Louise Lawler; Receptions

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.

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.

Roxana Marconi is Senior Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Rhea Anastas is Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of California, Irvine.

Mieke Bal is Professor Emeritus in Literary Theory at the University of Amsterdam and Co-Founder of the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis.

Douglas Crimp was the Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester.

Rosalyn Deutsche is Term Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at Barnard College and Columbia University.

Diedrich Diederichsen is Professor of Theory, Practice and Communication of Contemporary Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

Julian Stallabrass is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

David Platzker is former Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York