Photo credit: Harold Abramowitz

Written and delivered as an Artist’s Talk, the text’s underlying tone is a last word to a former significant other who does not “understand” the speaker’s work. The slide lecture contains five images of canonical Conceptual/ Feminist artwork as well as one image from a video piece of the speaker’s.



Excerpt:


This is what I think. I appreciate your attention in advance for listening to me just this once as I am resolved in my own mind about what I want to tell you, and you might not get a chance like this to hear my perspective again. […]

You think art is too removed from all things current that it becomes self-indulgent. You forget that in speaking we indulge ourselves. You just don’t like art because you think that there is only one way to talk about it and that way you don’t know or don’t care to know. I’d sense this when I’d get excited by a painting or video or use words like “rupture” and “multivalent,” and you’d say with a smirk, “Yes. Right. Sure,” to belittle me. You forget that you’re the one who’d take out a dictionary or smile and correct me when I’d mispronounce a word. You like to keep our strengths separate and discreet. (Slide up: Benglis, Lynda, Self-Portrait, 1971) […]

Art is made by people who have a sense of humor and capacity for empathy just like you. But you always think that art is judging you. You don’t understand how art can consume its practitioners, because it allows us to understand our own life relations more completely.

So, to this end, when you said that you don’t understand my art what you were wrong to imply is that you’d never be able to truly have me. (Slide up: Adair, Danielle, “False,” video still, 2005).

Thank you for having me here tonight.