Eugenia Perpetua Butler might have been willing to be your Muse, Mitch.
A funny, uncompromising woman and conceptual artist, she died last month unexpectedly at the age of 61. Butler was one volume shy of completing her latest project, the “Book of Lies”—a work created to examine how other artists (including poets) use “the lie to explore our relationship to the truth.”
Last year, the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica marked an exhibit with a series of private dinners. Every guest was expected to come to the Gallery ready to answer the following questions:
What is the lie in which I am most complicit? What is the truth that most feeds my life?
Tomorrow night is Passover. And in a few hours, I will head over to my own family dinner-cum-talk-service to eat and ask interesting questions. If I’m lucky (and if my son and his friend are unlucky), we’ll talk so much my stomach will grumble. Or maybe that’s exactly what we want out of Passover seders. I’m not sure I know.
So in honor of Truth, of spring, of Seder, and of conceptual artists, I leave you with Butler’s interesting questions. You can find a lovely remembrance of Eugenia Butler here and here.