Tell Them I Said No

Herbert is an outstanding stylist and writes sensitively and beautifully about the problematic relationship of artists to the art world. The 10 figures he profiles fall, roughly, into three categories: those who play with the system, those who struggle against it, and the ones who walked away in dissatisfaction. The first group, all descendants of Marcel Duchamp, includes David Hammons, who, among other things, has placed installations made of refuse in vacant lots in Harlem and sold snowballs on the street; Stanley Brouwn, who, since 1972, has insisted that no images of his whimsical work or any biographical information be published; Lutz Bacher (a pseudonym), whose mixed-media work spurns categorization, who refuses interviews, and whose gender wasn’t even known for years; and Trisha Donnelly, who has used rumor as part of her artwork, who forbids her gallery to write press releases, and who also refuses interviews (the title of the book is her response through her gallery to a request from Herbert). The second group’s relationship to the art world seems to be dictated in part by the artists’ temperaments. Agnes Martin suffered from schizophrenia and moved to New Mexico just as her career started taking off. Albert York had difficulty speaking to people and was so tortured by the feeling that his paintings were inadequate, he often avoided exhibitions and sales. Cady Noland said she can no longer make art because tracking how her installation work is misrepresented takes up all her time. And the career of the nearly forgotten Christopher D’Arcangelo — who once had an exhibition in which he asked that his name be replaced by a blank space on publicity materials — only lasted four years before he committed suicide. The third group simply found the art world insufficient. Charlotte Posenenske stopped making conceptual minimal sculpture to become a social worker, and Laurie Parsons, mortified by the idea that people were buying her work, responded to an invitation for an exhibition in Germany by choosing instead to work at a psychiatric hospital and with developmentally challenged children.