“Susan Haller.” ProofLos Angeles Art and the Photograph, 1960-1980, Fellows of Contemporary Art, 1992.

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Susan Haller has an enviable Southern California artistic pedigree, having studied with both Jerry McMillan and Robert Heinecken and having worked as assistant to Edward Ruscha since 1969. Her untitled silkscreen-and-iron-burn print on cotton may be a one-liner, but it’s the kind of brain-teaser that keeps returning to insist on our attention. The idea of the photograph as trace of the object it renders had not been articulated as a critical construct at the time this work was made, but Haller intuited the basic idea and explored it in works such as this in the early seventies. The work also toys with our notions of the original print and our preconceptions of women’s art and women’s work—issues Haller was early in taking on.