Attitude Becomes Form, which famously brought a
number of American post-minimalist artists and
European conceptualists together to present a
model of art as an idea manifest in an action.
A Swiss national who spent some time working
as a graphic artist, Lu ̈thi’s long and prolific career
culminated in the prestigious invitation to repre-
sent Switzerland at the 2001 Venice Biennial. His
work, which largely centers around self-representa-
tions in a number of media, has been described as
both body art and conceptual, and although Lu ̈thi
was undoubtedly influenced by movements like
Fluxus and Conceptual Art, his work resists strict
categorization, and he did not align himself with
any particular group or charter. Given to experi-
mentation in a variety of media and presentation,
including photography, performance, painting,
video, installation, and even graphic design, Lu ̈thi’s
work has been varied and not always conceived of
as coherent, especially in the United States where
he has received significantly less attention than in
Europe. However, it is indisputable that Lu ̈thi’s
photographic work—especially his self-portraits—
have had an important, if not seminal, role in
redefining the use of photography as an autono-
mous art form in the latter half of the twentieth
century. Of crucial concern to his oeuvre are recur-
rent questions regarding the relationship between
truth and representation, or as he suggested in a
1974 statement, the tenuous line between subjectiv-
ity and objectivity. For Lu ̈thi, ‘‘perhaps the most
significant and creative aspect of my work is
ambivalence as such...Objectivity is not important
to me; all is objective just as all could be subjective’’
(Lu ̈thi 2001, 9).
It therefore makes sense that Lu ̈thi’s earliest artis-
tic investigations led him to an investigation of
photography and to the self-portrait in particular,
since, in the days before Roland Barthes’s seminal
reflections on the photographic medium, for exam-
ple, photography itself was still largely conceived of
as a vehicle of truth. On the other hand, the self-
portrait had long been historically understood as the
artist’s means to evidence an interior truth, to make
public a very private self. Lu ̈thi’s earliest self-por-
traits, however, were largely in ‘‘disguise,’’ as if to
suggest the impossibility of a communicable stable
subject. In particular, the most famous of his self-
portraits pictured him in various poses as a woman,
such as the sultrySelf-Portrait(1971), which sug-
gests comparison to Man Ray’s photograph ofMar-
cel Duchamp as Rrose Se ́lavy(1920–1921), or the
tellingly titledI’ll Be Your Mirror(1972), and the
famousLu ̈thi Also Cries For You(1970). Not only
did these images question traditional gender norms,
they also positioned photography as an art form in
its own right. They were printed on canvas, de-
emphasized the role of the artist as implicated in
self-revelation, and instead constructed a model
wherein the artist would serve as a vessel for an
externally imposed quest. As he did in a 1970 exhibi-
tion in Lucerne entitledVisualized Thought Pro-
cesses (1970), in which he displayed all of his
possessions in glass cases alongside postcard dis-
plays of his sketches and self-portraits, Lu ̈thi uses
these photographs to blur the categories of art and
motif, therebyalsoblurringthefunctionof theartist.
In 1974, Lu ̈thi participated in the seminalTrans-
former: Aspect of Travestyexhibition, curated by
Jean-Cristophe Amman, in which he displayed a
20-photograph series of black and white large-scale
photographs of his own naked body, clutching a
smaller black and white self-portrait. EntitledThe
Numbergirl(1973), this series exceeded the exhi-
bition’s intended focus on transsexuality and
launched Lu ̈thi’s international star. The narrative
aspect of the photographic series was something he
had also explored in an earlier collaboration with
David Weiss and Willy Spiller.Sketches(1970), the
photographic series that ensued from this colla-
boration, represents Lu ̈thi and Weiss at play, in
various staged poses and configurations.
Throughout the 1980s, Lu ̈thireturnedtopainting
and produced a number of abstract and landscape
paintings, many of which he also entitledself-portrait,
illustrating his continued concern with simultaneously
confirming and dispelling the view of art as a per-
ceived repository for personal identity and experience.
When he returned to photography, it would be to
incorporate photographic images in large-scale instal-
lations and series. Turning in the 1990s to enhanced
technologies and digital reprocessing, Lu ̈thi began to
embrace the methods and means of contemporary
advertising, fusing a seemingly kitsch aesthetic into
his pursuits of everyday life. First came the exhibition
at Galerie Blancpain-Stepczynski in 1993 of The
Complete Life and Work, Seen Through the Pink
Glasses of Desirein which Lu ̈thi exhibited 180 photo-
graphs, all printed in a uniform size and shape and in
pink, from his life and artwork, further blending the
boundaries between art and life and making the
image serve as an equivalent sign for each.
In the series Placebos and Surrogates (1996–
ongoing) and two of its constituent parts,Run for
your Life(2000) andArt for A Better Life(2001),
Lu ̈thi contrasts the excesses of a culture that con-
tinually promotes wellness propaganda and health
as means to achieve happiness with the mundane
images of his own life and aging body, continuing
to question the relationship between truth andLU ̈THI, URS