Colorfully written and illustrated memoir of the activist art writer Lucy Lippard
Stuff: Instead of a Memoir is a short, abundantly illustrated autobiography of the American art writer, activist, and sometime curator Lucy R. Lippard. Describing tchotchkes, photographs, and art in her unpretentious New Mexico home, the author informally narrates key events and relationships in her 86-year-long, highly creative life, starting with her family roots and her childhood in New York, Louisiana, Virginia, and Maine. Through anecdotal and often humorous memories, we follow the author through her youth, adulthood, relationships, and her thirty-five years in New York City, where she organized dozens of exhibitions, authored hundreds of articles, and co-founded Heresies: A Feminist Journal of Art and Politics, the artist's-book center Printed Matter, and activist artists group PAD/D. Lippard touches on the roles she played in Conceptual Art and the Feminist Art movement in the 1960s through the 1980s. Her accounts of more recent years focus on the art, landscape, culture, and communities of the American Southwest, where she moved in the early 1990s. This "anti-memoir" also mentions Lippard's twenty-five books, but few of her many honors.
Industry Reviews
"A godmother of conceptual art and a preeminent feminist critic and environmentalist, Lippard shaped the ways in which we think about the contested borderlands of art, identity, and politics." * New York Review of Books *
"Admirers of the art writer and activist Lucy R. Lippard have long hoped that she would produce an autobiography, and at last, and with wry reluctance, she has. Characteristically, it's a maverick project: a super-succinct account that packs a lifetime, from her childhood to her octogenarian present, into illustrated outline form. There's so much to tell: She was a starter-spark in what came to be called feminist art, Conceptualism, Multiculturalism, and environmentally conscious art. She briefly touches on her role in each of these and makes mention of people she knew - what a lineup - all of it in what basically amounts to an annotated photo album of barely 140 small pages. Sure, you'd love to have more, but you still get a lot, about her and about the more than 60 years of art history she's helped shape." * The New York Times Best Art Books of 2023 *
"Art writer, activist, and curator Lucy R. Lippard's latest book is an illustrated autobiography framed as an 'anti-memoir.' Her snappy, often humorous writing takes readers on a journey through Conceptual Art and the Feminist Art movement in New York in the 1960s through the '80s, the founding of artist's book center Printed Matter and activist artists group PAD/D, and the art, landscape, culture, and communities of the Southwestern United States, where she currently resides." * Hyperallergic *
