Lawrence Weiner’s “very primitive existence”
The late artist on his daily routine circa 2010
The Conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner died last Thursday at age 79. (Read more about his work here.) More than ten years ago, while I was working on Daily Rituals, Weiner generously told me about his daily routine in a phone interview—but the entry I wrote about him was ultimately cut from the book. For this issue of Subtle Maneuvers, I thought I would resurface that deleted entry, in which the late artist describes his typical day in New York circa 2010.
Lawrence Weiner (1942–2021)
“If people knew how boring it was to be an artist,” Weiner remarked in a recent interview. “You meet a lot of interesting people, that’s true. But as far as your time and the way your life is, you often don’t get out on the street for days. And you don’t miss it; you don’t feel like you’ve been kept in.” Weiner lives with his wife in Amsterdam and New York’s West Village, and the outline of his typical day is, indeed, pretty unremarkable: