From Art, Despite Art

Lucy Lippard (1937) is one of the foremost critics and creators in the conception and history of contemporary art. Her writing, exhibitions and biography have been the subject of far-reaching studies and shows, for instance the recent Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of the Conceptual Art (Brooklyn Art Museum, 2012–2013) and From Conceptualism to Feminism. Lucy Lippard’s Numbers Shows 1969–74 (Afterall, 2012). Lippard was a guest at the opening of the Juan Antonio Ramírez Chair, which explores different approaches to art history – understanding it as a constantly evolving discourse – and signalled the start of activities in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Centre. Therefore, on the occasion of her visit, a master lecture, workshop and interview were all conducted, the latter of which looked over, for the first time, her career as a whole, for example the landmark exhibition Eccentric Abstraction (1966), representing a feminist and organic critique of Minimalism, a key term in the “dematerialisation of art” (1972), or the displacement of the institutional systems of art by community- and territorial-based aesthetic practices.