Mixed Blessings: Contemporary

by Lucy R. Lippard

In America today there is a little-known explosion of creative art by women and men from many different ethnic backgrounds. Mixed Blessings is the first book to discuss the crosscultural process taking place in the work of Latino, Native-, African-, and Asian-American artists. Rich with illustrations of artworks in many different mediums, and filled with incisive quotes and unsettling reports, it is more than a book about art, it is a complex meditation on the relationships of people to their cultures.

Lucy R. Lippard, one of our most original and insightful writers on art, challenges conventional approaches and explores the role of images in a changing society. Among her subjects are the uncertainty of exile; the confusion of identity in attempts to climb out of the melting pot; and art that speaks for itself, reversing stereotypes and reclaiming history and memory. Mixed Blessings is a book that will affect how we think of ourselves and each other.

Genres: Art, Art History, Nonfiction, Art and Photography, Reference

278 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Since 1966, Lippard has published 20 books on feminism, art, politics and place and has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations. A 2012 exhibition on her seminal book, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object at the Brooklyn Museum, titled "Six Years": Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art", cites Lippard's scholarship as its point of entry into a discussion about conceptual art during its era of emergence, demonstrating her crucial role in the contemporary understanding of this period of art production and criticism. Her research on the move toward dematerialization in art making has formed a cornerstone of contemporary art scholarship and discourse.

Co-founder of Printed matter (an art bookstore in New York City centered around artist's books), the Heresies Collective, Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D), Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America, and other artists' organizations, she has also curated over 50 exhibitions, done performances, comics, guerrilla theater, and edited several independent publications the latest of which is the decidedly local La Puente de Galisteo in her home community in Galisteo, New Mexico. She has infused aesthetics with politics, and disdained disinterestedness for ethical activism.

Reviews

[LANI · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved the quotes and excerpts that lined the sides of every page

square-shaped books are superior

[Jessica Bolton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout, MIXED BLESSINGS, Lippard presents an assortment of quotes, art, and theories from artists and writers challenging the mainstream, such as Cornell West, James Baldwin,and Adrian Piper, to name a few. What is unique about her inclusion of these artists and writers in the book is the sense that their voices are just as important as her own. The book takes on the feel of a dialog with these other voices as opposed to a third person survey of the topic of multicultural art. Lippard consistently pays tribute to their authority, as it is their experiences being dissected, effectively justifying her intentions on writing to this topic. In essence, the book could be considered a compilation of multicultural artists, writers, and theorists with Lippard, the supportive guide, navigating readers on a tour of contested space.

[Susan D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this for a grad class. It would probably be pretty hard to digest on its own, but the content and context under which I read this was incredibly enlightening, eye opening and profound. I see the world differently as a result of this class and this book.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once you get past the mind-numbing academic writing style, this book has a lot to say about the treatment of non-Anglo, non-mainstream artists in the 1980s. And today.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

independently read for my div III