Synopses & Reviews
Since the 1970s, the performance and conceptual artist Suzanne Lacy has explored women's experiences, violence, race, ethnicity, aging, and economic disparities through her pioneering work. Combining aesthetics and politics, and often collaborating with other artists and community organizations, she has staged large-scale public art projects, sometimes involving hundreds of participants. She has consistently written about her work: planning, describing, and analyzing it; advocating socially engaged art practices; theorizing the relationship between art and social intervention; and questioning the boundaries separating high art from popular participation. Leaving Art brings together thirty pieces that Lacy has written since 1974. In different ways, each one relates to questions arising during performances and installations; five were written as scripts or artworks. The chronological arrangement of the pieces reveals Lacy's intense focus on questions of gender, violence, and the body during the 1970s, and her turn in the 1980s toward political performance art and questions about how the media could be used by artists to instigate social change. Lacy later engaged questions of race relations, criminal justice, and education in the 1990s, developing community art initiatives designed to spark substantive discussion about charged social and political issues. More recently, in her reflections on what art is and should be now, she has compared socially engaged public art with Buddhist practices, and examined the influence of one of her mentors, the late Allan Kaprow, on the development of feminist performance art in the 1970s. Leaving Art includes an introduction to Lacy's art and writing by Moira Roth, and an afterword in which Kerstin Mey situates Lacy's work in relation to contemporary cultural theory and practice.
Review
andldquo;As both artist and theorist, Suzanne Lacy has pioneered the field of collaborative and socially engaged art. Over the past several decades, she has refigured artistic practice as a means for the production of new publics. This book is an incomparable toolbox for anyone seeking a renewal of artandrsquo;s social and political potential today.andrdquo;andmdash;Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery, London
Review
andldquo;Suzanne Lacy is the most important public artist working today, in part because she is also an inspired organizer, writer, and public intellectual. Multicultural and multicentered, and devoted to civic dialogue, she balances esthetics and politics, pragmatics and imagination, while collaborating with those living inside the issues. Her feminist energy infuses this book. It will turn many heads.andrdquo;andmdash;Lucy R. Lippard, author of The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Feminist Essays on Art
Review
andldquo;Suzanne Lacyandrsquo;s work is a communal improvisation inviting life to happen in all its drama, absurdity, pain, and danger. At its best, it has the passion and complexity of Action Painting.andrdquo;andmdash;Eleanor Antin, artist and Professor Emeritus, University of California, San Diego
Review
andldquo;For nearly 40 years Ms. Lacyandrsquo;s collaborative, community-based art projects, some involving hundreds of people, have been grappling with matters of race, class and possible social change with a hands-on audacity that few artists can match. This book, with a persuasive introduction by the artist-historian Moira Roth, at last puts Ms. Lacyandrsquo;s own fluent accounts of her life and work between covers. The result is a moving and feisty document of a committed life, one that students of the art of our time will be grateful for in the years ahead.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Reflection in and on the present momentandndash;rather than a concern for prestige or posterityandndash;defines and sets apart Lacyandrsquo;s experimental documents as in some way andlsquo;liveandrsquo; themselves, making Leaving Art a strong resource for public and live artists working now.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;The book, then, performs best as an archive of methods. One text explicitly
outlines how to develop a media strategy for a feminist campaign, with excellent practical tips on structuring an event and how to convey its meaning to the media. But, more subliminally, we can gauge throughout how certainty wavers and how uncertainty, when viewed in retrospect, is ultimately productive.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Lacy remains close in spirit to the feminism that emerged in the late '60s. Many of her most significant performances directly addressed women's issues, especially rape, prostitution, pornography and physical aging. With a canny understanding of mass communications. Lacy calibrated her staged actions to garner media attention, and to be readily comprehensible to those outside the art world. One of the most consistent elements of her activity is its emphasis on forming multiracial alliances under the banner of andlsquo;Women.andrsquo;andrdquo;
Synopsis
Since the 1970s, the performance and conceptual artist Suzanne Lacy has explored womenandrsquo;s lives and experiences, as well as race, ethnicity, aging, economic disparities, and violence, through her pioneering community-based art. Combining aesthetics and politics, and often collaborating with other artists and community organizations, she has staged large-scale public art projects, sometimes involving hundreds of participants. Lacy has consistently written about her work: planning, describing, and analyzing it; advocating socially engaged art practices; theorizing the relationship between art and social intervention; and questioning the boundaries separating high art from popular participation. By bringing together thirty texts that Lacy has written since 1974, Leaving Art offers an intimate look at the development of feminist, conceptual, and performance art since those movementsandrsquo; formative years. In the introduction, the art historian Moira Roth provides a helpful overview of Lacyandrsquo;s art and writing, which in the afterword the cultural theorist Kerstin Mey situates in relation to contemporary public art practices.
Synopsis
Collection of critical essays and performance pieces by pioneering feminist performance artist Suzanne Lacy.
Synopsis
A collection of thirty texts written by the internationally renowned conceptual and performance artist Suzanne Lacy between 1974 and 2007.
About the Author
“As both artist and theorist, Suzanne Lacy has pioneered the field of collaborative and socially engaged art. Over the past several decades, she has refigured artistic practice as a means for the production of new publics. This book is an incomparable toolbox for anyone seeking a renewal of art’s social and political potential today.”—Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery, London“Suzanne Lacy is the most important public artist working today, in part because she is also an inspired organizer, writer, and public intellectual. Multicultural and multicentered, and devoted to civic dialogue, she balances esthetics and politics, pragmatics and imagination, while collaborating with those living inside the issues. Her feminist energy infuses this book. It will turn many heads.”—Lucy R. Lippard, author of The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Feminist Essays on Art“Suzanne Lacy’s work is a communal improvisation inviting life to happen in all its drama, absurdity, pain, and danger. At its best, it has the passion and complexity of Action Painting.”—Eleanor Antin, artist and Professor Emeritus, University of California, San Diego