Since the 1970s, the performance and conceptual artist Suzanne Lacy has explored women'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 movements' formative years. In the introduction, the art historian Moira Roth provides a helpful overview of Lacy's art and writing, which in the afterword the cultural theorist Kerstin Mey situates in relation to contemporary public art practices.
Illustrations ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction. Suzanne Lacy: Three Decades of Performing and Writing/Writing and Performing / Moira Roth xvii
Part 1. Learning to Look: The Seventies
Introduction 2
1. Prostitution Notes (1974) 5
2. Falling Apart (1980) 20
3. Body Contract (1974) 30
Photo Essay. Learn Where the Meat Comes From (1976) 43
4. Cinderella in a Dragster (1977) 48
5. The Bag Lady: On Memory (1982) 52
6. The Life and Times of Donaldina Cameron (with Linda Palumbo and Kathleen Chang) (1978) 57
7. In Mourning and In Rage (With Analysis Aforethought) (1978) 64
8. Learning to Look: The Relationship between Art and Popular Culture Images (with Leslie Labowitz) (1970) 72
9. Feminist Artists: Developing a Media Strategy for the Movement (with Leslie Labowitz) (1981) 83
10. Time, Bones, and Art: Anatomy of a Decade (1995) 92
Part 2. Political Performance Art: The Eighties
Introduction 108
11. Broomsticks and Banners: The Winds of Change (1980) 109
12. The Greening of California Performance: Art of Social Change-A Case Study (1982) 114
13. Made for TV: California Performance in Mass Media (1982) 120
14. Battle of New Orleans (1980) 126
15. Beneath the Seams (1982) 137
16. In the Shadows: An Analysis of The Dark Madonna (1990) 144
17. Political Performance Art: A Discussion by Suzanne Lacy and Lucy R. Lippard (1985) 151
Part 3. Debated Territory: The Nineties
Introduction 160
18. The Name of the Game (1991) 161
19. Debated Territory: Toward a Critical Language for Public Art (1994) 172
20. Affinities: Thoughts on an Incomplete History (1994) 185
21. Love, Cancer, Memory: A Few Stories (1996) 194
22. Cancer Notes (with Leslie Becker) (1995) 211
23. What It Takes (with Ann Wettrich) (2002) 222
Part 4. Leaving Art: After 2000
Introduction 236
24. The Skin of Memory/La Piel de la Memoria (with Pilar Riaņo-Alcalá) (2006) 237
25. Seeking an American Identity (Working Inward from the Margins) (2003) 250
26. Cop in the Head, Cop in the Street (2006) 267
27. Having It Good: Reflections on Engaged Art and Engaged Buddhism (2005) 284
28. Hard Work in a Working-Class Town (2006) 300
29. Tracing Allan Kaprow (2007) 319
Afterword: In|ter|ceptions and In|tensions-Situating Suzanne Lacy's Practice / Kerstin Mey 327
Appendix. Chronology and Selected Performances and Installations 339
Notes 343
Index 369
