Flexi-disc insert of Laurie Anderson’s “let X = X,” 1982, included in Artforum’s February 1982 issue.

passages October 2015

Ingrid Sischy

IT’S LATE SUMMER in 1980, and Ingrid and I are in Venice outside one of the Biennale parties. A crowd of collectors, dealers, and artists are jostling on the narrow sidewalk between the canal and an elaborate gate to a palazzo where the party is being held. At the entrance, two severe women with buns and clipboards ask for our names. “Ingrid Sischy. I’m editor of Artforum,” Ingrid says. Even I think she looks about nine years old, so I’m not surprised when they ask for ID, which she doesn’t have. “Very sorry, but we can’t let you in without ID,” say the gatekeepers in unctuous unison. Ingrid is

print February 1982

let X = X

I met this guy and he looked like he might have been a hat check clerk at an ice rink—which, in fact, he turned out to be.
And I said, Oh boy, right again.
let X = X
You know, it could be you. It’s a sky—blue sky. Satellites are out tonight.
let X=X.
You know, I could write a book. And this book would be thick enough to stun an ox. Cause I can see the future—and it’s a place. About 70 miles east of here, where it’s lighter. Linger on over here. Got the time?
let X = X.

I got this postcard and it read, it said: Dear Amigo—Dear Pardner—Listen, I just want to say thanks. So, thanks. Thanks

print January 1974

Sylvia Sleigh

Sylvia Sleigh is improving her painting by imitating the compositional structures and the subject matter of figurative paintings. In her recent show, Ingres, Titian, and Signorelli are mentors. Sleigh’s struggle to integrate portraiture with Classical models and modes is one familiar to every art student faced with the (usually) less than ideal life-class model. The nude-in-north-light is an idealization, a transformation of the flawed physical facts. Unlike Pearlstein, who accepts the model as model, Sleigh is interested in transformation. Several problems complicate this process.

First, she

print January 1974

Jackie Ferrara

Jackie Ferrara’s recent works—apart from their iconographic meanings—forcefully demonstrate elementary methods of building. Stairways, towers, and pyramids are assembled from modular units. The process is additive and archaizing. As in Egyptian pyramids, stacking is primary. In most of her work, there is no disguise of the support; the work itself is embodied support.

Ferrara’s materials are wood, canvas, cardboard, cotton batting—which covers all the surfaces—and glue. In 2x4 Tower, 2“ x 4” pieces of wood are cut into equal 21" lengths. The equal, bricklike units, the tactility of her preferred

print November 1973

Mary Miss

MARY MISS, BORN IN 1944, is a sculptor who lives in New York, and has shown her work recently in a number of exhibitions including the last two Whitney Biennials.

In 1966, Miss made a small sculpture that bears an interesting and seminal relationship to later work shown last spring in the “Four Young Americans” show at Oberlin. In the earlier piece, a steel grate is locked into the center of four rectangular sections of rough wood. In the 1973 piece, a loosely latticed, three-layered network is set, its ends locked, into a shallow rectilinear hole. The shift has been from the early concerns with

print September 1973

About 405 East 13th Street

“Spatializing” and its implications were the premises of the 34 artists who participated in jean Dupuy’s show “About 405 East 13th Street” early this summer. “About” dealt with various interior, exterior, and interfacial aspects of Dupuy’s loft in terms of description and manipulation. Microscopic and telescopic realignments undermined the standard subject-object relationship. The show’s site, a living and working loft, dramatized this “spatializing” approach. Psychological and visual conditions imposed on the viewer in gallery space did not exist. The murky and raw space contributed to the

Laurie Anderson