At Frieze, Kevin Killian Remembers Lutz Bacher

Kevin Killian reflects on the life of conceptual artist Lutz Bacher (1943–2019), who died on May 14, for Frieze. "Our encounters with the extraordinary woman who called herself by the pseudonym Lutz Bacher ... were, from the first sighting, of someone who might never contain herself to expectations," writes Killian. A further excerpt:

...Lutz had a southern life as well as an Alpine one, and she told us about her teaching practice at the University of California, Los Angeles. With a student or two as a guide, she visited the legendary Circus of Books in Silverlake and pawed through its assorted porn books, magazines and tapes. She bought a number of novels featuring Southern California wife swapping and swinging, illustrated by black and white photos that were X-rated in nature. There’s a new documentary about the Circus of Books that amusingly portrays the mom and pop owners as a couple who could tell you what sex acts were in what film, and yet had never actually seen any of their blue movies or read the books and magazines. But the place operated as sort of a gay sex club, one with a heterosexual frenzy that Lutz appropriated for her series ‘Sex with Strangers’ (1986).

She was frequently in the southland, where she had her own style. When I directed myself and Hermosa Beach’s own Raymond Pettibon at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) to act out a number of his un-filmed genre scripts, every performance was packed with LA-based art stars and, often, their students sitting in clumps around them: Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy and Lutz, too, classy and with designer flare like Candice Bergen in Rich and Famous (1981), with big Joan Didion shades on, as though disguised as a Hollywood wife.

Read on at Frieze.