What was it like to be an artist and a woman in the 1960s?
In a pocket-sized notebook, in her characteristic capital letters script, Lee Lozano records an exchange:
MAY 16, 69
IN 1965 (?) KASPER
KÖNIG SAID TO ME:
“YOU ARE A GOOD
PAINTER AND A
NICE GIRL.”
I REPLIED:
“WRONG ON BOTH
COUNTS. I’M A
VERY GOOD PAINTER
AND NOT A
NICE GIRL!” (1)
Kasper König (1943, German) was an upstart curator back then, and is now an established curator and a museum director. Lee Lozano (1930-1999, American) was a visual and (later) conceptual artist.
During her undergrad degree (1951), Lozano studied philosophy and natural sciences. She had a brief marriage (to Mexico-born architect Adrian Lozano) during which she earned a BFA (1960). She was born Lenore Knaster in Newark, New Jersey. At fourteen she started using the name “Lee” and often just used “E”, which feels like she may already have been disgusted with gender constraints. (2)
Her early years as an artist were visual, that is her output comprised of drawings and paintings. Not pretty images, but emotionally charged pieces depicting male genitalia, tools, and facial features—not always on their own. See for example, Woman with Cocked Head (1962) which includes male and female parts, and a tool. She referred to some of her drawings as “comix”.
What drew me to her practice was not her visual work of the 60s, although that work is important in understanding her trajectory, but her turn to conceptual and institutional critique (a term that was not in use yet). Lozano was one of the first “who did the life-as-art thing” as critic Lucy Lippard noted in 2001.
Here’s her life-as-art thing:
(some of the works seem to be undocumented beyond the title/idea, while others are extensively documented in notebooks, e.g. Grass Piece)
Throw-Up Piece: a piece in which she “proposed throwing the 10 most recent issues of Artforum in the air and letting them fall where they may” (Artforum was and still is a leading magazine in contemporary art)
Dialogue Piece (1969)
Masturbation Investigation
Sex Piece
Investment Piece: “BE THE RECIPIENT OF A GRANT”
Real Money Piece: “OPEN JAR OF REAL MONEY AND OFFER IT TO GUESTS LIKE CANDY”
The Lie-In-Bed-And-Read-Cosmic-Books Piece
Grass Piece: a piece during which she smoked weed every day for 33 days and documented her experience in a notebook which was exhibited the next month at a gallery in SoHo. (year?)
General Strike Piece (1969): a piece in which she withdrew from the commercial art world
Dropout Piece (c. 1970): a piece in which she abandons art completely
Decide to Boycott Women (1971): a piece during which she avoided communicating and interacting with women, for a month or two, hoping to improve communication with them
Lozano is considered a pioneering conceptual artist, a first-generation female conceptual artist who was very frustrated with the art world and its gatekeepers. She and other female artists routinely encountered institutionalized discrimination. A 2020 exhibition in Germany, titled “I’M NOT A NICE GIRL!”, focuses on just that.
Unfortunately, Lozano continued to boycott women to the end of her life (apparently, she was an activist and a feminist!?). How inconvenient that must have been, and not to mention rude, as art critic Roberta Smith noted in an article in the New York Times. To what extent she was consistent is hard to say. To perform (Lozano did not like this term) a boycott of women until the end points to a disturbed individual. With this piece, the life-as-art-thing becomes murky—she did drop out of the art world in 1970 after all. To continue to call it art is probably irresponsible, at some point the terms mental illness, stubbornness, discontent…come to mind.
From 1968 to 1970, Lozano used pocket-sized notebooks—filled with her characteristic capital letters script---to document her life-as-art projects. As with many performative conceptual art pieces, the documentation is what remains as proof of the work done. But Lozano’s pocket notebooks truly become pieces in their own right. Have a look here.
How did it feel to leave the art world, when it seems the art world won’t leave you? After dropping out, Lozano had at least eight shows before she died (but did not produce new work), and eleven after. Her work is still relevant today.
Few people will have heard of Lee Lozano. I knew her name only, until I started the research for this piece. I hope to delve deeper into her story and work another time.
Endnotes
1 See an image of the actual notebook here: https://awarewomenartists.com/en/magazine/im-not-a-nice-girl-hommage-manifeste-aux-pionnieres-de-lart-conceptuel/
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Lozano
Many other online articles were referenced for this piece. Following the above links will provide some further background.