LG Williams Initiates Major New Art Commission: Everyone Sucks
Everyone Sucks is presented as a hundred-part digital affront, an emailed commission that turns desperation, sexuality, obscenity, and insult into an art-historical delivery system. The press release openly claims a filthy genealogy, running from Fragonard, Goya, and Courbet through body art, California vulgarity, Ruscha, Thiebaud, and Hedrick. Its scandal is not simply sexual; it is evaluative, insisting that the art world's polite exclusions and bad taste deserve a form nasty enough to meet them on their own terms. The project's use of email is crucial, because the work moves as accusation, invitation, and edition at once, bypassing the gallery while still demanding the privileges of art. As Samizdat, it is one of Williams's clearest early declarations that provocation is not a style but a means of forcing consequence where culture has chosen anesthesia.
- DATE:
- October 2, 2002
- DOCUMENT TYPE:
- Essay / Critique
- NAMED ARTISTS / FIGURES:
- LG Williams; Dave Hickey; Fragonard; Francisco Goya; Gustave Courbet; Ed Ruscha; Wayne Thiebaud; Wally Hedrick; Joseph Beuys; Chris Burden; Robert Morris; Lynda Benglis; Vito Acconci; Paul McCarthy; Charles Bukowski
- INSTITUTIONS / VENUES:
- PCP Press; dai bak hap; Miracle; Hi Gallery; 798 Art District
- KEYWORDS:
- filthy genealogy claimed; Fragonard to Hedrick; email as distribution weapon; nasty form for nasty culture; provocation as consequence-forcing; gallery bypassed; obscenity as judgment on art world; everyone sucks as critical verdict