Applebroog in her studio, 2012. Photo: Emily Poole.
Oh, not at all. Didn’t have a clue. That happened in California. As far as I was concerned before, that was life. It never even occurred to me that there was anything wrong. I mean, I knew there was a lot wrong, personally, but it never occurred to me it was something I could do anything about. It was only later on that I read Betty Friedan. It was like this whole world suddenly opened and, “Oh really? Oh my God. Really? Yes, really.” That’s pretty much how my world opened up, very slowly. How did you come to be involved in Heresies?
The Ethics of Desire (Studies), 2012; ink, tape, vellum on paper; 12 × 9". Photo: Emily Poole.
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It was Lucy Lippard and Miriam Schapiro and Joan Braderman, Joyce Kozloff, I can’t remember all the names…Pat Steir, Joan Snyder. It was a large group of women, and they were just starting the issue, and they asked me if I wanted to be part of it. It was better than winning the MacArthur. I remember it really saved my life.” I was involved, with Pat Steir and others, in making the second issue. I got a lot of women, like Louise Bourgeois, Annette Messager,
and others I thought did some interesting work and were funny. They were not deadly serious. Instead, they were funny at being deadly serious. And the thing is, there are all kinds of feminisms. I hate to say, “I’m a feminist, that one’s not a feminist, or that one could hardly be called a feminist.” There are all kinds, and that was from the very early wave of the ’70s. As it went on, it changed, and that was good. There are beautiful characters now like Harvey Weinstein and our dear President Trump, dare I say his name. So how else can you be but feminist nowadays? This is when you’re already back in New York. Did you have a gallery then? I had no idea about how to get a gallery. I began making the books [small selfpublished books based on Applebroog’s drawings of characters in ambiguous, often deeply unsettling situations, framed as if by a proscenium or a window]. I made a mailing list, of writers and artists I knew or liked until it was finally at 500 people. And I’d take all the books in a shopping cart to the Canal Street post office and mail them in bulk. Cost me very, very little. There are a lot of people who have them still. And there were people who wrote back and said, “Who are you!? Don’t ever send me anything like that again.” I kept all the responses. I thought the books were reasonable, myself. I thought they were kind of funny, too. In fact, I even had a little fantasy and sent some out to The New Yorker. I thought they would make nice New Yorker cartoons. I got a very polite response saying, “Thank you, but no thank you.”