Lee Lozano

This volume brings together a broad selection of the work of artist Lee Lozano (1930–99), representing the whole of her brief but prolific career. Trained as a painter, Lozano made a name for herself in the New York art world of the 1960s with a versatile output comprising painting on the one hand and conceptual practice on the other.
While working in the social and artistic context of the time, Lozano maintained a position radically opposed to any form of categorization. Strike surveys the different periods of her work, from figurative drawings and paintings in an Expressionist style to the large oils on canvas titled Tool Paintings, and following their formal evolution toward minimalist abstraction. The project also includes a selection of her Language Pieces, works that mark the artist’s shift to an exclusively conceptual phase that reached its conclusion in 1972 with Dropout Piece.

The ninth in Karma’s 11-volume edition of Lee Lozano’s (1930–99) Private Book project, this volume spans April to September 1970, the summer that preceded Lozano’s solo exhibition at the Whitney, where she showed her Wave Paintings. (Following this major show, Lozano ceased to paint altogether and increasingly turned her attention to text-based works.) Among the thoughts, manifestos and personal contacts scribbled in these entries is a callout to Lucy Lippard, who described Lozano as “the major female figure” in conceptual art during the 1960s: “Slogans written on postcards to Lucy Lippard & my parents: Love Your Planet / Plan-It / Lose your ego for peace / Put YOUTH in the black & white house.”

This 640-page volume comprises drawings from a critical six-year period in the development of American painter and conceptual artist Lee Lozano’s (1930-99) practice. Her daring, facetious sketches investigate issues of gender and the body through the erogenous anthropomorphization of tools.

Lee Lozano: Drawings 1958-64 includes two newly commissioned essays by Helen Molesworth and Tamar Garb. “What I love about Lozano—besides the crazy, ham-fisted quality of her drawn line, pictures made with pencils that appear to have been held with a fist—is how her demonstration of the word 'connection' is not bound to any of the anodyne ways we currently use it,” writes Molesworth. “There’s nothing about 'listening' or 'building community' or 'empathy' in any of these drawings. For Lozano, connection is fraught and hairy. Connection is dangerous.”

Lee Lozano (1930–99) kept a series of journals from 1968 to 1970 while living in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. In 1973, Lozano rigorously edited her journals, which included records of her personal relationships and interactions during this period. This pocket-sized ringbound volume is the eighth in Karma’s 11-volume facsimile printing of Lozano’s project, containing Lozano’s entries from March to April 1970. Lozano’s published notebooks convey a perpetually active mind, and give a glimpse into her process and her stylistic evolution from cartoonish pop expressionism in her early drawings to language-based conceptualism.

This is the seventh volume in Karma's 11-volume facsimile printing of Lee Lozano's Private Book (1930–99) project. “Don’t be RIVAL RABBITS," she writes here. "Give your ideas away. Help the world survive. SHARE AN IDEA JOINT.”

This is the sixth volume in Karma's 11-volume facsimile printing of Lee Lozano's Private Book (1930–99) project. One excerpt reads: “For my opening at the Whitney I would like to do a very special FANCY: want to give an invitation personally to the downtown people I know from being/living in this neighborhood for so long. In fact these are the only people I want at my opening. Just NEIGHBORHOOD people: from drugstores, food & laundry stores, stationary stores, etc. GET IT?”

Before her self-imposed exile from the art world, Lee Lozano (1930–99) was a highly regarded painter who defined a generation of American artists infusing conceptualism with a new intensity. A prolific writer and documenter of both her art and her relationships, the public and private, Lozano kept a series of personal journals from 1968 to 1972 while living in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. In the decade before her infamous “dropout piece”—culminating in a move to Dallas where she would remain until her death—Lozano returned to these notebooks, editing the entries, sometimes blacking out entire pages. Private Book 1 is the first in the series of 11 pocket-sized books, which are printed as facsimiles.

This third volume in Karma’s 11-volume facsimile edition of Lee Lozano’s Private Book project is primarily a calendar of Lozano’s personal, artistic and “chemical” interactions in 1969–70. A prolific writer and documenter of both her art and her relationships, the painter Lee Lozano (1930–99) kept a series of personal journals from 1968 to 1970 while living in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. In 1972 she rigorously edited these books, thus completing the project. Eleven of these private books survive, containing notes on her work, detailed interactions with artist friends and commentary on the alienations of gender politics, as well as philosophical queries into art’s role in society and humorous asides from daily life.

This is the fourth volume in Karma's 11-volume facsimile printing of Lee Lozano's Private Book project. It is primarily a calendar of Lozano's personal, artistic and chemical interactions in 1969–70. A prolific writer and documenter of both her art and her relationships, the public and private, the painter Lee Lozano (1930–99) kept a series of personal journals from 1968 to 1970 while living in New York's SoHo neighborhood. In 1972 she rigorously edited these books, thus completing the project.

This is the fifth volume in Karma's 11-volume facsimile printing of Lee Lozano's Private Book project. Eleven of these private books survive, containing notes on Lozano's work, detailed interactions with artist friends and commentary on the alienations of gender politics, as well as philosophical queries into art's role in society and humorous asides from daily life.

In the late 1960s, Lee Lozano (1930–99) conceived of and executed a series of "language pieces," written in the pages of her notebooks, consisting of rules and parameters for the actions that would constitute a piece. From offering money to houseguests to smoking as much marijuana as possible, Lozano boldly tested social norms, culminating in two of her most famous works: General Strike Piece (1969), which saw her retreating from the art world completely, and Decide to Boycott Women (1971), in which she ceased engaging with all members of her own gender. Lee Lozano: Language Pieces presents 46 of these pieces, beautifully reproducing them at full scale. Nearly five decades later, these radical manifestations of 1960s and '70s conceptualism continue to exert their political and artistic influence.

A prolific writer and documenter of both her art and her relationships, the public and private, Lozano kept a series of personal journals from 1968 to 1972 while living in New York’s SoHo neighborhood.

Eleven of these private books survive, containing notes on her work, detailed interactions with artist friends and commentary on the alienations of gender politics, as well as philosophical queries into art’s role in society and humorous asides from daily life.

In the decade before her infamous “dropout piece”—culminating in a move to Dallas where she would remain until her death—Lozano returned to these notebooks, editing the entries, sometimes blacking out entire pages. Private Book 2 is the second in a series of 11 pocket-sized books, which are printed as facsimiles with spiral binding.