistance and sly commentary of Lawler’s work feels as poignant and corrective as it has ever been. This book is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in late-20th- and early 21st-century art.

About this title

About the Author

Louise Lawler (born 1947) is a New York artist whose work came to notoriety in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when she began taking pictures of other artists’ work displayed in collectors’ homes, museums, storage spaces and auction houses to question the value, meaning and use of art.

Review

Lawler deploys photography as a way of staying close to and critical of the mainstream, simultaneously. (Alex Kitnick Artforum)

an elegant and engaging catalogue (Jennifer Krasinski Bookforum)

[Lawler’s] careful attention to artistic contexts, modes of presentation, and viewers’ receptions generates witty, affective situations that contribute to institutional transformation. (It's Liquid)

Louise Lawler is one of the great light-heavyweights of the 1980s Pictures Generation, an artist of stealth, wit and elegant understatement, adept at playing the art world against itself. (Roberta Smith The New York Times)

A sweeping survey of piercing skepticism . . . [Lawler] has cast a gimlet eye on art-world systems, critiquing collectors, museums, and other art. (New York Magazine)

One of the season’s brightest stars. (Holland Cotter The New York Times)

With oblique humor and a zest for unusual methods, Lawler critiques the art system writ large. (Andrew Russeth W Magazine)

The American photographer Louise Lawler may be the wittiest and most gimlet-eyed member of the Pictures Generation, revered for her matchless photographs of the secret life of art, as it cycles through gallery back rooms, collectors’ homes, and museum installations. (Andrea K Scott The New Yorker)

Louise Lawler’s beguiling institutional critique . . . by far the most arresting artist of her kind. (Peter Schjeldahl The New Yorker)

About this edition

• Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1633450236
• ISBN 13: 9781633450233
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Marcoci Roxana