Untitled (Be This Occasionally)
Lee Lozano
“Gradually but determinedly avoid being present at all official or public ‘uptown’ functions or gatherings related to the ‘art world’ in order to pursue investigation of total personal & public revolution. Exhibit in public only pieces which further sharing of ideas & information related to total personal & public revolution.”
- Lee Lozano, from General Strike Piece (1969) 1
Written in a notebook in 1969, Lee Lozano’s statement marks the beginning of the end of her short-lived time in the public eye. Lozano participated in New York City’s art scene and produced collectible work for just eight years before performing the General Strike Piece. Pursuing total revolution, she withdrew from the commercial art business and began creating performance and conceptual pieces that defied commodification. Her most confounding piece began in 1971 when she abruptly and definitively stopped speaking to women. In the same year, Lozano performed Drop Out Piece, her calculated departure from New York City and the art world at large. The work was successful on its own terms; it seemed she managed to erase her own name from art historical records. Only recently, some years after her death, has the art world begun to remember Lee Lozano, now dedicating numerous “uptown functions” to her work.
In the 2004 exhibition Drawn From Life, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center displayed the largest collection of Lozano’s drawings and paintings ever shown. Since then, much discussion has revolved around her body of work depicting the contents of a wellstocked toolbox. The bold, direct, and sometimes furious representations of screwdrivers, wrenches, vise grips, and hammers have been described by some critics as sexually suggestive. In the context of Lozano’s life and work, her sexually imbued tools critique dominant social and institutional systems of the sixties. The drawing Untitled (Be This Occasionally) (1964) was made years before Lozano’s more radical performances, yet even then its wrench was assembling what would take shape in the artist’s later provocations.
In this drawing, the deftness of Lozano’s stroke and intensity of her process commands attention. The thick graphite lines infuse the form with emotion and energy, and yet the drawing is more matter-of-fact than expressionistic. Rendered with economy, accuracy, and directness, it describes the object but refrains from excess detail. The tool disregards the paper’s size, as its hefty handle extends off the corner of the paper. The effect of viewing the drawing is immediate; we feel the volume, hardness, and heaviness of the enormous wrench as it pushes into our viewing space. Three words in script—“be this occasionally”—hover at the top of the paper. To whom is she speaking? What exactly is “this” that we should be? What are we to make of this cryptic message? Perhaps she instructs herself to bridge the separation between art and life.
Lozano’s drawing may even provide visual instructions for revolutionizing the social categories establishing identity. To challenge entrenched social systems Lozano must adopt the qualities traditionally reserved for men, as represented by the wrench. The object is perceived as masculine—symbolizing power, strength, action, and authority. It loosens and tightens, dismantles and builds. In her performance pieces, Lozano became what the wrench represents. She lived the ideas expressed in the drawing and challenged the socially constructed roles of artist and woman. In a radical stance, she perceived interaction with women to be a futile method of subverting gender expectations and inequality. By choosing to speak only to men, Lozano attempted to appropriate the power that men exercised in a patriarchal society. Lozano wanted to be art. Within her personal rebellion, she chose her life as her artistic medium.
Caitlin Hinz
Skidmore College, Class of 2006
1 Lee Lozano, “General Strike Piece,” Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999), 120.
- Lee Lozano, from General Strike Piece (1969) 1
Written in a notebook in 1969, Lee Lozano’s statement marks the beginning of the end of her short-lived time in the public eye. Lozano participated in New York City’s art scene and produced collectible work for just eight years before performing the General Strike Piece. Pursuing total revolution, she withdrew from the commercial art business and began creating performance and conceptual pieces that defied commodification. Her most confounding piece began in 1971 when she abruptly and definitively stopped speaking to women. In the same year, Lozano performed Drop Out Piece, her calculated departure from New York City and the art world at large. The work was successful on its own terms; it seemed she managed to erase her own name from art historical records. Only recently, some years after her death, has the art world begun to remember Lee Lozano, now dedicating numerous “uptown functions” to her work.
In the 2004 exhibition Drawn From Life, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center displayed the largest collection of Lozano’s drawings and paintings ever shown. Since then, much discussion has revolved around her body of work depicting the contents of a wellstocked toolbox. The bold, direct, and sometimes furious representations of screwdrivers, wrenches, vise grips, and hammers have been described by some critics as sexually suggestive. In the context of Lozano’s life and work, her sexually imbued tools critique dominant social and institutional systems of the sixties. The drawing Untitled (Be This Occasionally) (1964) was made years before Lozano’s more radical performances, yet even then its wrench was assembling what would take shape in the artist’s later provocations.
In this drawing, the deftness of Lozano’s stroke and intensity of her process commands attention. The thick graphite lines infuse the form with emotion and energy, and yet the drawing is more matter-of-fact than expressionistic. Rendered with economy, accuracy, and directness, it describes the object but refrains from excess detail. The tool disregards the paper’s size, as its hefty handle extends off the corner of the paper. The effect of viewing the drawing is immediate; we feel the volume, hardness, and heaviness of the enormous wrench as it pushes into our viewing space. Three words in script—“be this occasionally”—hover at the top of the paper. To whom is she speaking? What exactly is “this” that we should be? What are we to make of this cryptic message? Perhaps she instructs herself to bridge the separation between art and life.
Lozano’s drawing may even provide visual instructions for revolutionizing the social categories establishing identity. To challenge entrenched social systems Lozano must adopt the qualities traditionally reserved for men, as represented by the wrench. The object is perceived as masculine—symbolizing power, strength, action, and authority. It loosens and tightens, dismantles and builds. In her performance pieces, Lozano became what the wrench represents. She lived the ideas expressed in the drawing and challenged the socially constructed roles of artist and woman. In a radical stance, she perceived interaction with women to be a futile method of subverting gender expectations and inequality. By choosing to speak only to men, Lozano attempted to appropriate the power that men exercised in a patriarchal society. Lozano wanted to be art. Within her personal rebellion, she chose her life as her artistic medium.
Caitlin Hinz
Skidmore College, Class of 2006
1 Lee Lozano, “General Strike Piece,” Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999), 120.