Eugenia Butler
"The Book of Lies , Vol 1", 1996
Mixed media, including ashes of love letters, hand embroidery, and mechanically reproduced images and text on paper, safety pins, wooden stick, etc.
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection
Gift of the Las Vegas Art Museum, 2021; Gift of Patrick Duffy and Wally Goodman, Goodman Duffy Collection, 2007.
2021.08.139

Eugenia P. Butler was a conceptual artist. From the 1960s onward she used text, drawing, and processes of live conversation to consider our perception of our interior and exterior selves. Her Book of Lies is a three-volume project created in collaboration with artists from around the world. The artists were invited to contemplate two questions: “What is the lie with which I am most complicit?” and “What is the truth that most feeds my life?” Butler described Lies in 2007 as “a dialogue” conducted through “the slippery world of the visual and the poetic. ... The artworks are made by each individual artist using the materials and methods most organic to his or her working method. The portfolios are created in collaboration with an artist, a writer and myself.” Volume I, the one in front of you, is focused on lies in love. The two subsequent volumes considered the appearance of a lie, and the texture of a lie. Butler died in 2008. (DKS)

Item Description:
This portfolio work is illustrated with nine images. They are:

A sheet of white paper with the word “Amore” printed repeatedly in red ink until the mass of words forms the shape of a square. At the center of the square one of the “Amores” is replaced by “A chi.”

A page filled with ornate black script that resembles the Hebrew alphabet.

A white sheet of paper with two straight, polished wooden sticks lying parallel across the center. A line of black text above the top stick reads: “But this rough magic, I here abjure;.” The lower stick is broken and the text above it reads: “Now my charms are all o’erthrown.”

A white sheet of paper with two monochrome faces positioned back-to-back in the center. The faces are overlaid with another pair of faces surrounded by a circle of stars. Along the left side in a vertical line the paper reads: “Iohn” in capitalized, black text. Along the right side in a vertical line it reads: “Toti” in capitalized, black text. In the bottom center it reads: “Ianus Giano” in small, black text.

A semi-transparent sheet of paper laid over a circular constellation chart with star names written in white text. Rings of concentric gold dots drawn on the transparent overlay fill up the middle of the chart, with the dots becoming closer together the nearer the center they are. More gold dots are scattered across the chart, roughly in alignment with some of the stars. Two small gold safety pins are fastened vertically through the paper on either side of the circle.

A photo of a hand with blue nails on top of a wispy floral background. A yellow card decorated with a red male figure who has horns, a pointy tail, and a pitchfork, is lying on the back of the hand. The bottom of the card reads: “El Diablito'' in black text. Further text at the bottom of the photo reads: “When I was about twelve years old, my mother told me that her friend Dorothy had ordered something from the back pages of a magazine that promised to increase your bust size. What she got in the mail was a picture of a man’s hand. Since mother never told us anything about sex, money, or death, that didn’t have a punch line, it was left up to me to decipher the meaning of the man’s hand. I assumed that it referred to the rumor going around our school that your boobs would get bigger if you’d let guys fondle them.”

A sheet of paper partly covered by a triangular envelope flap. A block of centered black text is titled: “Open this envelope and you will age within seconds.” The text reads: “You were my guest--in the palace on the bottom of the ocean. You came here, because you saved my turtle, when your comrades tortured it on the beach. As a reward, I asked my armoured servant to take you on its back into the waves, diving through deep sea to my home. You are still light, a kid of not even ten, the turtle said. I was glad you came, because I am bored. We invented games no one has ever played before. You wanted to go home, back to your parents, friends and village by the shore. Yet I asked you to stay for another day [not visible] another day. I knew that once you would have [not visible] would sink back into the grey mud of boredom again. But after a week, I had to let you go. [not visible], back in your village, you feel lonely, don’t you? Your parents are dead. Your friends walk on three legs and have almost no teeth. Yet you are not even ten. What I did not tell you: a day in my palace makes ten years on earth. In case you cannot take it--open this envelope and you will age within seconds.”

A white sheet of paper with areas of red, green, black, and blue text in various sizes and fonts overlapping each other. The text opens by offering the reader “80 unique versions of the same story” and goes on to tell them about the story in different tones, cajoling them, praising them, shouting at them (“Get out”), and promising them that they can leave if it gets too boring, before concluding that “I doubt your level of commitment.”

A white surgical mask with a pair of red lips embroidered in the center.