Lucy R. Lippard > Quotes

“Travel is the only context in which some people ever look around. If we spent half the energy looking at our own neighborhoods, we'd probably learn twice as much.”
― Lucy R. Lippard, On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place

“An Eskimo custom offers an angry person release by walking the emotion out of his or her system in a straight line across the landscape; the point at which the anger is conquered is marked with a stick, bearing witness to the strength or length of the rage.”
― Lucy Lippard, Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory

“I do write about men now and then, but I mostly write about women because that's the work I like best. When I became a feminist, I realized that somebody had to write all about this women's art that was out there ignored, and it was going to be me. And of course the ideas were particularly interesting to me, and the discoveries, about what women's art was and could be. I often say I'm more interested and mediocre art by women than in mediocre art by men – which is interpreted as I only like mediocre art or women only do mediocre art – all that shit. I don't write about mediocre art but I look at it and it does interest me for the information it gives me about women's imagery, women's psyches, women's lives, women's experience.”
― Lucy Lippard in Talking Art Interviews With Artists Since 1976

“A great many contemporary artists from hugely diverse backgrounds are currently approaching the prospect of cultural mixing...”
― Lucy Lippard

“Some feminist artists have chosen a fundamentally sexual or erotic imagery... Others have opted for a realist or conceptual celebration of female experience in which birth, motherhood, rape, maintenance, household imagery, windows, menstruation, autobiography, family background and portraits of friends figure prominently...”
― Lucy Lippard

“The postmodern notion of "appropriation" is not a good fit. In New Mexico, the "indigenous" is a syncretic fusion of Native American and Hispano American. Just as Pueblo people who are Catholics embrace their traditional religions, Nuevo Mexicanos who wear Metallica T-shirts also attend mass and clean the ditches. The fact that both good and bad aspects of the larger pop culture are welcomed with open arms in New Mexican villages and pueblos does not belie the passion with which local ethnic culture is embraced.”
― Lucy R. Lippard, Nuevo México Profundo: Rituals of an Indo-Hispano Homeland

“History always catches up with rebels".”
― Lucy R. Lippard

“If I can’t read and can’t walk, please shoot me.”
― Lucy R. Lippard

“History always catches up with rebels.”
― Lucy R. Lippard

“Looking at and 'appreciating' art has been understood as an instrument (or at best a result) of upward mobility, in which owning art is the ultimate step. making art is at the bottom of the scale. This is the only legitimate reason to see artists as so many artists see themselves - as 'workers'. At the same time, artists/makers tend to feel misunderstood and, as creators, innately superior to the buyers/owners. The innermost circle of the art-world class system thereby replaces the rulers with the creators, and the contemporary artist in the big city is a schizophrenic creature. S/he is persistently working 'up' to be accepted, not only by other artists, but also by the hierarchy that exhibits, writes about and buys his / her work. At the same time s/he is often ideologically working 'down' in an attempt to identify with the workers outside of the art context and to overthrow the rulers in the name of art.”
― Lucy R. Lippard

“Political art tends to be socially concerned and activist’ art tends to be socially involved.”
― Lucy Lippard