LG Williams · Est. 1969Samizdat Archive
LG Williams Samizdat Archive
SAMIZDAT
1993–2026
Essay: LG Williams parodies disaster-response language to announce that collectors are desperate for more of his avant-garde inventory, 2010

"I Will Do What It Takes"

This press release recasts the artist's production schedule as a humanitarian emergency, with collectors and patrons begging for relief in the form of more LG Williams art. Williams speaks like a carnival prophet of abundance, promising hundreds of artworks while the text parodies disaster-response language, press conferences, and market desperation. The starving public is not deprived of food or shelter but of avant-garde inventory, and the absurdity is the point. The piece turns collector demand into a comic theater of dependency, where the artist must be rescued from being too necessary. It is vulgar, buoyant, and sharply aware that the art market often describes luxury desire in the borrowed language of crisis.

DATE:
January 15, 2010
DOCUMENT TYPE:
Essay / Critique
NAMED ARTISTS / FIGURES:
LG Williams; Lacey Macey; Dr. Mark Stoner; Flora Imaso Easey
INSTITUTIONS / VENUES:
The Estate of LG Williams; New York; Chelsea; Harvard; Fairfax; LG Williams website
KEYWORDS:
avant-garde inventory as humanitarian need; abundance as emergency rhetoric; collector demand as crisis; disaster-response language for luxury; artist too necessary; vulgarity and market necessity; art market as emergency sanitation
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