Lee Lozano ― Dropout Piece

The artist Lee Lozano (1930--1999) began her career as a painter; her work rapidlyevolved from figuration to abstraction. In the late 1960s, she created a major series of elevenmonochromatic Wave paintings, her last in the medium. Despite her achievements asa painter, Lozano is best known for two acts of refusal, both of which she undertook as artworks:Untitled (General Strike Piece), begun in 1969, in which she cut herself off fromthe commercial art world for a time; and the so-called Boycott Piece, which beganin 1971 as a month-long experiment intended to improve communication but became a permanent hiatusfrom speaking to or directly interacting with women. In this book, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer examinesLozano's Dropout Piece, the culmination of her practice, her greatest experimentin art and endurance, encompassing all her withdrawals, and ending only with her burial in anunmarked grave.

And yet, although Dropout Piece is amongLozano's most important works, it might not exist at all. There is no conventional artwork to beexhibited, no performance event to be documented. Lehrer-Graiwer views Dropout Pieceas leveraging the artist's entire practice and embodying her creative intelligence, herradicality, and her intensity. Combining art history, analytical inquiry, and journalisticinvestigation, Lehrer-Graiwer examines not only Lozano's act of dropping out but also the evolutionover time of Dropout Piece in the context of the artist's practice in New Yorkand her subsequent life in Dallas.