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Untitled, Liza Lou, 2013, MoMA: Drawings and Prints
Acquired through the generosity of John Baldessari, Catie and Donald Marron, and Mary M. and Sash A. Spencer Size: plate (see child records): various dimensions; sheet (each): 17 1/2 × 14" (44.4 × 35.5 cm) Medium: Portfolio of eight etchings
http://www.moma.org/collection/works/195995
Surreal kitchen #lizalou (at Whitney Museum of American Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/B8jVFnGA7Q-b9k1k0vnlfTl1nqZ-wkboNs1m-U0/?igshid=9pn2g7fvwguw
Untitled from an untitled portfolio, Liza Lou, 2013, MoMA: Drawings and Prints
Acquired through the generosity of John Baldessari, Catie and Donald Marron, and Mary M. and Sash A. Spencer Size: plate: 10 13/16 × 8 3/8" (27.4 × 21.3 cm); sheet: 17 1/2 × 14" (44.4 × 35.5 cm) Medium: One from a portfolio of eight etchings
http://www.moma.org/collection/works/199352
Untitled from an untitled portfolio, Liza Lou, 2013, MoMA: Drawings and Prints
Acquired through the generosity of John Baldessari, Catie and Donald Marron, and Mary M. and Sash A. Spencer Size: plate: 9 3/4 × 8 5/16" (24.7 × 21.1 cm); sheet: 17 1/2 × 14" (44.4 × 35.5 cm) Medium: One from a portfolio of eight etchings
http://www.moma.org/collection/works/199351
always in uniform 👼🏻 MARICAMA.COM @shopmaricama love u mom ♥️ she no hav ig i’ll tell her #whitneymuseum #lizalou #artmuseum #nyc #museum #whitney #spiritualclothing #trackset #tracksuit #newagefashion #nyfashion MAY WE MAKE MORE SPACES FOR MORE BREATH MORE AWARENESS MORE FUN MORE ABUNDANCE CUZ WE ARE WORTHY DESPITE OUR PHONE ADDICTION HOBBIES 🙋🏻♀️ (at Whitney Museum of American Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZwkIaLOalQ/?utm_medium=tumblr
Blog at 40, Liza Lou at 40
This is the fourth blog post I’ve written on what (feminist and/or women) artists have done/created during their 40th year during my 40th year. First 3:
1) Judy Chicago
2) Carolee Schneemann
3) Wanda Ewing
I include artworks by myself inspired by and/or in tribute to the artists at end of each post as well.
Today I write about Liza Lou, (born 1969), American visual artist best known for her large scale sculptures using glass beads. Though not currently an artist on the top of my inspiration list, as much of her work leans primarily on the more conceptual side of the spectrum--though not entirely, to be sure--I came across her work the other day as I was researching what contemporary artists are doing in response to the pandemic for an upcoming presentation, and found her Apartogether project.
Screenshot of an Instagram post by Liza Lou announcing the start of Apartogether in response to Covid-19, 2020.
Apartogether is a community art project founded by Liza Lou at the onset of the COVID19 pandemic to foster connection and creativity during a time of social distancing and isolation. Lou encourages IG followers to make work from familiar materials around the house and to tag it with the Instagram handle @apartogether_art and she archives it on her website. What started as an exercise in combatting long-term isolation has grown into a global community of makers eager to share. She also hosts art talks, a “sew-in” and sessions on Zoom to facilitate conversation among the participants. As an accessible, open art project, I completely love this - anyone can participate, and everyone can view and appreciate this project. It’s warm, intimate, personal while also being enormous, inspirational and broadly impactful. I can’t help compare to Judy Chicago’s Honor Quilt from The Dinner Party, a crowdsourced quilt made from patches from people worldwide dedicated to women past to present, famous to non, that traveled with the famous work throughout its international tour in the 1980s, but I digress.
Speaking of Chicago, while doing my current research, I found an Op-ed for the New York Times she wrote about the significance of work with content; she articulated everything about her and feminist art that I love now and always have:
Does art matter when we are facing a global crisis such as the current Covid-19 pandemic?
Obviously, there is a great deal of art that doesn’t matter. This includes the work issuing from those university art programs that every year pump out thousands of graduates, taught only to speak in tongues about formal, conceptual and theoretical issues few people care about or can comprehend. Then there is the art created for a global market that has convinced too many people that a piece’s selling price is more important than the content it conveys.
But when art is meaningful and substantive, viewers can become enlightened, inspired and empowered. And this can lead to change, which we urgently need.
...One might ask what this has to do with the global pandemic afflicting us. The answer lies in art’s power to shed light on the problems we are confronted with at this difficult time.
...Art that raises awareness of the state of our planet can be especially important in today’s world. One example of this is the work of the contemporary artist and illustrator Sue Coe, whose pieces on animal mistreatment have been ignored or, at best, marginalized by an art community that seems to privilege meaninglessness over consequential work...
(I can’t express how much I love Judy Chicago’s adamant voice. It is so assertively, unapologetically and refreshingly personal and feminist. I highlly recommend reading her books and autobiographies - a new combined edition is actually coming out next year. Also, I currently have her book, New Views, which I’m stoked about starting and reviewing...but I digress, again!)
The point in my bringing this quote up around Liza Lou is that her work created during her 40th year, 2009, Book of Days, leans conceptual.
Liza Lou. Book of Days, Paper and glass beads.
I say “leans,” because, to make an obvious (and unfair) comparison: viewing Book of Days, without context, versus viewing this Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, a monumental work with 39 place-settings dedicated to women in Western art history (which Chicago debuted her 40th year, read my blog post here), there is clear content beyond the media with the latter, where the former emphasizes the media. Of course, Dinner Party’s media is very important, and Book of Days does have content beyond the media; its just immediate objective response in comparison is content vs. media. Which, is what Chicago was referring to in her editorial.
My preference typically leans towards feminist art with immediate content impact; as evidenced in my posts on Carolee Schneemann and Wanda Ewing. I haven’t thought about Liza Lou in years; in fact, Ewing was the one to introduce me to her work when I made a series of self portraits using beads (see below). Notably Lou is known for this work, which I love, Kitchen:
Liza Lou: Kitchen, 1994 (c) Liza Lou
Kitchen is a full-scaled kitchen Lou covered, over a five year period, with glistening beads. Lou created this piece after researching the lives of 19th women and kitchen design; the made plans, crafted objects out of paper mâché, painted them, and applied the beads in a mosaic of surface pattern. This work, in Lou’s words, “argues for the dignity of labor”—a labor that here manifests as process and subject, and is linked to gender, since crafts and kitchen work are traditionally female domains. Some of the popular branded kitchen products depicted also might comment on American life. Of course I can make a comparison to Chicago’s The Dinner Party, too, using the dinner table/traditional feminine media (ceramics/quilting) to honor these typically deemed inferior media. Or pop art, of course. Lou’s stands on its own--less reverential --more playful, inviting, fun and even personal (Lou did it all herself whereas Chicago had 400+ volunteers; Lou dedicates this to the all-encompassing woman; Chicago to specific though broad reaching women); both with extremely detailed thought, research and planning.
I didn’t mean for this to be a comparison of Chicago to Lou - but, it is how I’ve been thinking these last couple days--because, to bring it back to Lou’s Book of Days, this work can be viewed as more akin to minimalist work--one can guess what it means--a tall, stack of beaded forms depicting paper--beautiful, white, simple--maybe you think of other such minimalist works that make you aware of your environment such as Mary Corse’ White Inner Bands (2000) made of glass microspheres inside acrylic canvas. I imagine as you move around Lou’s stack of beaded objects, the beads sparkler or shimmer, femininizing the perhaps stale environment. Or perhaps think of the intense linework of Edwina Leapman. Like the laborous line-making of Leapman, so is the intricate beadwork of Lou.
As such, Book of Days, like Kitchen, points to labor, containment, and womanhood in a beautiful, perhaps more subtle way. To be sure, Book of Days includes 365 beaded sheets - the days in a year, completed her 40th year. Making literal cognitive and/or physical aging, perhaps? Perhaps....
Back to viewing it as an object - no context on the wall, no intent known. Is such work, sans clear feminist intent, feminist? Or would it just be meaningless work such as that Chicago points to in her article, lacking educational value? It is, in fact, feminist regardless. A woman making work, taking up space, is, in itself, political and a feminist statement. As women have been left off the walls, books and pages of history the majority of time and still are underrepresented (minorities even more), anything a woman (broadly defined) makes and is on view, is feminist in itself, clearly evoking social justice intent, or not.
To be sure - I don’t know, but I think Chicago would agree. To note as well, much of her work has minimalist aesthetics, as her training was such.
Here are a few of my older works, made with beads, inspired by Liza Lou:
Sally Brown Deskins: Babylove, beads and yarn on silk, 2007
Sally Brown Deskins: Self portrait with beads, pastel on black paper, 2008
Sally Brown Deskins: Heidi Clock - beads and yarn on a clock (I wish I had a better photo of this - it was donated and sold at an auction at the Bemis Center in 2008 or 2009; the purchaser told me she thought it was the “most authentic clock in the room” (all of the art was clocks)
-Sally Brown Deskins
IG @sallery_art
~
Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Brown Deskins. LFF Books is a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including the award-winning Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014) , The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015 and Mes Predices (catalog of art/writing by Marie Peter Toltz, 2017). Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. A portion of the proceeds from LFF books and products benefit the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund.
Submissions always open!
https://femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com/callforart-writing
Mesmerizing. Small glass beads cover every surface of this precisely detailed #kitchen by #lizalou at #whitneymuseum (at Whitney Museum of American Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6RWYLbHbue/?igshid=1uec6j1819upl
Capped off celebrating our 5 year anniversary with a a really amazing visit to the @thewhitneymuseum to see #makingknowing and #rachelharrison with the kiddos. I can not wait to go back and spend time with the beautifully curated Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 curated by #JennieGoldstein @elisabethfsherman #AmbikaTrasi works included #lizalou #mikekelly #miriamshapiro #evahesse #MikeKelley #alansheilds (at Whitney Museum of American Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/B5Rq1n3FL8Q/?igshid=1becjoebq8dve
