Lucy Lippard lecture at SVA

SVA's Art Criticism and Writing MFA Director, David Levi-Strauss Introducing the Lecture

The Art Criticism and Writing MFA program at SVA sponsored the brilliant curator, "critic", writer, and activist Lucy Lippard last evening. The talk, titled "Ghosts, the Daily News, and Prophecy: Critical Landscape Photography" examined the role and effectiveness of photography in generating responsibility for place. Much of the lecture was extracted from her most recent project "The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society." The Manhattan native moved to New Mexico a few years ago, and is active with city planning and watershed restoration. Always an activist, it comes as no surprise that Lippard is heavy into land use issues, and artworks as activism.

I am still processing the pithy lecture, but I expect that it will be made public soon at this website. (the other lectures in the series are here as well.)

Very interesting to me was that her talk made no argument, nor did it actually 'critique' any art work. It was more a presentation of landscape photographs which illustrated a discussion about local and global power relations, the role of art, and the deconstruction and de-contextualization of visual knowledge. Early on in the talk, she disclaimed the distinction between being a critic and an advocate of art. She identified with the latter, but accepted the former. She flat-out rejected being a theorist. To Lippard, being a theorist marks a sort of hardening of the veins. A very even-keeled, approachable, scholar, I am happy to report how refreshingly human she was, for such a prolific genius.