“The effort of my work is to show the habits and conventions of looking at art by taking on aspects of the system to make it visible.” - Louise Lawler, 1986
A prominent member of the Pictures Generation, Louise Lawler addresses the creation, perception and function of art in both private and institutionalized environments through photography and image appropriation. In the present lot, Lawler utilizes text and photographic imagery to challenge the relationship between context and meaning. On the left-hand side of the composition Lawler has placed a black and white photograph which depicts the interior of an art collector’s home. This 1980’s living room is a characteristic scene which Lawler incorporated into her early works. When carefully examining this art collector’s private room, one can make out paintings by Cy Twombly, Richard Diebenkorn and Franz Kline. This photograph is accompanied by red embossed text, a wall label, which is also the title of this work, which reads “Once there was a little boy and everything turned out alright. THE END.” This snippet of the text was seen by Lawler’s mother on the wall of a roadside café and absorbed into Lawler’s art practice. By simply adding text to an image and framing them together, she is able to transform two disparate forms of expression and communication. Many questions are triggered by the text, the two-sentence story seems to lack a middle narrative, only addressing the beginning and the end of this boy’s story, what happened in between? Does the photograph on the left represent the middle? Lawler is the master of storytelling, with just a brief text and a seemingly mundane interior she leaves the viewer perplexed, a museum wall label is meant to explain an image and instead has been turned upside down, it does not give answers to our questions but in its brevity presents an artwork riddled with enigma.
Metro Pictures, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner
New York, Artists Space, The Fairy Tale: Politics, Desire, and Everyday Life, October 30 - November 26, 1986 (another example exhibited)
Seattle, Henry Art Gallery, Now Here is also Nowhere: Part I, October 27, 2012 - January 06, 2013 (another example exhibited)