Lynn Hershman Leeson

When Gagosian Goes So Do His Galleries, How Hockney’s Swimmer Swam Away, and Green Shoots in the Gallery World: Columnist Kenny Schachter on the latest talk of the town

When Gagosian Goes So Do His Galleries, How Hockney’s Swimmer Swam Away, and Green Shoots in the Gallery World: Columnist Kenny Schachter on the latest talk of the town
Category
Book Review, news
Date
Sep 22, 2025
Source
Artnet
Author
Kenny Schachter
Excerpt

“Private I, A Memoir (published by ZE Books, 2025), penned by artist and writer Lynn Hershman Leeson is a book I couldn’t recommend with more conviction. I beg, instead command, you to read this elucidating eye-opening chronicle of a prescient historical figure heralding a cultural period decades before it’s come to pass. The only thing worse than being behind the times is to be this far ahead. Even at 84 years-young, Leeson is and has been for…ever, resilient, tenacious and relentlessly progressive.

Singling out one quote among a profusion I could have referenced, underground filmmaker and artist George Kuchar

“…taught all of us to search for our soul in a better world, to not be afraid, to live in the raw, to be honest, naked, and funny, and to express the irony of our frailty as we all approach extinction.”

Unquestionably something to ponder—I  only wish I could compose an account as forthright and philosophically insightful as Lynn; even if I could (I can’t), who on earth would publish such a folly…”