FRIEDRICH LIEBERMANN, AMERICAN ARTIST

This is a multimedia installation and performance, showing the posthumous retrospective of the conceptualist, Friedrich Liebermann, who was born 1889 in Galatz, Romania, and died in New York City, in 1974. The exhibit is well curated, with biographical posters, audio taped extracts from the artist's journals, a slide show, and the voices of Liebermann's friends and family. The range of Liebermann's work is impressive, particularly since, having been a conceptualist, he in fact created none of it. In view of the lifelong quarrel Liebermann had with his sister, Aurelia,

over whether his devotion to not creating his body of work interfered with his ability to support her and her children, many feminist scholars have argued that the Liebermann retrospective represents yet another example of how men appropriate women's work, or, in this case, their non-work. In fact, these scholars propose that it was not Liebermann who did not create any of the works exhibited, but, instead, his sister Aurelia, who did not create any of them. A further debate rages between Liebermann's supporters and those who argue that, had Liebermann in fact been the non-creator of this body of work, the cause of his non-creation would have been mere laziness, whereas Aurelia's non-creation of this body of work was clearly caused by the pervasive oppression she suffered as a woman. A revisionist group jeers at both sets of pretensions, holding that the real "onlie (non-)begetter" of Liebermann's body of work was his boon companion, Judge Ira Muldoon, and that the attempted appropriation of this oeuvre by the supporters of Aurelia represents the straight world attempting to render invisible gay creativity.

The artist is always present posthumously at his retrospective, to answer audience questions.

For performances and installations, please contact the curator, Judith Johnson, at jej84@cnsunix.albany.edu. The retrospective will be available later this year as a multimedia cd-rom.