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This will mean more to some of you than others

Louise Lawler at the Museum of Modern Art

Ingrid Periz
Eyeline 89
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"This will mean more to some of you than others1"

For forty years Louise Lawler has been practising her own form of institutional critique in predominantly photographic work that takes art and the artworld as its subject matter. Much if not all of this work can be understood as a continual framing and reframing, physically and conceptually, of works of art. Lawler is interested in the contexts in which art is found, and how these contexts determine the conditions under which it appears as art. These conditions can include the placement of artworks within the domestic spaces of private collections, the arrangement of work in a commercial gallery, exhibition opening protocols, the forms of artist publicity, the theatre of the art auction, titling, and provenance, amongst other things. Why Pictures Now, Lawler’s career survey exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, showed her at once witty, sly and deft in a collection of works that strive constantly to refashion the notion of the work of art.

The exhibition revealed the range possible within Lawler’s practice of photographing art in different sites. In addition to the documentation of work in domestic, institutional and commercial interiors—a format that has more variety than this description might suggest—Lawler can work very large and very small, and again, to markedly different effect. Her ‘adjusted to fit’ works—mural-sized images applied directly to the wall, depicting typically large-scale installations of multiple iconic works by other artists—read as depthless stretched surfaces, an ironic take on art appearing in many super-sized museums. By contrast Lawler’s paperweights, which encase her own images of art in situ, instantiate a physical presence, at once miniaturised and... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Arranged by Donald Marron, Susan Brundage, Cheryl Bishop at Paine Webber Inc. (adjusted to fit), 1982/2016. Dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures. © 2016 Louise Lawler.

Arranged by Donald Marron, Susan Brundage, Cheryl Bishop at Paine Webber Inc. (adjusted to fit), 1982/2016. Dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures. © 2016 Louise Lawler.

(Andy Warhol and Other Artists) Tulip, 1982. Silver dye bleach print, 38 ½ x 60 ½” (97.8 x 153.7 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures. © 2016 Louise Lawler.

(Andy Warhol and Other Artists) Tulip, 1982. Silver dye bleach print, 38 ½ x 60 ½” (97.8 x 153.7 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures. © 2016 Louise Lawler.