Writing Contents | by Lorraine O'Grady
{ primary texts } | articles | interviews | artist statements | letters
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Black Dreams, 1982
Heresies #15: Racism Is the Issue
Published in the Heresies collective’s journal, this was O’Grady’s first attempt to deal publicly with issues of black female subjectivity. It is based firmly in personal anecdote and psychological description rather than the more theoretical analysis she would later employ. more
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Olympia’s Maid, 1992, 1994
Afterimage 20, and in various anthologies
This first-ever article of cultural criticism on the black female body was to prove germinal and continues to be widely referenced in scholarly and other works. Occasionally controversial, it has been frequently anthologized, most recently in Amelia Jones, ed, The Feminism and Cultural Reader , Routledge. more
{ articles } | primary texts | interviews | artist statements | letters
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Black Women Film Directors, 1992
Artforum International
Written during a tentative “break-through” year for black women film directors, the article was a search for answers to the question, “Why are there so few even now?” It found the situation for black women to be an exaggeration of that for women in general. more
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WAC (Womens Action Coalition), 1992
Artforum International
O’Grady was one of less than a handful of women of color active in the Womens Action Coalition. WAC had been begun by women in the New York art world in response to Anita Hill’s denigration during the congressional hearing on Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court. more
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Basquiat and the Black Art World, 1993
Artforum International
O’Grady’s column on the occasion of Basquiat’s first retrospective, at the Whitney Museum, was the first to examine Basquiat’s relation to the black art world. It discusses her personal relationship to Jean-Michel and analyzes the mainstream art world’s “primitivist” responses to his work. more
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Sean Landers, SWM, 1994
Artforum International
By mutual consent, this was O’Grady’s last article for Artforum. It was also not included in the Sean Landers gallery press kit. more
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Thoughts on Diaspora and Hybridity, 1994
Unpublished lecture, Wellesley College
Written shortly after the “Postscript” to “Olympia’s Maid,” this lecture delivered to the Wellesley Round Table, a faculty symposium on Miscegenated Family Album, takes a retrospective look at O’Grady’s earlier life and work through the prism of cultural theory. more
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Political response to William Kentridge, 2002
LACMA panel paper, revised for publication in X-Tra
O’Grady recounts an incident from her pre-art life in explanation of her response to the work of the white South African artist. more
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Four Diptychs, 2010
Four Diptychs, 2010
The French feminist magazine Petunia’s invitation to create a centerfold sparked O’Grady’s piece in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, The First and the Last of the Modernists. The text documents her decision to contrast images of Baudelaire and Michael Jackson.
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The Black and White Show, 2009
The Black and White Show, 2009
The artist portfolio that accompanied a survey article on O’Grady’s work by Nick Mauss in a two-article Artforum cover spread combined impressionistic text on her experience curating “The Black and White Show,” 1983, with historically analytic captions for works from the show. more
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The Wailers and Bruce Springsteen, 1973
The Wailers and Bruce Springsteen, 1973
A piece written by O’Grady in 1973 for the Village Voice, but rejected by her editor because it was "too soon for these two" and finally published in 2010 by Abrams Image, reviews the night the Wailers with Bob Marley led in for Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band. more
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G.G. Alma Thomas on Flannery O'Connor, 1999
G.G. Alma Thomas on Flannery O'Connor, 1999
This personal article by Guerrilla Girl Alma Thomas on one of O'Grady's key authors, Flannery O'Connor—who wrote as a Catholic in the Protestant South—discusses O'Connor's meaning for later "minority" artists in a pluralized world. more
{ interviews } | articles | primary text | artist statements | letters
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Interview by Linda Montano, 1986
Unedited transcript
Montano’s questions on “ritual” cast interesting light on the connection between O’Grady’s early life and her performances. The unedited transcript of the interview contains answers in greater depth on Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline. more
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Interview by Laura Cottingham, 1995
Artist and Influence 1996.
In-depth interview done for the excellent Artist and Influence series produced by Camille Billops and James Hatch for their archive of African American visual and theatre arts. more
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Interview by Theo Davis, 1996
Sojourner: The Women’s Forum
Conducted in Cambridge during O’Grady’s one-year residency at the Bunting Institute at Harvard, the interview may have been affected by what she’d felt as adverse treatment there of her diptych The Clearing. more
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Email Q & A w Courtney Baker, 1998
Unpublished
The most comprehensive and focused interview of O’Grady to date, this Q & A by a Duke University doctoral candidate benefited from the slowness of the email format, the African American feminist scholar’s deep familiarity with O’Grady’s work, and their personal friendship. more
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The 1980s: An Internet Conference, 2005
Moderated online by Maurice Berger
O’Grady’s replies to Berger’s questions, both reproduced here, were extensive. The conference, with 30 posters and hosted on the Georgia O’Keefe Museum website, provided an opportune moment to re-think her 80s work in its larger historical context. more
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WPS1 chat w Connie Butler, 2008
WPS1.org. 2008
Full transcript of a 45-minute conversation between Lorraine O’Grady and curator Connie Butler in WPS1 Art Radio’s broadcast studios two weeks before the WACK! opening at PS1–MOMA, Long Island City, NY. more
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PS1 newspaper interview, 2008
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
Abbreviated version of a WPS1 radio chat with curator Connie Butler. Published in the P.S.1 Newspaper Special Edition for “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” Winter/Spring, 2008, P.S.1–MOMA, Long Island City, NY. more
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Interview by Cecilia Alemani, 2010
Interview by Cecilia Alemani, 2010
The Mousse interview, done after the Whitney Biennial opening, elaborated on O’Grady’s piece for that exhibit,The First and the Last of the Modernists, and its relation to her decades of teaching Baudelaire and to her work-in-progress Flowers of Evil and Good. more
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Email Q & A w Artforum Editor, 2009
Email Q & A w Artforum Editor, 2009
O’Grady used the margin comments of her Artforum editor on “The Black and White Show” in part as an opportunity for background clarification on the situation of race in the 1980s art world. more
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Interview by Andil Gosine, 2010
Interview by Andil Gosine, 2010
This half-hour show, extracted from a longer video interview and produced in Canada for NCRA, is focused on O’Grady’s diptych “The Clearing” and explores issues of sex, nature and love in her work via a mix of the intellectual and the intimate. more
{ artist statements } | articles | primary text | interviews | letters
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Mlle Bourgeoise Noire at JAM, 1980
High Performance #13, Artist’s Chronicle
Her first submission to a performance art journal was a description of Mlle Bourgeoise Noire’s earliest appearance, a guerrilla action at Just Above Midtown, the country’s only black avant-garde art gallery. more
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Performance Statement #1, 1981
Unpublished statement
O’Grady early on felt the need, and was asked, to explain herself —as in this reply to a request by Lucy Lippard on politics in art. Lippard, curating “ACTING OUT: The first political performance art series,” had invited her to perform. The letter dated 1.1.81 addressed practical and other issues and became her first statement on performance art. more
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Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline at Oberlin, 1982
High Performance #17/18, Artist’s Chronicle
After a delay to see if the first chronicle on Mlle Bourgeoise Noire would be accepted by High Performance, a second on Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline was submitted the following year — though it had in fact premiered at Just Above Midtown just 3 months later. more
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Rivers, First Draft, 1982
Working script
O’Grady’s most autobiographical performance was a “three-ring” simultaneous narrative performed one time only in the Loch section of Central Park on August 18 for “Art Across the Park,” curated by Gilbert Coker and Horace Brockington. This script, redrafted until the day of performance, and a set of photo-documents are the only remains. more
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Performance Statement #2, 1982
Unpublished statement
In writing a proposal to perform Rivers at Judson Memorial Church, a venue with important avant-garde history, O’Grady unexpectedly reached greater clarity on the spiritual aspects of her work, especially its forms. more
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Performance Statement #3, 1983
Unpublished statement
A letter to Tony Whitfield in preparation for Just Above Midtown’s Afro- Pop catalogue interview is O’Grady’s most self-conscious to that point. Experiencing a lack of clear precedents for her work, in it she attempts to theorize her relationship to performance art and the paucity of role models, and to face the question of the audience for black avant-garde art. more
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The Presence that Signals an Absence, 1993
Catalogue essay
Written for the unpublished, photocopied catalogue of Coming to Power: 25 Years of Sexually X-plicit Art by Women, curated by Ellen Cantor and presented by David Zwirner Gallery and Simon Watson/The Contemporary, NYC, the essay examines O’Grady’s inclusion in the show and responses to her diptych The Clearing. more
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The Space Between, 1995
Lorraine O’Grady / MATRIX 127, brochure
Artist brochure statement for Lorraine O’Grady / MATRIX 127, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, May 21 – Aug 20, 1995. Adapted from “Lorraine O’Grady, conceptual artist,” in Susan Cahan and Zoya Kocur, eds., Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art and Routledge, 1996. more
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Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, 1997
Art Journal, College Art Association
In this article for Art Journal, Winter 1997, the special issue on performance edited by Martha Wilson, O’Grady focuses first on Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, then discusses its relationship to Miscegenated Family Album, alluding to the advantages and disadvantages of the move from performance to photo installation. more
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The Diptych vs the Triptych, 1998
Unpublished statement
excerpt from a conversation between Lorraine O’Grady and a studio visitor, 9.12.98. more
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Studies for Flowers of Evil and Good, 1998
Wall statement for Thomas Erben exhibit
Written for the first exhibit of “Studies #3 and 4 for Flowers of Evil and Good” at Thomas Erben Gallery, NYC, this discussion of the father of modernism Charles Baudelaire and his Haitian common-law wife Jeanne Duval, as well as Picasso and O’Grady’s mother Lena, places their relationships in the postmodernist moment. more
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Re Cutting Out the New York Times, 2006
Binder statement for Daniel Reich exhibit
At curator Nick Mauss’s request, O’Grady first exhibited five of the 26 cut-outs that she’d done on successive Sundays, from June 5 to November 20, 1977, in a group show nearly 30 years later — Between the Lines, in March 2006 at Daniel Reich Temporary (The Chelsea Hotel). She wrote a binder statement about her original work method and state of mind. more
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Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and Feminism, 2007
WACK! audio statement, published in Artlies.
For WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, the first-ever museum exhibit of feminist art, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A., O’Grady was asked to record an audio statement for the cell-phone tour to explain how her piece related to the show’s theme. more
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Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and Feminism #2, 2007
WACK! gallery talk note, published in Artlies.
As part of her gallery talk for WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at MOCA, LA, O’Grady read this statement inspired by Marsha Meskimmon’s important catalogue essay, in which the theoretical underpinning for the show’s historic statement of including 50% non- U.S. artists had been laid out. more
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Mlle Bourgeoise Noire 1980-81, Synopsis 2007
Posted to the moca.org WACK site
O’Grady posted this brief synopsis of the performance and its background on the WACK! exhibit’s excellent website. Significantly, she also posted 13 largely unknown photos-with-captions documenting the performance, which historically had been victim to two iconic images. Lacking a full context, they had become empty signifiers. more
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re Art Is . . ., to Moira Roth, 2007
Unpublished email exchange
Full transcript of a 45-minute conversation between Lorraine O'Grady and curator Connie Butler in WPS1 Art Radio's broadcast studios two weeks before the WACK! opening at PS1-MOMA, Long Island City, NY. more
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Miscegenated Family Album paragraph, 2008
Lorraine O'Grady
Written for the first New York exhibition of the Miscegenated Family Album installation, at Alexander Gray Associates, Chelsea, September 10 - October 11, 2008 more
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BodyGround Image Descriptions, 2010
unpublished paragraphs re individual works
Written to answer FAQs about the works without prescribing viewers' responses. The photomontages were not based in Surrealist or Dada randomness. To make arguments and not just images or dreams, rational sources were twisted so unfamiliar subjective material of the "other" might enter. more
{ letters } | articles | primary text | interviews | artists statements
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Art in America, 1984
Unpublished letter re “Report from the East Village”
Unpublished letter re the omission of Kenkeleba Gallery and O’Grady’s The Black and White Show from the feature section, “Report from the East Village: Slouching Toward Avenue D,” in Art in America, Vol 72 No 6 (Summer 1984). Receipt not acknowledged more
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Artforum International, 1998
Published letter re “Ronald Jones on 'Black Like Who?'”
Response to "Crimson Herring: Ronald Jones on 'Black Like Who?' [Harvard University symposium on stereotypes in art]," Artforum International, vol. xxxvi, no. 10, Summer 1998. Letter published as "Poison Ivy," in Artforum International, vol. xxxvii, no. 1, October 1998. more
© 2009 Lorraine O'Grady | All rights reserved.