I See / You Mean

Lucy Lippard

• Other Authors Susana Torre (Afterword), Jeff Khonsary (Editor)
• Title

  I See / You Mean

• Date 2021 [1979]
• ISBN 9781953441034
• Publisher Los Angeles, CA: New Documents
• Description 224 p.; 8 in.
• Language English
• Collections Permanent Collection
• Summary

  I See / You Mean is an experimental novel about mirrors, maps, relationships, the ocean, elusive success, and possible happiness. Through a collage of verbal photographs, overheard dialogue, sexual encounters, found material, and self identi­fication devices (astrology, the I Ching, palmistry, Tarot), it charts from past to future the changing currents between two women and two men­: a writer, a model/stockbroker/maybe dictator, a photographer, and an actor. A lot happens between the lines. Art critic Lucy Lippard wrote this novel in 1970 and became a feminist in the process: “I started writing and realized I was ashamed to be a woman. Then I had to find out why. Then I got very angry. The fragmented visual form came out of contemporary art and the conflicting emotions of 1960s political confrontation; they suggested a new way to put things back together—an open-ended, female way that didn’t pretend conclusions" (New Documents). 

• Tags Fiction, Experimental fiction, American fiction -- 20th century