#suzanne lacy

Anatomy Lessons #4: After Mantegna, 1977

Three Weeks in May: Speaking Out On Rape, A Political Art Piece by Suzanne Lacy in Los Angeles (1977)

Each day Lacy went to the Los Angeles Police Department’s central office to obtain confidential rape reports from the previous day, and stamped their locations on the map. Each actual report was surrounded by fainter stamp markings symbolizing of the estimated nine additional rapes for every one reported.

Over thirty events were produced during the piece, and television and print media covered many of them. These included rituals by Melissa Hoffman, Anne Gauldin and Laurel Klick exorcising their own violations; a guerrilla event marking sidewalks throughout the city with Phranc and Judith Loischild; a performance by Cheri Gaulke and Barbara Smith for a group of women activists and law enforcement officials who met over dinner, instigated by Lacy to increase coordination and provide a safe space for personal conversation; a self-defense demonstration in the City Mall; and a series of public performances by Leslie Labowitz.

Suzanne Lacy, Body Contract, 1974

Transcript

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Suzanne Lacy on March 16, 1990. The interview took place in Berkeley, California, and was conducted by Moira Roth for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

This interview has been extensively edited for clarification by the artist, resulting in a document that departs significantly from the tape recording, but that results in a far more usable document than the original transcript.—Ed.

Interview

[ Tape 1, side A (30-minute tape sides)]

MOIRA ROTH: March 16, 1990, Suzanne Lacy, interviewed by Moira Roth, Berkeley, California, for the Archives of American Art. Could we begin with your birth in Fresno? SUZANNE LACY: We could, except I wasn’t born in Fresno. [laughs] I was born in Wasco, California. Wasco is a farming community near Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley. There were about six thousand people in town. I was born in 1945 at the close of the war. My father [Larry Lacy—SL], who was in the military, came home about nine months after I was born. My brother was born two years after, and then fifteen years later I had a sister—one of those “accidental” midlife births. My dad was from a very poor Tennessee hillbilly environment, and my mother [Betty Little—SL] from Canadian-Scottish background. Her dad was one of the early settlers of the town of Wasco. In his childhood, my father, for some strange reason, completely out of context of his class, had developed a very strong interest in classical music and opera. He was also artistically inclined. He lied about his age to get into the military during the war and, once in, I think it became what college was to my generation. They taught him photography, which gave him an artistic outlet, and he also became a captain and flew bombing raids over Germany. He spent his leaves in Europe hanging out with opera singers. Apparently he had some desire to be an opera singer and didn’t have quite strong enough a voice, although a good voice at one point. So as I knew him, growing up, he was an intensely creative man, who was singing and playing music—everything from Mexican Mariachi to La Traviata. He also painted, you know, what we’d now call a Sunday painter. And drew, and wrote. He’s written two books about the war that have not been published. They are evidence of the fact that he is intensely creative, though not necessarily professional.