8h ago

LG Williams Awarded Honorary Doctorate Degree

Hundreds of nominees. A unanimous vote. From Gallery Subversive. An honorary doctorate named Docteur Honaris Caustica. And the honoree's response: “This rocks!” In February 2005, Gallery Subversive in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, announced that the Institute for Subversive Art and Analysis, founded and directed by Haleh Niazmand, would confer an unconventional honorary degree on artist LG Williams. The release dressed the occasion in all the elaborate ceremony of academic recognition. This archival audio edition contains an adapted reading of the February 26, 2005 press release, followed by Williams's complete, unabridged acceptance address. It is not an excerpt from the speech. Then the ceremony turns against its own assumptions. Williams argues that conventions are worth studying only so they can be questioned; that even the questioning of conventions can itself become a convention; and that artistic invention offers no method, institutional protection, or guarantee of reward. “Art is not problem solving. Art is Art.” Independence, he warns, may exact a horrible price. The original release praises Williams's “particularly warm and fruitful history of collaborative research and intellectual exchange with experimental art and artists.” A contemporary editorial aside: at the time of publication, this editor could not find a single one willing to speak on the record. Press Release by Gallery Subversive, Cedar Rapids, IA. Acceptance address by LG Williams. Originally published February 26, 2005, by Gallery Subversive. Archived at: lgwilliams.com More at: 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.

23h ago

THE PAIN!!! — LG Williams' 2004 Letter to Dave Hickey

Include me in your next article, Dude. Any article. In November 2004, LG Williams sent art critic Dave Hickey an outrageously profane demand: include Williams in his next published review, regardless of subject, merit, historical relevance, or taste. Hickey had just attacked the contradictory logic of curatorial selection in his Artforum review of Beyond Geometry at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Williams wanted to know whether the critic would dare practice the freedom his own criticism seemed to expose. This episode presents one complete original letter, including its archival footer, from Williams' larger 123-part artwork This F*****g Sucks (catalogue no. 12), preceded by new editorial narration. The letter itself is not abridged. What sounds like a narcissistic tantrum is also a calculated conceptual intervention. Williams, confronting poverty, homelessness, and professional exclusion, makes a spectacle of demanding the recognition that museums, critics, galleries, and collectors routinely confer under the respectable language of judgment and historical importance. His provocation is simple: If critics can expose the absurdity of institutional selection, can they also demonstrate how selection manufactures authority? Hickey neither answered the letter nor published the requested inclusion. But the critic who had not included Williams in his criticism had already been included in Williams' art. In 2016, Williams, through PCP Press, conceived and produced two books of Hickey's online writing, Wasted Words and Dust Bunnies. David Hawkes reviewed both in the Times Literary Supplement. According to Williams, Hickey had sought such a review for more than thirty years, while Williams remained homeless, penniless, and professionally marginalized. Who, exactly, gets to decide what survives? Written by LG Williams. Original artwork and letter dated November 20, 2004. Archived at: lgwilliams.com More at: 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.

2d 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.

2d 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.

3d 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.

4d 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.

4d 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.

5d 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.

LG Williams — Audio Essays & Criticism

LG Williams Awarded Honorary Doctorate Degree

THE PAIN!!! — LG Williams' 2004 Letter to Dave Hickey

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

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

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

Regime of Impunity — When Art Exhibits Its Critics

100 Women Artists: Problem Solved

100 Black Artists: Problem Solved

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LG Williams — Audio Essays & Criticism

Episodes

LG Williams Awarded Honorary Doctorate Degree

THE PAIN!!! — LG Williams' 2004 Letter to Dave Hickey

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

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

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

Regime of Impunity — When Art Exhibits Its Critics

100 Women Artists: Problem Solved

100 Black Artists: Problem Solved

About

Information