Lozano's best known for two of her last works, General Strike and Dropout Piece. In General Strike, she announced her refusal to speak to or work with anyone in the New York art world.

Perhaps she was trying to test the limits of Dialogue Piece, to ascertain whether or not it was possible to confer the value of art upon such activities without in fact engaging in any of the activities properly designated as befitting an artist? Clearly, without the institutions of art buttressing her activities Lozano fell into art-world obscurity, and this suggests that when an artist abandons the institutions of art, no matter how profound and legitimate the artist's desire to merge life and art, the result will be that the "art" part of the equation will become unrecognizable.

In Dropout Piece, she refused to speak to women.

I think part of what is shocking about Lozano's withdrawal is the rigor with which she rejected two intimately connected systems: patriarchy and capitalism. By refusing to speak to women she exposed the systemic and ruthless division of the world into the categories of men and women. By refusing to speak to women she acknowledged the impossibility of a life lived outside of the societal confines and projections of gender. By refusing to speak to women as an artwork she also refused the demand of capitalism for the constant production of private property. That she elided the fetishized art object and women was perhaps no mistake, as both share a similar fate.

David Reed said:

I remember thinking that she was a kind of warning about what could happen if you mixed art and life too closely, that it could get very dangerous if you had no boundaries....

I view it as a self-destructive way of dealing with a very real situation: Women didn't have any power in the art world then, so she decided to just deal with the men, who did have the power. It points up that issue. But it's masochistic also, because she couldn't form dialogues with other women and missed out on the feminist movement of the '7Os, when women in the art world did gain power by engaging and supporting each other.

In "mixing art and life too closely," did she ultimately ruin her own career? More important, did her abject "refusal" hasten her own death, in 1999, of cervical cancer?

Lozano's body of work is limited by the relatively short period in which she actively produced. Only since her death has the art world reinvestigated her life as an artist, and it seems, partly because she was so reclusive (and thus uncommunicative of her theories and ideas) and partly because she was so clearly a Class-A nutter, that she is regarded as a bit of an Outsider, or in the best case, a mystery. I didn't come away from the exhibit feeling as though I understood Lozano or her work any better, but I did feel intensely intrigued by it all. It's worth reading all the articles I've cited here before you go see her show, which I recommend doing if you have the opportunity.

Meanwhile, as I was meandering around the galleries, I recognized the man strolling behind me. It was John Frickin' Bartlett. Two things sprang to mind: a) I wondered what the Harvard sociology major, no stranger to dropping out himself, thought of Lozano's work; and b) My God, he really is a babe.

Anyhow, we left PS1 and wandered around my soon-to-be neighborhood, past the loft where the Talking Heads recorded Fear of Music.

We had coffee at a cafe where I found my new favorite zine: neighborhood Boy. It's published by a fourth grader and his sister who apparently live in LIC. The cover story of Issue 7, titled "neighborhood Guinea Pig Gives Birth in Store Window!", features the greatest observation ever: "It was really nasty when they came out beause they had sacks on them and the mother ate the sack and the umbilical cord and the placenta. My friend Max almost barfed and had to go home." Also in the issue: "Terminator 3 (The movie I can't see)," in which the author states "Violence in movies can give you nightmares, but kids are desperate to see violence, violence is our dream. This goes to show parents that they should let their kids watch what the want. Of course they would let you read the BOOKS because that's READING!"

Reading neighborhood Boy made me simultaneously immensely happy and completely untalented. I wish I'd thought to have a zine when I was 10.

Now I'm off to the podiatrist. Sometimes I wonder if I'm destined to become a nun--it seems like it's the only profession in a which a woman can wear sensible shoes.