Q. And babies? A. And babies.

Artist's Poster Committee of Art Workers Coalition

Q. And babies? A. And babies. 

New York City, USA: Self-published, 1970

63.5 x 96.5 cm.

Edition size unknown

Cover-Up, the 2025 documentary about investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, features a chilling interview clip that I had read many times, but never seen: 

Mike Wallace: So you fired something like sixty-seven shots?

Paul Meadlo: Right.

Mike Wallace: And you killed how many? At that time?

Paul Meadlo: Well, I fired them automatic, so you can’t- You just spray the area on them and so you can’t know how many you killed ‘cause they were going fast. So I might have killed ten or fifteen of them.

Mike Wallace:  Men, women, and children?

Paul Meadlo: Men, women, and children.

Mike Wallace: And babies?

Paul Meadlo: And babies.

Coupled with the infamous My Lai Massacre picture taken by combat photographer Ronald L. Haeberle on March 16, 1968, the last question and answer became part of one of the most enduring and disturbing art world images of the Vietnam war. 

The Artist's Poster Committee of Art Workers Coalition presented the two word question with the identical two word answer in an enlarged, blood-red distressed font overlaid onto the colour photograph of women and children killed by US forces on a dirt road

It has been estimated that over 500 unarmed civilians were killed - some raped, tortured and mutilated before their deaths - as part of the March massacre in South Viet Nam. The story caused global outrage when it became public knowledge in November of 1969. Eventually twenty-six US soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only one was convicted. Despite being found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he served only three and a half years under house arrest.

The poster was produced by AWC and GAAG members Frazer Dougherty, Jon Hendricks and Irving Petlin, along with Museum of Modern Art members Arthur Drexler and Elizabeth Shaw. Unexpectedly, the MoMA had agreed to fund and circulate the poster, but it was eventually vetoed by the president of the Board of Trustees, William S. Paley (chief executive office of the CBS radio and television networks). He and fellow board member Nelson Rockefeller were both "firm supporters" of the war and had backed the Nixon administration.1 Paley reportedly "hit the ceiling" when he saw the poster proofs. Funding was cancelled and the MoMA's press release stated that the project was outside the "function" of the museum, which could not take a position on any matter not directly related to a specific function of the institution.

"We picketed and protested in front of Guernica, published 50,000 posters on our own and distributed them, free, via an informal network of artists and movement people; it has turned up all over the world," wrote AWC member Lucy Lippard in November of 1970. The poster image was broadcast on television and reprinted in newspapers, as well as carried in protest marches around the globe.

"The success of And Babies gave the AWC a sense of self-determination that MoMA’s patronage would not have offered,” Lippard later wrote, in Vietnam in Art. 

The AWC press release stated "Practically, the outcome is as planned: an artist-sponsored poster protesting the My-Lai massacre will receive vast distribution. But the Museum's unprecedented decision to make known, as an institution, its commitment to humanity, has been denied it.”

A second version of the poster was released when Nixon ran for re-election, with the caption changed to “Four More Years?”

The poster was included in two major MoMA exhibitions: Kynaston McShine's 1970 exhibition of conceptual art, Information; and Betsy Jones' The Artist as Adversary in 1971. It is now included in the gallery's permanent collection.

1. In the years that followed Paley would shorten a second instalment of a two-part CBS Evening News series on the Watergate, based on a request by Charles Colson, an aide to President Richard M. Nixon, and order the suspension of a critical analyses by CBS news commentators following Presidential addresses.

It was just reported this week that new head of CBS News Bari Weiss has spiked another 60 Minutes story critical of the Trump administration. 

Printed Matter

A letter written fifty years ago today that precipitated the founding of Printed Matter Bookstore. 

Jackie Winsor: Sculpture at P.S.1

[Jackie Winsor]

Jackie Winsor: Sculpture at P.S.1

New York City, USA: Paula Cooper Gallery, 1997

24 pp., 8.5 x 7”, softcover

Edition size unknown

A catalogue published in conjunction with an exhibition at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center that ran from October 29th, 1997 to April 15th, 1998.

The Newfoundland-born Minimalist artist died earlier this week, at the age of 82.

“Winsor often refers to ‘muscle’ when she talks about her work, not just the muscle it takes to make the pieces and haul them around, but the muscle which is the kinesthetic property of wound and bound forms, of the energy it takes to make a piece so simple and still so full of an almost frightening presence, mitigated but not lessened by a humorous gawkiness.”

- Lucy Lippard

Lucy Lippard | Stuff

Lucy Lippard

Stuff: Instead of a Memoir

New York City, USA: New Village Press, 2023

144 pp., 20.3 x 20.3 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

Lucy Lippard will be signing copies of her new autobiography tomorrow between 3 and 4pm at Printed Matter in New York (231 11th Avenue). 

Lucy Lippard | Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object

Lucy Lippard

Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object

London, UK: Studio Vista, 1973. 

272 pp., 22 x 18.5 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

It’s difficult to measure the impact of Lucy R. Lippard’s groundbreaking 1973 book, whose full title is eighty-eight words long: 

Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, antiform, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones), edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard.

Now over fifty years old, the volume helped cement the legacy of conceptual art, which Lippard defines as "work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or ‘dematerialized.’"

Artists featured in the book include Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Eleanor Antin, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner (who wrote a negative review of it in Art Forum: "To document the history of six years of extremely active and possibly radical art requires a sense of responsibility to the spirit of the art itself. The bibliographic processes must be systematic, clear, informed, and consistent within the chosen theoretical framework. Lippard’s book does not satisfy these criteria.”), Daniel Buren, Hannah Darboven, Marcel Duchamp, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, On Kawara, Les Levine, Sol Lewitt, Lee Lozano, Ursula Meyer, Bruce Nauman, The N.E. Thing Co., Yoko Ono, Adrian Piper, Robert Ryman (who Lippard was married to for six years), Michael Snow, Jeff Wall, Lawrence Weiner and many others. 

As the title Six Years suggests, the book is presented as a timeline, with key moments in the development of the genre appearing as titles, with supporting documents such as contemporaneous letters, interviews, and reviews. Lippard quotes herself liberally, mistrusting memory and privileging her own first-hand accounts over hindsight. For example, the timeline includes the publication date of her essay The Dematerialization of the Art Object (written with John Chandler in the Fall of 1967, and published in February of 1968):

"During the 1960s, the anti-intellectual, emotional/intuitive processes of art-making characteristic of the last two decades have begun to give way to an ultra-conceptual art that emphasizes the thinking process almost exclusively... The studio is again becoming a study. Such a trend appears to be provoking a profound dematerialisation of art, especially of art as object, and if it continues to prevail, it may result in the object's becoming wholly obsolete."

The essay, and the book it inspired has become an essential historical survey and reference book for sixties art and conceptualism in particular. 

"At age eighteen I discovered a book called Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object by Lucy Lippard. To me this book reconfirmed that a concept can be equally as beautiful as its aesthetics. I was so excited that I read it too quickly, not fully appreciating its content, and had to read it again. Following a Christmas tradition, my grandmother would ask my mother to buy a present for her to give to me on Christmas morning. My Mum later passed the task to me, so I bought a reissue of Six Years, which my grandmother then gave back to me on Christmas morning. I acted surprised, as promised, when unwrapping it. “Thank you, Grandma. A book on the dematerialization of the art object, just what I always wanted.” She wrote a note on the inside front cover, and I treasure it over all other books [see below]. Six Years made me realize that art and design were no longer disciplines that were motivated purely by aesthetics. I wanted to relate Lippard’s ideas of dematerialization to graphic design, exploring objectivity, systems, and concepts, and remove as many aesthetic decisions from the design process as possible. I asked myself whether graphic design can be dematerialized, or whether the graphic can be informed by a concept.”

- Daniel Eatock

Speaking volumes: Women Artists’ Books

[Lucy Lippard]

Speaking volumes: Women Artists’ Books

New York City, USA: A.I.R. Gallery, 1980

10.2 x 15.2 cm.

Edition size unknown

A postcard invitation for an exhibition of Artists' Books by female artists, curated by Lucy R Lippard, which presented a hundred and fifty books by a hundred artists. The exhibition took place at A.I.R. Gallery in New York, from June 3rd to the 21st,  1980.

A partial checklist of the exhibition is below. 

Lucy Lippard turns 86 today. 

Lucy Lippard | 5 Prose Fictions

Lucy Lippard

5 Prose Fictions

New York City, USA: Self-published, 1976

[14] pp., 21.6 × 27.9 cm., staple-bound

Edition size unknown

A self-published mimeographed work featuring five pieces by Lippard: "The Cries You Hear", "N.Y. Times IV", "Headwaters", "Into Among" and "First Fables of Hysteria". he reproduced typewritten text includes the author's corrections and revisions. 5 Prose Fictions was produced for the A.I.R. Gallery, the first all-female artists cooperative gallery in the United States. 

The title is extremely rare and - when it does appear for sale - it is typically priced around a thousand dollars. New Documents republished the title earlier this year (see next post). 

"The A.I.R. Gallery was founded because, despite gains made by the early women artists’ movement, the majority of the emergent women had no place to show their art. The commercial galleries were filled up with men and, even if more good will existed than it does, it would take forever for women to sift through the extant openings. Other co-ops also tended to be run by men and to lack the cohesion that a political alliance, no matter how feeble, provides an all-woman gallery. 

[...]

A.I.R. is a non-profit, the proceeds of all sales going directly to the artist with no dealer’s commissions detached. Located in the heart of SoHo, A.I.R. participates (perhaps of necessity) in the art world’s promotion and power games, competing for reviews and attention and sales with the rest of the gang, and doing well at it. Like the commercial galleries, it has a stable of 20 artists; here the similarities end. A.I.R. has no director. According to the tenets of the women’s movements there are no leaders; everybody has her say on everything; work and money are solicited equally from all members with the usual problems of haves and have-nots, workers and non-workers, solved intramurally. Most significantly, it is committed to a diversity of styles not found in the most high-powered emporia, as befits the organ of a movement devoted to a multiple, open, flexible view of life and opposed to the single, acceptable, currently fashionable image, opposed to the rejection of self and emotion for a place in the establishment’s sunlamp. The original group of A.I.R. members was selected from slides of some 600 “unknown” artists. The resulting stylistic mix has been maintained in the turnovers, and A.I.R.’s major problem is probably the fact that there are too many good artists for its small space, especially considering the women from out of town who want to show in New York, but cannot be here to do the daily work entailed by membership.

For the most part, A.I.R. has resisted the temptation to focus inwards on its own artists rather than looking outwards towards all women artists. It holds yearly invitational shows, and recently had its first international exhibition—a group of women from Paris, none of whom was previously known in New York. A.I.R.’s non-profit status allows foundation support of parallel projects like the Monday night programs of film, panels, readings, discussions; the sponsoring of outside exhibitions, such as that of women artists from the 1930’s recently at Vassar; a possible periodical—and this portfolio, which offers a sampler of the gallery’s art for prices more accessible to other artists and to the growing feminist public which breaks art world (though not class) boundaries. It is only a pity that the space is too small to house the Women’s Art Registry of slides, from which the bulk of A.I.R.’s artists were initially selected."

- Lucy Lippard

Lucy R. Lippard | 955,000

Lucy R. Lippard

955,000

Vancouver, Canada: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1970

138 pp., 10 x 15.5 cm., loose leaves

Edition size unknown

The landmark exhibition catalogue for Lucy Lippard's landmark exhibition of the same name, which ran from January 13th to February 8th, 1970, at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

The title refers to the population of Vancouver at the time (it's estimated to be almost three times the number now: 2,606,351). 

The publication was the first in a series of titles by Lippard which were titled after the population of the city in which the exhibition was held (Seattle 557,087, Buenos Aires 2,972,453). For these exhibitions each participating artist was invited to produce one or two cards to represent their work. The texts consisted primarily of proposals, scores and conceptual works. These cards were then placed in an envelope, in no arranged order - alongside an introduction and bibliography - and sold as a catalogue for $3.

Among the 62 artists in the exhibition were: Vito Acconci, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Greg Curnoe, Hannah Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Dan Graham,  Eva Hesse, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, The N.E.Thing Company, Adrian Piper, Ed Ruscha, Fred Sandback, Jeff Wall, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson, and many others. 

New Documents produced a facsimile reprint in 2012, but it has already sold out.