Artist Thomas Lawson

Thomas Lawson (artist)

Thomas Lawson is an artist, writer, and Dean of the School of Art at California Institute for the Arts. He has exhibited paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as part of the Pictures Generation exhibit, Metro Pictures in New York, Anthony Reynolds in London and LAXART in Los...

  and writer Susan Morgan

Susan Morgan

Susan Morgan of Cheltenham was a best-selling English author of Chick lit genre.She was born near Liverpool to a Manx mother and Yorkshire father...

 co-founded REALLIFE Magazine in 1979 as a publication “by and about artists.” The magazine’s first issue was made possible by an NEA grant in art criticism, awarded to Lawson through Artists Space (New York). During the 1980s, REALLIFE Magazine was based in New York and attentively addressed current art and its influences while continuously speculating about culture and questioning politics. Starting with a focus on the ‘Pictures’ artists and an affinity with the world of TV, film, and popular culture, the magazine charted the rise of the postmodernism and post feminist debates before moving into more political issues, from institutional critique and hypertext to AIDS and the civil war in El Salvador. As the ‘80s unraveled, and priorities and interests shifted in the art world, the magazine remained a forum for artists’ opinions, providing exposure for those overlooked by the mainstream, and introducing the work of a new generation of practitioners; the wide range of featured artists included Sherrie Levine

Sherrie Levine

Sherrie Levine is an American photographer and appropriation artist.-Education:Levine received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1969. In 1973, she earned an M.F.A. from the same institution....

, Mike Kelley

Mike Kelley

Mike Kelley is a contemporary American artist. Kelley's work involves found objects, textile banners, drawings, assemblage, collage, performance and video. He often works collaboratively and has done projects with artists Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler and John Miller...

, Adrian Piper

Adrian Piper

Adrian Margaret Smith Piper is a first-generation conceptual artist and analytic philosopher who was born in New York City and lived for many years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts before emigrating from the United States...

, Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall

Jeffrey "Jeff" Wall, OC, RSA is a Canadian artist best known for his large-scale back-lit cibachrome photographs and art-historical writing. Wall has been a key figure in Vancouver's art scene since the early-1970s...

, Group Material, David Hammons

David Hammons

David Hammons is an African-American artist mostly known for his works in and around New York City during the 1970s and 1980s.Much of his work, including Spade with Chains , reflects his commitment to the civil rights and Black Power movements...

 and Critical Art Ensemble

Critical Art Ensemble

Critical Art Ensemble is an award-winning collective of five tactical media practitioners of various specializations including computer graphics and web design, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. For CAE, tactical media is situational, ephemeral, and self-terminating...

. During its fifteen-year publication run, Morgan and Lawson produced twenty-three issues in total. The final issue of REALLIFE Magazine was published in 1994.

Exhibition

In March, 2007, Artists Space hosted the exhibition REALLIFE Magazine: 1979-1990 curated by Kate Fowle. The show looked at the decade through the lens of this publication and its extraordinary roster of contributors—including Richard Baim, Eric Bogosian, Glenn Branca

Glenn Branca

Glenn Branca is an American avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series. In 2008 he was awarded an unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.-Beginnings: 1960s and early 1970s:Branca...

, Critical Art Ensemble

Critical Art Ensemble

Critical Art Ensemble is an award-winning collective of five tactical media practitioners of various specializations including computer graphics and web design, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. For CAE, tactical media is situational, ephemeral, and self-terminating...

, Jamie Davidovich, Jessica Diamond, Mark Dion

Mark Dion

Mark Dion is an American fine artist best known for his use of scientific presentations in his installations. Dion has exhibited his art works internationally including at the Tate Gallery, Museum of Modern Art, and the PBS series art:21...

 + Jason Simon, Jack Goldstein

Jack Goldstein

Jack Goldstein was a Canadian born, California-based performance and conceptual artist turned painter in the 1980s art boom.-Early life and education:...

, Kim Gordon

Kim Gordon

Kim Althea Gordon is an American musician, vocalist, artist, record producer, video director and actress. She has sung and played bass and guitar in the alternative rock band Sonic Youth, and in Free Kitten with Julia Cafritz...

, Group Material, David Hammons, Michael Hurson, Ray Johnson

Ray Johnson

Raymond Edward Johnson , known primarily as a collagist and correspondence artist, was a seminal figure in the history of Neo-Dada and early Pop art...

, Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed...

, Louise Lawler

Louise Lawler

Louise Lawler is a U.S. artist and photographer. From the late 1970s onwards, Lawler's work has focused on the presentation and marketing of artwork. Much of this work consists of photographs of other peoples' artwork and the context in which it is viewed...

, Sherrie Levine, Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt

Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....

, Robert Longo

Robert Longo

Robert Longo is an American painter and sculptor. Longo became famous in the 1980s for his "Men in the Cities" series, which depicted sharply dressed businessmen writhing in contorted emotion.-Early life and education:...

, Ken Lum

Ken Lum

Ken Lum is a Canadian artist of Chinese heritage who lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. Working in a number of media including painting, sculpture and photography, his art is conceptually oriented, and generally concerned with issues of identity in relation to the categories of...

, Allan McCollum

Allan McCollum

Allan McCollum is a contemporary American artist who was born in Los Angeles, California in 1944, and now lives and works in New York City. He has spent over forty years exploring how objects achieve public and personal meaning in a world constituted in mass production, focusing most recently on...

, Paul McMahon, Matt Mullican, Adrian Piper, Richard Prince

Richard Prince

Richard Prince is an American painter and photographer. Prince began appropriating photographs in 1975...

, David Robbins

David Robbins

David Robbins is an artist and writer who was one of the first to investigate the art world's entrance into the culture industry....

, John Roberts, Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in and Metro Pictures gallery in...

, Michael Smith and James Welling.

Book

The exhibition coincided with the publication REALLIFE Magazine: Selected Writings and Projects 1979-1994, edited by Miriam Katzeff and published by Primary Information (NY, 2007). With an introduction by Matthew Higgs

Matthew Higgs

Matthew Higgs is a British artist, curator, writer and publisher. His contribution to UK contemporary art has included the creation of Imprint 93, a series of artists’ editions featuring the work of artists such as Martin Creed and Jeremy Deller...

, the anthology features writings and projects by Doug Ashford, Jo Baer

Jo Baer

Josephine Gail "Jo" Baer, born Josephine Kleinberg August 7, 1929, is an American artist, whose works are associated with minimalist art...

 and Bruce Robbins, Judith Barry, Dara Birnbaum

Dara Birnbaum

Dara Birnbaum, born in 1946 in New York ,USA, where she continues to live and work, uses video to reconstruct television imagery using as material such archetypal formats as quizzes, soap operas, and sports programmes. Her techniques involve the repetition of images and interruption of flow with...

, Joseph Bishop, Eric Bogosian, Jennifer Bolande, Derek Boshier, Jim Bradley, Elsa Bulgari, Rhys Chatham

Rhys Chatham

Rhys Chatham is an American composer, guitarist, and trumpet player, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions...

, Mark Dion

Mark Dion

Mark Dion is an American fine artist best known for his use of scientific presentations in his installations. Dion has exhibited his art works internationally including at the Tate Gallery, Museum of Modern Art, and the PBS series art:21...

, Spencer Finch

Spencer Finch

Spencer Finch is an American artist whose work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world. In 1985 he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.A. in comparative literature from Hamilton College, then pursued an M.F.A. in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating...

, Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Félix González-Torres

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was an American, Cuban-born visual artist."For Felix it was much more powerful to assume that the gay and straight audience was the same audience, that being a Cuban-born American is the same as being an American. And being American was something he was extremely proud of."...

, Kim Gordon

Kim Gordon

Kim Althea Gordon is an American musician, vocalist, artist, record producer, video director and actress. She has sung and played bass and guitar in the alternative rock band Sonic Youth, and in Free Kitten with Julia Cafritz...

, Dan Graham

Dan Graham

Dan Graham , is a conceptual artist now working out of New York City. He is an influential figure in the field of contemporary art, both a practitioner of conceptual art and an art critic and theorist. His art career began in 1964 when he moved to New York and opened the John Daniels Gallery....

, Group Material, B.P. Gutfreund, The Holy Ghost Writers, Kellie Jones, Judith Kirshner, Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed...

, Louise Lawler

Louise Lawler

Louise Lawler is a U.S. artist and photographer. From the late 1970s onwards, Lawler's work has focused on the presentation and marketing of artwork. Much of this work consists of photographs of other peoples' artwork and the context in which it is viewed...

, Thomas Lawson, Christine N. Lea, Sherrie Levine, Allan McCollum

Allan McCollum

Allan McCollum is a contemporary American artist who was born in Los Angeles, California in 1944, and now lives and works in New York City. He has spent over forty years exploring how objects achieve public and personal meaning in a world constituted in mass production, focusing most recently on...

, Paul McMahon, John Miller, Robert C. Morgan, Susan Morgan, David A. Muller, Matt Mullican, Kathi Norklun, Adrian Piper

Adrian Piper

Adrian Margaret Smith Piper is a first-generation conceptual artist and analytic philosopher who was born in New York City and lived for many years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts before emigrating from the United States...

, Richard Prince

Richard Prince

Richard Prince is an American painter and photographer. Prince began appropriating photographs in 1975...

, Rex Reason, David Robbins

David Robbins

David Robbins is an artist and writer who was one of the first to investigate the art world's entrance into the culture industry....

, Walter Robinson, John Robert, Tim Rollin, Ed Ruscha, Fulton Ryder, Grahame Shane, Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in and Metro Pictures gallery in...

, Laurie Simmons

Laurie Simmons

Laurie Simmons is an American artist and photographer currently working in New York.- Personal life :Laurie Simmons was born in Long Island, New York, in 1949. She received a BFA from Tyler School of Art in 1971...

, Howard Singerman, Michael Smith and R. Sikoryak, Jana Sterbak, Josef Strau and Stephan Dillemuth, John Stezaker, Valentin Tatransky, Bernard Tschumi

Bernard Tschumi

Bernard Tschumi is an architect, writer, and educator, commonly associated with deconstructivism. Born of French and Swiss parentage, he works and lives in New York and Paris. He studied in Paris and at ETH in Zurich, where he received his degree in architecture in 1969...

, John A. Walker, Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall

Jeffrey "Jeff" Wall, OC, RSA is a Canadian artist best known for his large-scale back-lit cibachrome photographs and art-historical writing. Wall has been a key figure in Vancouver's art scene since the early-1970s...

, Joan Wallace and Geralyn Donohue, James Welling, and Robin Winters.

External links

• REALLIFE Magazine: Selected Writings and Projects 1979-1994