In the late 1960s, Lee Lozano 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 house-guests 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.

Produced over the course of little more than a decade, Lee Lozano’s art is striking for its breadth and vigour. As well as paintings characterized by energy, daring physicality, and tireless investigation of the body and gender, Lozano’s oeuvre also includes conceptual works and drawings, the latter of which are the focus of this publication. A selection of the artist’s early narrative and figurative drawings from 1960 to 1964—all of which were previously unpublished—are presented alongside texts by Barry Rosen and Jaap van Liere, as well as extracts from the artist’s own diaries that capture the wit, intelligence, and anger that animated her brief yet profoundly influential career.

Revenge publishing? A new genre? Or has it been around since writers first put pen to paper? Isn’t all writing to some degree a means to avenge an oversight or a rejection, intending to set the record straight? A number of pieces in this collection which were commissioned, accepted, and paid for, never appeared for one reason or another, whether devious or common: books don’t always cross the finish line. Years go by. Patience evaporates. Corrected Proofs aims to seek remedy. In addition to previously unpublished pieces, a number of essays and interviews were written specially for this collection: on Lutz Bacher and Charles Ray, with Arnold J. Kemp. There are heroes and villains, from the assassins John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, to Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Cady Noland and Steven Parrino. Here the reader encounters usual suspects in unexpected context—Marcel Duchamp, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol—and artists recently rediscovered—Bob Smith and Stephen Varble—alongside Lee Lozano, the January 6 insurrection, and The Fall.

Riffing off the title, this volume includes an interview with Carolyn Lazard—an artist whose conceptual and often spare videos, sculptures, installations, and performances explore the full amplitude of relation—by Catherine Damman, plus a feature on New York-based contemporary artist Tishan Hsu, whose practice examines the “embodiment of technology”, and contributions by time-based media artist Silvia Kolbowski, for whom political resistance, the unconscious, and structures of spectatorship are a central concern of all her projects; choreographer and dancer Yvonne Rainer; and science fiction author Octavia Butler. Edited with Kathrin Bentele, Anna Gritz, and Ghislaine Leung. Including the work of Lutz Bacher, stanley brouwn, Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda, Hanne Darboven, Jef Geys, Tishan Hsu, Pope L., Louise Lawler, Carolyn Lazard, Ghislaine Leung, Lee Lozano, Henrik Olesen, Sarah Rapson, Margaret Raspé, Ketty La Rocca, Sturtevant, Martin Wong and Octavia E. Butler.

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 1969–1970. A prolific writer and documenter of both her art and her relationships, the public and private, the painter Lee Lozano (1930–1999) 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.

Produced on the occasion of Lee Lozano, Drawings 1959–64 at Karma, New York, July 12–August 13, 2021.

Lozano’s drawings register a social consciousness that was radical for its time and continues to be groundbreaking in the present day. Her transgressive and experimental illustrations dissect institutionalized power, behavioral propriety, and gender socialization with zealous intensity. Challenging norms of respectability, Lozano’s works are “anti-skill, antisocial, antithetical, a “manly,” macho display, figured in the touch and tone as much as in the innuendos and imagery,” as Tamar Garb aptly notes.