We are on the sixth floor at the Museum of Modern Art, in the exhibition “Louise Lawler:
WHY PICTURES NOW” which covers the 40-year artistic vision of the American artist, Louise
Lawler, who came of age in the late 1970s as part of the Pictures Generation and currently
she's one of the most influential women artists, known for her sustained feminist, antiwar,
as well as collaborative and relational aspects of her work.
Louise Lawler's work is very much involved with taking pictures of other artists' works
in private home collections, museums, and bringing a certain lens and institutional
critique about how works are being presented, how they are being displayed, what is the
context and meaning and user value of artworks once they leave the artist's studio.
I think that one of the most interesting aspects of her work is the way that she's constantly
reframing, restaging, and repositioning her work in the present, moving from photographs
to very little works that are paperweights to tracings and to works that she calls "adjusted
to fit," which are works that are being stretched and expanded to fit precisely the wall on
which they are being displayed.
In 1988, Louise Lawler took a photograph at an auction house, because what I should mention
is that, in fact, Lawler photographs, takes her pictures in various contexts, in museums,
in auction houses, in storage spaces, and in collectors' homes, understanding how art,
once it leaves the artist's studio, is being used and that its meaning changes in function
of its used value.
This picture was taken in 1988 at Christie's, when a very important art collection, the
Tremaine collection, was being auctioned and one of the most iconic works at that auction
was this piece by Andy Warhol, which was the round, golden Marilyn Monroe.
In fact, what is interesting with Lawler is how she contextualizes the photograph.
And you can see here there is even the original label from the auction house, which even indicates
the price for which the piece was being auctioned.
The piece is rendered at the exact same size as the original, 17 inches in diameter, but
the most interesting aspect of this work is the relationship between titles and images.
The work is titled "Does Marilyn Monroe Make You Cry?"
An absolutely identical piece, which is right across from this one, is titled "Does Andy
Warhol Make You Cry?"
So two images, absolutely identical with two different titles, provoke different receptions
in the viewer.
One obviously is referring to a very well-known pop artist, a real author, the other one,
to an iconic dead movie star.
So the effective relationship is quite different, although the image is the same and that is
only... the only difference is implied in the title itself.
This whole idea of theory of reception is equally important to Lawler's works because
it understands that art, in fact, depends on the framework on which it is presented,
that its meaning changes, morphs, shifts in function of who looks at it and the reaction
that you have towards it.
This is this photograph that is called "War is Terror."
It is one of her most antiwar pieces.
But the title obviously plays with the expression or the term “War on Terror" that was devised
by the George W. Bush administration following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Here, Lawler switches that preposition and makes it active, "war is terror," rather than
“War on Terror," giving it a sense of urgency.
This picture was shot actually in the guest room of a private home in France, outside
of Avignon, where the owners decided to install a photograph of Julia Margaret Cameron's from
1869 of her niece, Julia Jackson.
Julia Jackson would eventually have seven children, including the painter, Vanessa Bell,
and the author, Virginia Woolf.
Lawler is placing an emphasis on this kind of a matriarchal lineage, pointing on one
hand to the strength of Julia Margaret Cameron as the first, one of the earliest women photographers
to receive critical acclaim, then the antiwar views of Virginia Woolf.
She's basically kind of bringing together both historic and contemporary strains of
feminism and pacifism.
This is "Salon Hodler."
It is a photograph that Lawler actually took in Switzerland in a private home of a private
collector and it shows the diptych love by the Swiss artist, Ferdinand Hodler, at the
turn of the 20th century.
This exhibition, in fact, relishes on these different types of looking, of moving from
"Salon Hodler" being perceived as a regular photograph, a direct viewing experience that
you would have of direct rapport versus this kind of jewel-like paperweight or rather like
a peephole viewing experience, where you have to just lean and look into it.
It's a one-to-one relationship, extremely intimate.
And here is "Salon Hodler," rendered just as a tracing on a different scale and emptied
out of color.
It has a very different feeling to it, more like a drawing of sorts.
She collaborated on them together with the artist and illustrator John Buller.
They have this very ghostly presence because all that is being done is the outline of her
photographs that is being rendered.
They are devoid of any kind of color and look more like coloring books.
This idea of continuous representation of reappropriation of her own work is absolutely
critical to Lawler's work.
An image that you find in a photograph can sort of morph into another image as tiny as
a paperweight or as large as an adjusted to fit work or as ghostly as a tracing.