Patricia Goldstone, author of "Interlock: Art, Conspiracy, and the Shadow Worlds of Mark Lombardi," in conversation with Mark Van Proyen.

Mark Lombardi’s spidery, elusive drawings describe the evolution of a shadow-banking industry from decades-old alliances between intelligence agencies, banking, government and organized crime. His primary subject, the CIA, turned around and investigated him and his art work. In a conversation with art critic Mark Van Proyen, Patricia Goldstone talks about her comprehensive biography of this immensely contradictory, enigmatic, and brilliantly original artist.

Presented in partnership with City Lights Bookstore.
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In the fateful month of March 2000, shortly after opening a hugely successful show in New York that unveiled the more nefarious financial connections of Presidential candidate George W. Bush, the hugely ambitious Conceptual artist Mark Lombardi was found hanged in his studio, an apparent suicide. With museums lining up to buy his work, and the fame he had sought relentlessly at last within his reach, speculation about whether his death was suicide or murder has titillated the art world ever since. Lombardi was an enigma who was at once a compulsive truth-teller and a cunning player of the art game, a political operative and a stubborn independent, a serious artist and a Merry Prankster, a metaphysicist if not a scientist.

Lombardi’s spidery, elusive diagrams describing the evolution of the shadow-banking industry from a decades-old alliances between intelligence agencies, banking, government and organized crime, may have made him unique in art history as the only artist whose primary subject, the CIA, has turned around and studied him and his art work. Exhaustively researched, this is the first comprehensive biography of this immensely contradictory and brilliantly original artist.
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About Patricia Goldstone:
Patricia Goldstone has been a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and a bureau chief for Cablevision. She has written for the Washington Post, Maclean's, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and The National (Abu Dhabi), among others. She holds a master's degree in literature from Trinity College (Dublin) and is the author of Making the World Safe for Tourism (Yale University Press, 2001) and Aaronsohn's Maps (Harcourt, 2007). A national award-winning playwright, she divides her time between New York and Los Angeles. →patriciagoldstone.com

About Mark Van Proyen:
Mark Van Proyen is an art critic based in northern California. His writings have appeared in Art News, Art in America, The New Art Examiner, Artweek, Art Practical, Art Issues, Bad Subjects, Square Cylinder, and the San Francisco Arts Quarterly. His monograph titled Administrativism and its Discontents was published by SUNY Stony Brook in 2006. He is Associate Professor of Studio Practice at the San Francisco Art Institute.
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About the Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series
The Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series (VAS) provides a forum for engagement and dialogue with major figures in international contemporary art and culture. Through lectures, screenings, and performances, the series creates intimate connections between SFAI and the public, and invites individuals to contribute to the spirit of curiosity that drives the SFAI community.

The VAS Series is free and open to the public.

VAS SOCIAL HOUR
Join the SFAI community for informal social gatherings prior to each VAS lecture.
SFAI Café | 6-7 PM
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Image credit: Courtesy of the Lombardi Family.