LG Williams — Audio Essays & Criticism

LG Williams and The Estate of LG Williams ™
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Essays, letters, criticism, archival audio, and new writing by LG Williams. Drawn from decades of published and independently circulated texts, the series explores contemporary art, artists, exhibitions, institutions, publishing, and cultural criticism. More at lgwilliams.com, lgwilliams.substack.com, and pcppress.substack.com. LG Williams is an American artist, writer, publisher, critic, art historian, and educator. His practice spans visual art, publishing, criticism, pedagogy, and digital projects. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute and his M.F.A. in Visual Art from the University of California, Davis. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Laguna Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and di Rosa Art Preserve, as well as at Artissima, Art Cologne, ARCO, and ART-O-RAMA.

  1. 33m ago

    The Mona Lisa Mystery Solved: The 2005 Discovery Behind Her Expression

    For five centuries, the world has tried to decide whether the Mona Lisa is smiling. LG Williams proposes that this is the wrong question—and that Leonardo constructed something far more unsettling: a mouth capable of appearing to express contradictory emotions without changing at all. In an August 16, 2005 announcement, Williams advanced an explanation of the painting's enigmatic expression, locating the source of its instability in the relationship between the anatomically resting mouth and the shadows surrounding it. This audio edition presents a spoken adaptation of selected passages from the original 2005 announcement; it is not a complete verbatim reading. Williams's argument begins with sfumato, which Leonardo uses not only to model form but, in Williams's reading, as an independent expressive artifice. To the viewer's left, shadow appears to pull the mouth downward. At the center, the anatomy remains at rest. To the viewer's right, shadow appears to lift the mouth upward. Down. Flat. Up. Three signals give rise to fifteen initial ordered arrangements, initiating an increasingly complex, recursive process of emotional interpretation. The painting remains fixed. The viewer's understanding does not. What looks melancholy may become amused; what appears neutral acquires another emotional register. Leonardo's trap springs open, and the mystery of her entire expression—not merely her smile—becomes the subject of Williams's audacious visual equation. Written by LG Williams. Originally published August 16, 2005. Original text and archive: lgwilliams.com More at: lgwilliams.com, pcppress.com, lgwilliams.substack.com, and pcppress.substack.com. LG Williams is an American artist, writer, publisher, critic, art historian, and educator. His practice spans visual art, publishing, criticism, pedagogy, and digital projects. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute and his M.F.A. in Visual Art from the University of California, Davis. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Laguna Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and di Rosa Art Preserve, as well as at Artissima, Art Cologne, ARCO, and ART-O-RAMA.

    The Mona Lisa Mystery Solved: The 2005 Discovery Behind Her Expression

  2. 16h ago

    Everyone Sucks: The 100 Letters Sent to the Art World’s Power Brokers

    One hundred celebrated artists. One hundred unsolicited propositions. One artist determined to turn obscenity into professional opportunity. In September 2002, LG Williams assembled a wish list of prominent artists, dealers, and other figures in the contemporary art world, and approached them with an extraordinarily candid offer. The project, Everyone Sucks, premiered that October as a nationwide exercise in correspondence, artistic ambition, and professional advancement. This audio edition presents an excerpt from the complete project. It includes one complete original letter, preceded by a contextual introduction and followed by archival closing narration. The recording does not contain all one hundred letters. Armed with his reading of Eugène Delacroix and a particularly uncharitable observation by Dave Hickey, Williams set out to reconcile the artist's contempt for cultural authority with his own need for recognition. His solution involved a censored photograph, a detailed personal proposition, an editioned artwork, and an administrative notice allowing recipients to object to the appearance of their names in the publication by October 15, 2002. A remarkably efficient way to approach the very art-world establishment one professes to disdain — and perhaps acquire a few useful names for one's résumé in the process. The complete project, including all one hundred letters and accompanying imagery, is reproduced in Everyone Sucks, published by PCP Press. Written by LG Williams. Original letters dated September 26, 2002; project premiered October 2002. Subsequently reproduced as Everyone Sucks. Published by PCP Press. Publisher's website, book info and complete catalogue: pcppress.com. Available on Amazon: amazon.com. More at: lgwilliams.com, lgwilliams.substack.com, and pcppress.substack.com. LG Williams is an American artist, writer, publisher, critic, art historian, and educator. His practice spans visual art, publishing, criticism, pedagogy, and digital projects. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute and his M.F.A. in Visual Art from the University of California, Davis. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Laguna Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and di Rosa Art Preserve, as well as at Artissima, Art Cologne, ARCO, and ART-O-RAMA.

    Everyone Sucks: The 100 Letters Sent to the Art World’s Power Brokers

  3. 1d ago

    Nothing, Not Really: Pace Gallery, Loie Hollowell, and the Institutional Manufacture of Advancement

    What if an artist inherits the visual discoveries of others, a gallery inherits its authority from artists who actually changed art, and everyone agrees to call the result progress? In Nothing, Not Really, LG Williams puts Pace Gallery and painter Loie Hollowell on trial—not for making money, but for confusing market success, autobiographical disclosure, and institutional endorsement with artistic invention. The argument begins with Hollowell's attempt to “mother-ize” Ellsworth Kelly's color and ends with a gallery deciding what artistic inheritance is supposed to mean. This audio edition presents selected passages from the book, interwoven with commentary. Two inheritances drive the indictment. Arne Glimcher passes Pace to Marc; painter and educator David Hollowell passes down a demanding artistic discipline to his daughter. What did the heirs actually do with what they received? Williams brings Agnes Pelton, Zilia Sánchez, Robert Irwin, Jackson Pollock, Cy Twombly, and Kelly into the argument—not as a parade of visual similarities but as a test of what it means to discover, transform, or merely repeat an artistic problem. The commercial plot is no gentler. Joel Mesler becomes Hollowell's Frank Dunphy, helping turn signature imagery and renewable autobiography into a saleable career before becoming a practitioner of a similar formula himself. At Pace Berlin, the Surrealists' exquisite corpse—a game of concealed collaboration and unforeseen invention—returns as an orderly inheritance pageant. The corpse gets a makeover. And a pedigree. A gallery in contraction certifies a formula that cannot advance. An artist who recycles inherited forms becomes a curator of inheritance. One exhausted institution finds its ideal companion in an exhausted artistic formula. Written by LG Williams. Originally published October 2026, by PCP Press. Book and publisher catalogue: pcppress.com Available on Amazon: amazon.com Publisher's website, book info and complete catalogue: pcppress.com More at: lgwilliams.com, lgwilliams.substack.com, and pcppress.substack.com. LG Williams is an American artist, writer, publisher, critic, art historian, and educator. His practice spans visual art, publishing, criticism, pedagogy, and digital projects. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute and his M.F.A. in Visual Art from the University of California, Davis. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Laguna Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and di Rosa Art Preserve, as well as at Artissima, Art Cologne, ARCO, and ART-O-RAMA.

    Nothing, Not Really: Pace Gallery, Loie Hollowell, and the Institutional Manufacture of Advancement

  4. 2d ago

    Regime of Impunity — When Art Exhibits Its Critics

    The art world no longer needs to defeat its critics. It can exhibit them. Museums can display attacks on museums. Collectors can acquire works that condemn collecting. An artist's refusal of the market can become a marketable signature. Criticism circulates. Prestige accumulates. The institution survives. Regime of Impunity: A Diagnostic Essay on Contemporary Power, by LG Williams, examines a condition in which exposure, failure, and judgment no longer necessarily end authority. This episode brings that diagnosis into the institutions of art and culture. This episode is an original, condensed audio adaptation of the book's central argument. It is not a verbatim excerpt, a complete reading, or the full audiobook. The argument is not that criticism has disappeared. It is that criticism can flourish while losing the power to compel an ending. Truth becomes circulation. Politics becomes procedure. Opposition becomes something institutions can display, brand, and absorb. Legitimacy gives way to impunity. Finance then makes the arrangement durable by converting penalties into prices and failure into manageable cost. The book does more than name the problem. Its second part develops three negative theoretical investigations—legitimate exit, non-absorbable refusal, and institutional forfeiture—and explains why none can yet become an operative positive program without risking absorption by the system it describes. What is missing is not another revelation, another exhibition, or another critical performance. What is missing is judgment with consequences: the capacity for failure to end authority. When does this end? Regime of Impunity: A Diagnostic Essay on Contemporary Power. Written by LG Williams. Originally published: 2026. Published by PCP Press in the Éditions des Pirates series. Available on Amazon: amazon.com Publisher's website, book info and complete catalogue: pcppress.com More at: lgwilliams.com, lgwilliams.substack.com, and pcppress.substack.com. LG Williams is an American artist, writer, publisher, critic, art historian, and educator. His practice spans visual art, publishing, criticism, pedagogy, and digital projects. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute and his M.F.A. in Visual Art from the University of California, Davis. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Laguna Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and di Rosa Art Preserve, as well as at Artissima, Art Cologne, ARCO, and ART-O-RAMA.

    Regime of Impunity — When Art Exhibits Its Critics

  5. 2d ago

    100 Women Artists: Problem Solved

    In May of 2023, one book solved the greatest problem in contemporary art. That book was 100 Women Artists, by artist LG Williams, published with PCP Press. This original audio essay tells the story of how it was done. What would happen if Pablo Picasso were a woman? Same paintings. Same dates. Same inventions. Only the painter changes. Pablo Picasso becomes Paula Picasso. The artwork and its achievement remain. The way museums talk about them does not. For more than half a century, women artists, critics, curators, and institutions have argued that Western art museums lack adequate female representation. The art world responded with exhibitions, acquisitions, departments, budgets, and strategic plans. It is slow. It is expensive. It is never finished. Published May 21, 2023, during the first months of publicly accessible generative AI, 100 Women Artists takes one hundred men from the canon of Western art, transforms their portraits into women, and gives them female names. Paula Picasso. Marcelle Duchamp. Jacqueline Pollock. Georgia Baselitz. The argument is simple. The problem was never in the art. It was in the filing system. And a problem that lives in the filing system is solved in the filing system. In 2013, Georg Baselitz declared that women don't paint very well. With 100 Women Artists, Georg Baselitz becomes Georgia Baselitz. The paintings remain. The achievement remains. Only the classification changes. Now men don't paint very well. It's a fact. No painting repainted. No sculpture removed, defaced, or toppled. No acquisitions committee. The entire cost of the correction: one book. Along the way: Linda Nochlin's foundational question about great women artists; the Guerrilla Girls at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Simone de Beauvoir on becoming a woman; Helen Frankenthaler and the difference between identity and invention; OpenAI's announced Navier–Stokes result and Terence Tao's response; and Jason Farago's assessment of artistic stagnation in The New York Times. Mathematics got its revolution in 2026. Contemporary art got its revolution in 2023. It took one homeless artist, one decades-old laptop, a slow public library connection, and one book. 100 Black Artists was the first case. 100 Women Artists is the second. It will not be the last. Problem solved. Once and for all. Now we can move on to more important matters. Like the stagnation of contemporary art itself. 100 Women Artists, by LG Williams. Text and photographs by LG Williams. Published by PCP Press. Available on Amazon: amazon.com Publisher's website, book info and complete catalogue: pcppress.com More at: lgwilliams.com, lgwilliams.substack.com, and pcppress.substack.com. LG Williams is an American artist, writer, publisher, critic, art historian, and educator. His practice spans visual art, publishing, criticism, pedagogy, and digital projects. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute and his M.F.A. in Visual Art from the University of California, Davis. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Laguna Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and di Rosa Art Preserve, as well as at Artissima, Art Cologne, ARCO, and ART-O-RAMA.

    100 Women Artists: Problem Solved

  6. 3d ago

    100 Black Artists: Problem Solved

    In May of 2023, one book solved the greatest problem in contemporary art. That book was 100 Black Artists, by artist LG Williams, published with PCP Press. This original audio essay tells the story of how. What would happen if Pablo Picasso were Black? Same paintings. Same dates. Same inventions. Only the classification changes. The artwork and its achievement remain. The way museums talk about them does not. For more than a generation, artists, critics, curators, and institutions have argued that Western art museums lack adequate Black representation. The art world responded with exhibitions, acquisitions, departments, budgets, and strategic plans. It is slow. It is expensive. It is never finished. Published May 18, 2023, during the first months of publicly accessible generative AI, 100 Black Artists takes one hundred artists from the canon of Western art and presents them as Black artists. Salvador Dalí. Alberto Giacometti. Gerhard Richter. Cy Twombly. The argument is simple. The problem was never in the art. It was in the filing system. And a problem that lives in the filing system is solved in the filing system. No painting repainted. No sculpture removed, defaced, or toppled. No acquisitions committee. The entire cost of the correction: one book. Along the way: Kerry James Marshall at LACMA; Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream sixty years on; Jacob Lawrence and the difference between experience and invention; OpenAI's announced Navier–Stokes result and Terence Tao's response; and Jason Farago's assessment of artistic stagnation in The New York Times. Mathematics got its revolution in 2026. Contemporary art got its revolution in 2023. It took one homeless artist, one decades-old laptop, a slow public library connection, and one book. Problem solved. Once and for all. Now we can move on to more important matters. Like the stagnation of contemporary art itself. 100 Black Artists, by LG Williams. Text and photographs by LG Williams. Published by PCP Press. Available on Amazon: amazon.com Publisher's website, book info and complete catalogue: pcppress.com More at: lgwilliams.com, lgwilliams.substack.com, and pcppress.substack.com. LG Williams is an American artist, writer, publisher, critic, art historian, and educator. His practice spans visual art, publishing, criticism, pedagogy, and digital projects. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute and his M.F.A. in Visual Art from the University of California, Davis. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Laguna Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and di Rosa Art Preserve, as well as at Artissima, Art Cologne, ARCO, and ART-O-RAMA.

    100 Black Artists: Problem Solved

  7. 3d ago

    Wally Hedrick: I'm on Strike! — An Emergency Antiwar Exhibition Proposal to LG Williams, January 8, 2003

    What does an artist do when another war is coming—and painting seems powerless to stop it? Wally Hedrick (1928 – 2003) had an answer: paint everything black, resurrect the wounded veterans, and prepare for battle. A foundational figure in the San Francisco avant-garde and a veteran of the Korean War, Hedrick spent decades confronting American militarism through his Black Paintings and War Room, a monumental enclosure of eight towering black canvases. His protest began during the Vietnam War, continued through the Gulf War, and returned with renewed urgency as the United States prepared to invade Iraq. This audio edition presents the complete text of a handwritten letter — not an excerpt — written by Hedrick to artist LG Williams on January 8, 2003. The letter is an extraordinary document of artistic refusal, black humor, and impending catastrophe. Hedrick recounts painting over his existing works, describes his battered canvases as wounded veterans, and proposes an immediate exhibition synchronized with the outbreak of war. He needs walls. He needs ceilings. He needs transportation, publicity, and a venue. Above all, he needs a collaborator willing to launch what he calls a "monolateral sneek attack." Here, painting is neither decoration nor passive commentary. It becomes a deliberately improvised act of resistance, with the artist treating his surviving works as troops awaiting deployment. The letter concludes not with a manifesto, but with a demand addressed personally to Williams: "RU? YES OR NO?" Written by Wally Hedrick. Addressed to LG Williams. January 8, 2003. Historical archive and related exhibition documentation: lgwilliams.com Wally Hedrick — Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Hedrick War Room (Wally Hedrick) — Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Room_(Wally_Hedrick) More at: lgwilliams.com, lgwilliams.substack.com, and pcppress.substack.com. LG Williams is an American artist, writer, publisher, critic, art historian, and educator. His practice spans visual art, publishing, criticism, pedagogy, and digital projects. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute and his M.F.A. in Visual Art from the University of California, Davis. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Laguna Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and di Rosa Art Preserve, as well as at Artissima, Art Cologne, ARCO, and ART-O-RAMA.

    Wally Hedrick: I'm on Strike! — An Emergency Antiwar Exhibition Proposal to LG Williams, January 8, 2003

  8. 3d ago

    Help Wanted: Artist / Fix-It-Man — The 2004 Craigslist Ad Nobody Should Answer — But Thousands Did

    What happens when a homeless artist pretends to be an employer—and thousands of people take his fictional job advertisements seriously? In March 2004, LG Williams was unemployed, without stable housing, and working from public computers at the University of California, San Diego's Geisel Library. Instead of answering another employment advertisement, he reversed the arrangement: he invented employers, advertised impossible jobs, and transformed Craigslist into an international exhibition. This audio edition presents the complete text of Artist / Fix-It-Man, one of five fictional employment advertisements from Williams's larger Help Wanted online exhibition (2004). Inspired directly by Williams's late friend and mentor Wally Hedrick, Artist / Fix-It-Man demands an almost superhuman combination of artistic talent, mechanical competence, intellectual independence, moral character, and professional nonconformity. In return, the position offers minimum wage, no benefits, no advancement, and virtually no security. Its ideal candidate must possess an exceptional work ethic, an inability to take New York City seriously, and a natural capacity to remain wholly uncooperative. The joke is deadly serious. Across sixteen metropolitan markets, the five advertisements generated more than 5,000 reported replies. Some respondents applied sincerely. Others praised, denounced, threatened, flirted, offered employment, or proposed romantic relationships. Approximately 500 exchanges survive in the published archive. The exhibition turned a website's ordinary employment machinery into an artistic system: advertisements became artworks, job seekers became unwitting participants, and recorded removals and repostings became part of the work's history. But beneath the comedy lies a darker reversal. The man offering imaginary employment was himself seeking real work, shelter, and economic stability. Help Wanted exposed the ease with which professional authority could be manufactured through the language of qualifications, institutional expectations, and online advertisements. The result is simultaneously a parody of recruitment culture, a tribute to Hedrick's anti-institutional independence, and a disturbing experiment in the relationship between art, labor, deception, and economic vulnerability. Written by LG Williams. Original advertisement dated March 5, 2004. Complete exhibition archive: lgwilliams.com The Book — Help Wanted: The Complete Resource PCP Press, 2017. 359 pages. Available on Amazon: amazon.com Publisher's website, book info and complete catalogue: pcppress.com More at: lgwilliams.com, lgwilliams.substack.com, and pcppress.substack.com. LG Williams is an American artist, writer, publisher, critic, art historian, and educator. His practice spans visual art, publishing, criticism, pedagogy, and digital projects. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute and his M.F.A. in Visual Art from the University of California, Davis. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Laguna Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and di Rosa Art Preserve, as well as at Artissima, Art Cologne, ARCO, and ART-O-RAMA.

    Help Wanted: Artist / Fix-It-Man — The 2004 Craigslist Ad Nobody Should Answer — But Thousands Did
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About

Essays, letters, criticism, archival audio, and new writing by LG Williams. Drawn from decades of published and independently circulated texts, the series explores contemporary art, artists, exhibitions, institutions, publishing, and cultural criticism. More at lgwilliams.com, lgwilliams.substack.com, and pcppress.substack.com. LG Williams is an American artist, writer, publisher, critic, art historian, and educator. His practice spans visual art, publishing, criticism, pedagogy, and digital projects. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute and his M.F.A. in Visual Art from the University of California, Davis. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Laguna Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and di Rosa Art Preserve, as well as at Artissima, Art Cologne, ARCO, and ART-O-RAMA.

Information

  • Creator
    LG Williams and The Estate of LG Williams ™
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    29
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 1969-2026 LG Williams and LGW Ventures LLC. All Rights Reserved.
  • Show Website
    LG Williams — Audio Essays & Criticism