Laurie Simmons

Last updated
Laurie Simmons
Laurie Simmons.tif
Born1949
Far Rockaway, Queens,
New York, U.S.
Education Tyler School of Art
Known forPhotography, film, sculpture
Spouse Carroll Dunham
Children
Awards Guggenheim Fellowship, American Academy in Rome, National Endowment for the Arts
Website LaurieSimmons.net
Laurie Simmons, First Bathroom/ Woman Standing, 1978. Laurie Simmons First Bathroom Woman Standing 1978.jpg
Laurie Simmons, First Bathroom/ Woman Standing, 1978.

Laurie Simmons (born 1949) is an American artist best known for her photographic and film work. [1] [2] Art historians consider her a key figure of The Pictures Generation and a group of late-1970s women artists that emerged as a counterpoint to the male-dominated and formalist fields of painting and sculpture. [3] [4] [5] The group introduced new approaches to photography, such as staged setups, narrative, and appropriations of pop culture and everyday objects that pushed the medium toward the center of contemporary art. [6] [7] [8] Simmons's elaborately constructed images employ psychologically charged human proxies—dolls, ventriloquist dummies, mannequins, props, miniatures and interiors—and also depict people as dolls. [9] [10] Often noted for its humor and pathos, her art explores boundaries such as between artifice and truth or private and public, while raising questions about the construction of identity, tropes of prosperity, consumerism and domesticity, and practices of self-presentation and image-making. [11] [12] [13] In a review of Simmons's 2019 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, critic Steve Johnson wrote, "Collectively—and with a sly but barbed sense of humor—[her works] challenge you to think about what, if anything, is real: in our gender roles, and our cultural assumptions, and our perceptions of others." [4]

Contents

Simmons's art belongs to the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, [14] Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), [15] Los Angeles County Museum of Art, [16] Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, [17] Hara Museum (Tokyo) [18] and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, among others. [19] She has exhibited at venues including MoMA, [15] the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, [20] Walker Art Center [21] and Whitney Museum. [22] In 1997, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. [23] She lives and works in New York City and Cornwall, Connecticut. [1] [24]

Early life and career

Simmons was born in 1949 in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York, the daughter of Jewish parents, Dorothy "Dot" Simmons, a homemaker, and Samuel "Sam" Simmons, a dentist. [25] [1] [9] She spent her formative years in Great Neck, Long Island and began photographing at the age of six, with a Kodak Brownie camera her father gave her. [26] [17] She studied printmaking, painting and sculpture at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, earning a BFA in 1971. [27] [28]

After graduating, Simmons traveled in Europe and lived in a commune-like situation in upstate New York; while there she purchased a cache of toys and dollhouse furniture from a failing toy store and began experimenting with photography. [28] [17] [29] In 1973, she moved to SoHo, sharing a loft with the late photographer Jimmy DeSana, who helped her set up a darkroom; Simmons is executor of the Jimmy DeSana Estate/Trust. [29] She started working with life-like set-ups using old dollhouses, dolls and the toys she purchased—a unique approach then, which reflected her encounter with a contemporary art scene open to new forms. [6] [26] [11] [30] Her first solo exhibitions took place at Artists Space (1979), [31] MoMA PS1 (1979) and Metro Pictures (1981, initiating a 20-year relationship) in New York and at the Walker Art Center (1987), among other venues. [15] [32] [33] [20]

In subsequent years, she exhibited at Sperone Westwater [34] [35] and Salon 94 in New York, [36] [12] Amanda Wilkinson Gallery in London, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Jewish Museum (Manhattan). [10] Retrospectives of her work have been held at the San Jose Museum of Art (1990), [37] Baltimore Museum of Art (1997), [38] Gothenburg Museum of Art (2012), [39] Neues Museum Nürnberg (2014), [40] Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2018) and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2019). [41] [4] [42] She also exhibited in the Whitney Biennial (1985, 1991), Bienal de São Paulo (1985), Biennale of Sydney (1986) and Austrian Triennial on Photography (1996), [22] [17] and surveys at MOCA LA, MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. [20] [15] [43]

Work and reception

Laurie Simmons, Tourism: Parthenon, 1984. Laurie Simmons Tourism Parthenon 1984.jpg
Laurie Simmons, Tourism: Parthenon, 1984.

In her career spanning more than four decades, Simmons has used the camera to explore psycho-social subtexts involving gender, social convention, identity and cultural aspiration, often by considering ways that objects are humanized and people—particularly women—are objectified. [15] [41] Central to her work are visual contrivances such as manipulation of scale and photography's capacity to deceive, inanimate human surrogates, which mediate subjects, creating a sense of remove and disjuncture often described as uncanny and unsettling. [44] [45] [10] [46] Simmons's striking uses of color, pattern and lighting are often cited as important factors in her work's articulation of cultural memory, emotion and interiority. [6] [41] [28] [13] Critics also identify a performative aspect to her photographs akin to cinema, in which elements like set-building, role-playing or body-painting are as central as the act of photographing itself. [4] [39]

According to New York Times critic Ken Johnson, "Simmons is counted as a core member of the Pictures Generation, whose appropriations, manipulations and simulations of various photographic genres profoundly altered the course of late-20th-century art." [8] The group emerged in the aftermath of conceptual art and the sociopolitical upheavals of the 1970s, offering a critical, often playful examination of an increasingly media-saturated world. [47] [3] [2] Their work—and for the women, their prominence in the field—represented a radical departure from the art norms of the time. [3] [1] Critics particularly connect Simmons's work with that of New York contemporaries Cindy Sherman and Sarah Charlesworth, whose photography also made use of personal and collective memory, pop culture and everyday objects in order to restage, rework or subvert socio-cultural constructions. [38] [5] [3] [48]

Although traditional gender roles are a common theme in Simmons's pieces and her work is often discussed in the context of feminist critique, [49] [50] [36] critics note in it an ambivalence and nostalgia that is more sociological than political. [4] [27] [9] [51] Simmons presents the lived experiences and collective cultural memory of women in a way that preserves complexity and agency. [28] [52] [45] From an art historical perspective, her images conflating dolls and humans are seen as upendings of surrealist photography that used replicas of women as objects of male desire (e.g., Man Ray, Hans Bellmer). [53] [35] [54] [55]

Doll and dollhouse works (1976–98)

In earlier work, Simmons staged tableaux with dolls, toys and props, using visual immersion into miniature spaces to create moments of dramatic potency. [56] [4] [44] Her small dollhouse images often presented a solitary miniature plastic housewife in mundane domestic scenarios—organizing food, preparing a bath or watching television in pristine spaces—that offered a simultaneously nostalgic and critical view of idealized, 1950s American femininity and suburban conformity. [15] [6] [7] [2] Ken Johnson described her initial black-and-white series (1976–78) as "funny, strange and moody," adding, "Big themes animate these small pictures: feminism, consumerism and the sociology of photography … Yet the intellectual dimension is handled with such unassuming, playful intimacy that you could almost miss its role in making these seminal explorations of set-up photography so richly evocative." [8]

Laurie Simmons, Walking Camera (Jimmy the Camera), 1987. Laurie Simmons Jimmy the Camera 1987.jpg
Laurie Simmons, Walking Camera (Jimmy the Camera), 1987.

With the "Early Color Interiors" series (1978–79), Simmons shifted to saturated Cibachrome images, introducing elements of longing and fantasy associated with advertising, fashion, and film into the work. [31] [38] [57] [6] Assessing them later, New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman wrote, "the mood is wry, ad hoc and bittersweet, the feminist message neither obscure nor didactic … Her gifts for light, pattern and color and for making catchy images disproportionate to their modest size are nowhere more apparent than in these photographs." [6] In the larger-format "Color-Coordinated Interiors" (1982–83) and "Tourism" (1983–84) images, Simmons set monochrome Japanese dolls against rear-projected, like-hued rooms or postcard slides of famed tourist sites that seemed to subsume them; [38] [58] the latter works questioned the artificially contrived "slickness" [50] of such images and the possibility of unprogrammed, unmediated experience. [59] [60] [61]

Inspired by old dancing cigarette box commercials and Rockettes-like chorus lines, Simmons's tongue-in-cheek, human-scaled "Walking and Lying Objects" (1987–91) featured human-object hybrids. [62] [38] She created them by outfitting dolls with miniature, highly symbolic props—handbags, houses, perfume bottles, guns, pastries—that covered all but their slender legs. [38] [63] [17] Suggesting possessions that took on agency and women merging into cultural stereotypes, the images nodded toward consumer culture and the objectification of the female body in ways that ARTnews writer Elizabeth Hayt-Atkins noted for their "weirdness, wittiness, and glamour." [62] [64] [38] [11]

Simmons explored masculine and portraiture conventions, using ventriloquist dummies and toy or model train figurine setups ("Cowboys," 1979 and "Actual Photos", 1985, with Allan McCollum). [44] [15] [38] Her "Clothes Make the Man" series (1990–92) featured seven near-identical dummies differentiated mainly by clothing, calling to mind post-World War II conformity and the minute differences in appearance thought to distinguish people. [65] [26] [9] The "Café of the Inner Mind" series (1994) presented the dummies in environments with digitally collaged thought bubbles revealing fantasies about sex, food or doting mothers. [61] [26] [1]

In 1994, Simmons extended the blurring of object and person in her work by commissioning a female dummy in her own likeness. She photographed it with six male dummies in simulated self-portraits ("The Music of Regret" series, 1994) that hinted at a crisis of self-fashioning in the face of a culture of artificiality and pretense; the images were a springboard for her first film. [17] [15]

Later artwork projects (2001–present)

In her post-2000 projects, Simmons moved toward human subjects and greater emotional starkness, extending recurrent themes of dolls, artifice, public and private to include social media practices of constructing, disseminating and obscuring images of the self. [10] [13] [30]

In "The Instant Decorator" series (2001–04), Simmons collaged fabric swatches, drawings and figures clipped from fashion magazines and sex comics onto room templates from a 1976 interior decorating book, then enlarged them into seamless, if disjointed, wholes. [7] [45] [9] Combining an ambiguous mix of scale and styles—intense colors, discordant fabrics, askew paintings and kitschy accessories—the images depicted dramatic scenarios (cooking, sex, slumber parties) that ARTnews critic Hilarie Sheets called "glossy, over-the-top retro fantasies of domestic desirability." [9] [34] [7] The "Long House" (2003–04) and "Color Pictures/Deep Photos" (2007–22) works addressed sexuality, with sultry, confident women appropriated from porn magazines and sites set in a worn, three-dimensional doll house that evoked a low-rent bordello and desecrated, film noir version of Simmons's early doll house images. [7] [66]

Laurie Simmons, Some New: Lena (Pink), Pigment print, 2018. Laurie Simmons Lena (Pink) 2018.jpg
Laurie Simmons, Some New: Lena (Pink), Pigment print, 2018.

"The Love Doll" series (2009–11) represented a turn from the retro or nostalgic, toward the contemporary, realistic and human-scaled. [67] [68] The large, color-saturated images portrayed thirty days in the "life" of a high-end, life-size sex doll from Japan. [69] [70] Set in a real domestic world (Simmons's home) that had a normalizing effect underplaying the sexual element, the series privileged the doll's emotional life as a kind of "Everygirl" [68] engaged in casual moments of undisturbed innocence. [67] [36] [69] Artforum's Jeffrey Kastner wrote that Simmons "conjured remarkable depth of feeling and unexpected poignancy from an object that is, by definition, a caricature." [67]

Simmons made the transition to human models in two photographic series influenced by kigurumi , a Japanese costume play subculture in which participants become doll-like characters through masks, bodysuits, make-up or surgery. [46] [12] [25] "Dollers" (2014) featured women wearing large doll heads, drawing unexpected feelings and expressiveness out of carefully crafted compositions and poses. [71] [72] [73] The oversize "How We See" portraits (2015) depicted young women in yearbook-like poses against bright curtains, with radiant light catching strangely vacant eyes that were actually trompe l'oeil illusions painted onto their closed eyelids. [13] [46] [74] Reviewers described them as "equal parts alien and alluring … uncanny in their mystery" [46] and "flicker[ing] between warm-blooded and animatronic." [13] As with the doll masks, the process removed the models' sight leaving them vulnerable—an effect critics interpreted variously as commentary on the objectification of women, the opacity and risk of online identities, or the unreliability of assumptions about perception, self-presentation and portraiture. [49] [13] [75]

In the "Some New" photographs (2018), Simmons moved further toward direct portraiture, while still marshalling visible contrivances. [1] They depicted friends and family in states of change, renewal or guise, adorned in only body-paint that realistically simulated clothing yet left them somewhat exposed. [1] [76] The images included portraits of her children, Lena Dunham and Cyrus Dunham, as Audrey Hepburn and Rudolph Valentino, respectively. [1] In 2022, Simmons began experimenting with A.I. (text-to-image generators), yielding the "Autofiction" images and a movie; the images consist of surreal scenes of women in interiors that recall her early staging of dolls and extend her considerations of the ways images can deceive. [77] [78]

Filmmaking and acting

Simmons's first major film was The Music of Regret (2006, MoMA; Art21), a 45-minute, three-act musical weaving iconic elements of her photographic work, actors and puppets into humorous and poignant vignettes about choices made in friendship, love and work. [9] [79] [80] The acts include a dark-wigged Meryl Streep portraying a speed dater (and Simmons surrogate) being courted by male ventriloquist dummies and the Alvin Ailey dancers embodying her "Walking Objects" female archetypes in a heartbreaking, Chorus Line-like audition. [81] [9] [1] Geisha Song (2010) was a looping short film exhibited with "The Love Doll" series; it consisted of dream-like views of a doll made up as a geisha, set to a Japanese vocalist singing the Dietrich, classic "Falling in Love Again" in nasal, accented English. [69] [36]

In the feature-length film she wrote and directed, My Art (2016), Simmons took on stereotypes about the lives of older women artists and their career aspirations. [82] [83] The New Yorker critic Richard Brody deemed it "a frankly practical look at professionalism and its blurry borders." [84] Simmons portrayed the protagonist, Ellie, a single, 60-something artist, who spends a month in a borrowed country house (Simmons's) to regenerate herself and her stalled art career. [1] [2] [5] While different in character, Ellie's art—meticulous, DIY feminist recreations of Hollywood scenes in which she subs for Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich and others—shares concerns with Simmons's work involving artifice, fantasy, reality and women's roles. [85] [10] [2] Eve MacSweeney of Vogue called the film "a devastatingly funny and subtle lens on such subjects as success, ageism, loneliness, absurdity, dating in your 60s, inhibition and disinhibition, collaboration, and ruthlessness." [86] Its cast included actors Blair Brown and Parker Posey and Simmons's friend, artist Marilyn Minter. [2]

Simmons also co-starred in her daughter Lena Dunham's award-winning independent film, Tiny Furniture (2010), as a mother and mid-career artist whose daughter returns home after university; shot in the Dunhams' New York apartment, it included fake "movie art" that Simmons created. [25] [2] She appeared in a 2011 Gossip Girl television episode as a portrait artist whose style resembled her "Interior Decorator" works. [87]

Collaborative fashion and design projects

In 2008, Simmons collaborated with the designer Thakoon Panichgul on fabrics for his 2009 spring collection based on her "Walking & Lying Objects" series. The final pattern repeated an image of a blood-red rose over legs in repose. [63] [25] In 2010, she created works using paper dolls created from images of models dressed in designer Peter Jensen's clothing, which she placed inside her signature dollhouse tableaus, then collaged and photographed. [88] She collaborated with cosmetics entrepreneur Poppy King on a limited-edition poppy red lipstick, "Pushing It," that was available in tandem with her museum retrospectives in 2018 and 2019. [89]

Simmons created the Kaleidoscope House (2000–2) with architect Peter Wheelwright, an interactive, three-story modernist dollhouse sold in stores, which she later photographed. It employed colorful sliding transparent walls and miniature artwork and furniture by contemporary artists and designers. [60] [90] [7]

Personal life

Simmons lives and works in New York City and Cornwall, Connecticut with her husband, painter Carroll Dunham. They have two children: writer, director and actress Lena Dunham and Cyrus Dunham, author of the memoir A Year Without A Name, actor and activist. [24] [10] [91]

Collections and recognition

Simmons's work is held in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, [92] Art Institute of Chicago, [93] Baltimore Museum of Art, [94] Brooklyn Museum, [95] Hara Museum, [18] High Museum of Art, [96] International Center of Photography, [97] Jewish Museum, [98] Los Angeles County Museum of Art, [16] Metropolitan Museum of Art, [14] Moderna Museet (Stockholm), [99] Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), [100] MOCA LA, [101] Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, [102] Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, [103] Museum of Modern Art, [15] National Gallery of Art, [104] Philadelphia Museum of Art, [105] Saint Louis Art Museum, [106] San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, [107] Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, [17] Stedelijk Museum, [19] Tate, [108] Walker Art Center, [109] Weatherspoon Art Museum [110] and Whitney Museum, [22] among others.

She has been recognized with a Women in the Arts Award from the Brooklyn Museum (2013), an American Academy in Rome residency (2005), a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship (1997) and a National Endowment for the Arts grant (1984). [111] [112] [23] [17] In 2016, the International Center of Photography named her its sixth "Spotlights" honoree for her contributions to visual culture. [113] [27]

Publications

Related Research Articles

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. Kruger's artistic mediums include photography, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, as well as video and audio installations.

Justine Kurland is an American fine art photographer, based in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cindy Sherman</span> American photographer (born 1954)

Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Charlesworth</span> American conceptual artist and photographer

Sarah Edwards Charlesworth was an American conceptual artist and photographer. She is considered part of The Pictures Generation, a loose-knit group of artists working in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s, all of whom were concerned with how images shape our everyday lives and society as a whole.

Marilyn Minter is an American visual artist who is perhaps best known for her sensual paintings and photographs done in the photorealism style that blur the line between commercial and fine art. Minter currently teaches in the MFA department at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Marie Cosindas was an American photographer. She was best known for her evocative still lifes and color portraits. Her use of color photography in her work distinguished her from other photographers in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of her photographs were portraits and pictures of objects like dolls, flowers, and masks.

Jimmy DeSana was an American artist, and a key figure in the East Village punk art and New Wave scene of the 1970s and 1980s. DeSana's photography has been described as "anti-art" in its approach to capturing images of the human body, in a manner ranging from "savagely explicit to purely symbolic". DeSana was close collaborators with photographer Laurie Simmons and writer William S. Burroughs, who wrote the introduction to DeSana's self-published collection of photographs Submission. His work includes the album cover for the Talking Heads album More Songs about Buildings and Food as well as John Giorno’s LP, You’re The Guy I Want To Share My Money With.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aziz + Cucher</span> American artist duo

Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher are American artists based in Brooklyn, New York who work together as the collaborative duo Aziz + Cucher. Their interdisciplinary practice has included digital photography and animation, video, textiles, screen-printing and sculpture. They emerged in the early 1990s and are regarded as pioneers in post-photography and the then-nascent use of digital imaging in fine art. The duo's earlier photography and sculptures centered on socio-anthropological themes, such as dehumanization, communication breakdown and notions of utopia or dystopia in relation to advancing technology. In later installations and exhibitions, they have taken a more political approach, examining issues such as war, inequality and the effects of globalization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leslie Hewitt</span> American artist (born 1977)

Leslie Hewitt is an American contemporary visual artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zoe Leonard</span> American artist (born 1961)

Zoe Leonard is an American artist who works primarily with photography and sculpture. She has exhibited widely since the late 1980s and her work has been included in a number of seminal exhibitions including Documenta IX and Documenta XII, and the 1993, 1997 and 2014 Whitney biennials. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marvin Heiferman</span> American curator and writer (born 1948)

Marvin Heiferman is an American curator and writer, who originates projects about the impact of photographic images on art, visual culture, and science for museums, art galleries, publishers and corporations.

Anne Collier is an American visual artist working with appropriated photographic images. Describing Collier's work in Frieze art magazine, writer Brian Dillon said, "Collier uncouples the machinery of appropriation so that her found images seem weightless, holding their obvious meaning in abeyance."

Mariah Robertson is an American artist. She lives in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirana Shahbazi</span> Iranian-born photographer (born 1974)

Shirana Shahbazi is an Iranian-born photographer who now lives in Switzerland. Her work includes installations and large prints of conceptual photography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Ess</span> American photographer (1944–2021)

Barbara Ess was an American pinhole camera photographer, No Wave musician and Just Another Asshole editor. She taught photography at Bard College since 1997; who in 2024, along with the Schwartz family, has established an annual award to assist Bard College photography students in need called The Barbara Ess Fund for Artistic Expression in Photography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Bolande</span> American artist

Jennifer Bolande is an American postconceptual artist. Her art explores affinities and shifts of meaning among sets of objects and images across different contexts and media including sculpture, photography, film and installation. She emerged in the early 1980s with work that expanded on ideas and strategies rooted in conceptualism, Pop, Arte Povera and the so-called Pictures Generation. Her work focuses on thresholds, liminal and peripheral spaces, and transitional moments—states she enacts by the repetition, accumulation and recontextualization of found materials. She frequently selects cultural artifacts on the verge of obsolescence or in flux—and thus acquiring new meanings—and archives, studies and reframes them. Artforum critic Paula Marincola wrote, "Bolande's highly individualized amalgam of sculpture and photography proceeds obliquely but precisely toward an accumulation of possible meanings. She is a connoisseur of unlikely but evocative details, of subliminally perceived, fragmentary images and events."

Eileen Quinlan is a self-described still-life photographer who shoots with medium format and large format cameras. An art critic for Art in America likened her style to that of Moholy-Nagy and James Welling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eileen Cowin</span> American artist and photographer

Eileen Cowin is a Los Angeles–based artist known for photography, video and mixed-media installations that draw on the language of mass media and art history and explore the relationship between narrative, fiction and non-fiction, memory and experience. Associated with the 1970s Los Angeles experimental photography scene and the Pictures Generation artists, her work combines familiar human situations and carefully chosen gestures, expressions and props to create enigmatic images whose implied, open-ended stories viewers must complete. Cowin has exhibited in more than forty solo shows in the United States and abroad, including at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Museum of Contemporary Photography, Armory Center for the Arts and Contemporary Arts Center. Her work is included in more than forty institutional collections, including LACMA, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and Smithsonian American Art Museum. She has been recognized with awards and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, LACMA, the City of Los Angeles (COLA), Public Art Fund, and the Sundance and USA film festivals. New York Times critic Andy Grundberg wrote that her multi-image work "sets up a tension between the familiar and the mysterious, creating a climate of implied danger, sexual intrigue and violence" in which clues abound to intimate various narratives. Jody Zellen observed that Cowin "manipulates the conventions of photography, film, and video to tell a different kind of story—one that explores where truth and fiction merge, yet presents no conclusions. Cowin's work provokes."

Sheida Soleimani is an Iranian-American multimedia artist, activist, and professor. Her works have generated conversations in the field of 'constructed' tableau photography, as well as the intersections of art and protest, with a focus on Iranian human-rights violations.

Adam Putnam is an American visual artist working primarily with photography, drawing, and performance art. Putnam is a Visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Lubow, Arthur. "Influenced by Her Children, Laurie Simmons Exits Her Comfort Zone," The New York Times, April 27, 2018. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Eckardt, Steph. "How the Artist Laurie Simmons Made a Movie in Spite of Everything," W, May 2, 2017. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Eklund, Douglas. The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Johnson, Steve. "Laurie Simmons Talks About Her MCA Photography Show And How Daughter Lena Dunham Helped Her Explain Her Work," Chicago Tribune, February 27, 2019. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  5. 1 2 3 Shockman, Elizabeth. "Tiny furniture, art and being the mom of Lena Dunham," Public Radio International, April 16, 2016. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kimmelman, Michael. "Laurie Simmons—Photographs 1978-79: 'Interiors' and 'Big Figures'," The New York Times, June 7, 2002. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Yablonsky, Linda. "Better, More Surreal Homes and Collages," The New York Times, February 15, 2004. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  8. 1 2 3 Johnson, Ken. "Laurie Simmons: In and Around the House," The New York Times, June 20, 2008, p. E18. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Sheets, Hilarie M. "In the Studio: Laurie Simmons," Art + Auction, October 2007, p. 72–78.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Russeth, Andrew. "Laurie Simmons: Eyes Wide Shut," ARTnews, March 4, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  11. 1 2 3 Noyes, Chandra. "Laurie Simmons' Big Career Photographing Little Things," Art & Object, February 27, 2019. Retrieved April 10, 2024.
  12. 1 2 3 Sanchez, Gabriel H. "Laurie Simmons," Artforum, April 18, 2014. Retrieved April 10, 2024.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Sheets, Hilarie M. "Laurie Simmons," ARTnews, April 28, 2015. Retrieved April 17, 2024.
  14. 1 2 Metropolitan Museum of Art. Laurie Simmons, Collection. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Museum of Modern Art. Laurie Simmons, Artists. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  16. 1 2 Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Laurie Simmons, Collections. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  17. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Laurie Simmons, Artist. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  18. 1 2 Hara Museum. "STOPGAP – Homage to Rauschenberg: Selections from the Hara Museum Collection," Exhibitions. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  19. 1 2 Stedelijk Museum. Sarah Charlesworth, Robert Garratt, General Idea, Peter Halley, Jeff Koons, Peter Nagy, Laurie Simmons, Collection. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  20. 1 2 3 Goldstein, Ann, Mary Jane Jacob and Catherine Gudis. A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation, Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1989. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  21. ↑ Simmons, Laurie. Laurie Simmons: Water Ballet/Family Collision, Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 1987
  22. 1 2 3 Whitney Museum of American Art. Laurie Simmons, Artists. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  23. 1 2 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Laurie Simmons, Fellows. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  24. 1 2 Thornton, Sarah. "Side by Side. Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons, soldiering on together," The Economist, August 11, 2010.
  25. 1 2 3 4 Oliver, Charlotte. "Latex doll images inflate the appeal of V&A photographer," The Jewish Chronicle, November 24, 2016. Retrieved April 10, 2024.
  26. 1 2 3 4 Art21. "Photography, Perfection, and Reality: Laurie Simmons," 2007. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  27. 1 2 3 Soo, Youn. "This Artist Subverts Housewife Stereotypes," New York Magazine, November 3, 2016. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  28. 1 2 3 4 Shattuck, Kathryn. "I Like to Imagine People Imagining I'm From Anywhere," The New York Times, July 6, 1997. Retrieved April 10, 2024.
  29. 1 2 Trillin, Calvin. "A Doll's House," The New Yorker, December 10, 2012.
  30. 1 2 Blanch, Andrea. "Interview with Laurie Simmons: a real doll," Musee Magazine. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  31. 1 2 Lifson, Ben. "Laurie Simmons," The Village Voice, February 12, 1979.
  32. ↑ Heartney, Eleanor. "Laurie Simmons at Metro Pictures," Art in America, June 1988, p. 160–61.
  33. ↑ Reilly, Maura. "Laurie Simmons at Metro Pictures," Art in America, February 1999, p. 108.
  34. 1 2 Glueck, Grace. "Laurie Simmons: 'The Instant Decorator'," The New York Times, March 26, 2004. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  35. 1 2 Cohen, David. "Nordic Gloom & Dancing Mannequins," The New York Sun, June 8, 2006, p. 15.
  36. 1 2 3 4 Johnson, Ken. "Laurie Simmons: 'The Love Doll: Days 1-30'," The New York Times, March 3, 2011. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  37. ↑ Cameron, Dan and Laurie Simmons. Laurie Simmons, San Jose, CA: San Jose Museum of Art, 1990. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  38. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Goldberg, Vicki. "The Doll Houses That Sheltered So Many Dreams," The New York Times, July 6, 1997. Retrieved April 10, 2024.
  39. 1 2 Gothenburg Museum of Art. Laurie Simmons, Exhibitions. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  40. ↑ Neues Museum Nürnberg. "The Fabulous World of Laurie Simmons," Exhibitions. Retrieved April11, 2024.
  41. 1 2 3 Lobel, Michael. "Laurie Simmons: Big Camera/Little Camera," Artforum, October 2018. Retrieved April 10, 2024.
  42. ↑ Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Laurie Simmons: Big Camera/Little Camera, Exhibitions. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  43. ↑ Metropolitan Museum of Art. "'Pictures Generation' of New York Contemporary Artists Featured in Spring Metropolitan Museum Exhibition,", Exhibitions, 2009. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  44. 1 2 3 Smith, Roberta. "Actual Photos," Art in America, January 1986.
  45. 1 2 3 MacAdam, Barbara A. "Laurie Simmons at Sperone Westwater," ARTnews, June 2004, p. 112.
  46. 1 2 3 4 Hering, Dierdre. "The Lifeless Eyes of Laurie Simmons's Human Dolls," Hyperallergic, July 22, 2015. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  47. ↑ Eklund, Douglas. "The Pictures Generation,", Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  48. ↑ Simmons, Laurie. "Sarah Charlesworth (1947–2013)," Artforum, November 10, 2013. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  49. 1 2 Berry, David. "Artist Laurie Simmons' latest work is a blindingly brilliant critique of femininity," National Post, November 14, 2014. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  50. 1 2 Linker, Kate. "Laurie Simmons," Artforum, March 1985. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  51. ↑ Bothwell, Anne. "Laurie Simmons Explores Memory And Domesticity With Dolls," Art + Seek, October 15, 2018. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  52. ↑ Marsh, Stefanie. "'No mother wants watch her daughter in a sex scene. I had to cover my eyes,'" The Times, May 26, 2014.
  53. ↑ Jenkins, Nicholas. “Laurie Simmons at Metro Pictures,” ARTnews, January 1992, p. 119.
  54. ↑ Budick, Ariella. "Laurie Simmons: How We See, Jewish Museum, New York—review," Financial Times, March 25, 2015. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  55. ↑ Heti, Sheila. "Laurie Simmons," Interview, March 4, 2014. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  56. ↑ Gloede, Marc. "Laurie Simmons, Erna Hecey," Art in America, March 2009, p. 156.
  57. ↑ The Museum of Modern Art. Laurie Simmons, Blonde/Red Dress/Kitchen, Collection. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  58. ↑ Rosenberg, Karen. "Laurie Simmons: Color Coordinated Interiors," The New York Times, October 19, 2007. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  59. ↑ Heartney, Eleanor. "Laurie Simmons at International with Monument," ARTnews, February 1985, p. 143.
  60. 1 2 Glueck, Grace. "Laurie Simmons," The New York Times, November 24, 2000. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  61. 1 2 Howard, Jan. Laurie Simmons: The Music of Regret, Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997.
  62. 1 2 Hayt-Atkins, Elizabeth. "Laurie Simmons at Metro Pictures," ARTnews, March 1990, p. 173–74.
  63. 1 2 Lau, Venessa. "Rose Land: A collaboration with artist Laurie Simmons blossoms at Thakoon," W, November 2008.
  64. ↑ The Museum of Modern Art. Laurie Simmons, Walking House, Collection. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  65. ↑ Woodward, Richard B. "Laurie Simmons at Metro Pictures," ARTnews, May 1988, p. 161.
  66. ↑ Pejcha, Camille Sojit. "Laurie Simmons Makes Art Not Magic," Vogue, December 8, 2022.
  67. 1 2 3 Kastner, Jeffrey. "Laurie Simmons," Artforum, May 2011. Retrieved April 10, 2024.
  68. 1 2 Hoban, Phoebe. "The Great Leap Forward: Artist Laurie Simmons Finds Her Perfect Subject," New York Magazine, February 21, 2011.
  69. 1 2 3 Yablonsky, Linda. "Laurie Simmons's Love Doll," The New York Times, February 21, 2011. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  70. ↑ The New Yorker. "Laurie Simmons," March 2011.
  71. ↑ Larkin, Daniel. "How Laurie Simmons Makes Dolls Lie," Hyperallergic, April 17, 2014. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  72. ↑ Binlot, Ann. "A Doll's Life: Laurie Simmons Explores Kigurmi," The Daily Beast, March 10, 2014.
  73. ↑ Johnson, Ken. "Pluralism, With Bug Zappers and Doll People," The New York Times, April 3, 2014. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  74. ↑ Farago, Jason. "Laurie Simmons," Artforum, March 27, 2015. Retrieved April 10, 2024.
  75. ↑ Laster, Paul. "Laurie Simmons talks juggling her roles as an artist and the mother of a famous daughter," TimeOut, March 11, 2015. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  76. ↑ Larocca, Amy. "How Laurie Simmons's Photographs (Including Pictures of Her Daughters in Body Paint) Ended Up in Two Galleries at Once," Vulture, May 1 2018. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  77. ↑ Chen, Min. "A Collaborator Who Understood My Vision: Laurie Simmons, Casey Reas, and Mario Klingemann on How A.I. Is Fueling Creativity," Artnet, December 20, 2023. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  78. ↑ Jacobs, Gideon. "A.I. Is the Future of Photography. Does That Mean Photography Is Dead?", The New York Times, December 26, 2023. Retrieved April 11, 2024.
  79. ↑ The Museum of Modern Art. Laurie Simmons's The Music of Regret, Film. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  80. ↑ Art21. "Laurie Simmons in 'Romance' – Season 4 – Art in the Twenty-First Century," 2007. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  81. ↑ Yablonsky, Linda. "The Sound of Silence," Artforum, May 2006. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  82. ↑ Stewart, Sara. "Portrait of an artist," New York Post, January 12, 2018.
  83. ↑ Fagerholm, Matt. "My Art," Roger Ebert.com, January 12, 2018. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  84. ↑ Brody, Richard. "My Art," The New Yorker, January 4, 2018. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  85. ↑ Langmuir, Molly. "15 Women Artists Who Are Changing Their World—And Ours," Elle, November 15, 2016. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  86. ↑ MacSweeney, Eve. "In My Art, Laurie Simmons's Directorial Feature-Film Debut," Vogue, January 12, 2018. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  87. ↑ Grand, Robert "What 'Gossip Girl' Got Right (And Wrong) About the Art World," Artspace, October 13, 2017. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  88. ↑ Lau, Vanessa. "Five minutes with artist Laurie Simmons," W, September 22, 2009. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  89. ↑ Regensdorf, Laura. "Artist Laurie Simmons Just Made Her First Wearable Artwork: A Bold Red Lipstick," Vogue, October 22, 2018.
  90. ↑ Weinstein, Jeff. "The Kaleidoscope House," Artforum, January 2001. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  91. ↑ Dunham, Cyrus. A Year Without a Name, New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2019. ISBN 9780316444958. Retrieved July 18, 2024.
  92. ↑ Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Laurie Simmons Magnum Opus II (the Bye-Bye), 1991, Artworks. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  93. ↑ Art Institute of Chicago. Laurie Simmons, Artists. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  94. ↑ Baltimore Museum of Art. Walking House, Laurie Simmons, Objects. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  95. ↑ Brooklyn Museum. Laurie Simmons, Collection. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  96. ↑ High Museum of Art. Tourism: at the Bikini Atoll, Laurie Simmons, Collection. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  97. ↑ International Center of Photography. Laurie Simmons, Artist. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  98. ↑ The Jewish Museum. Laurie Simmons, Artist. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  99. ↑ Moderna Museet. Laurie Simmons, Artists. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  100. ↑ Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Laurie Simmons, Authors. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  101. ↑ Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Laurie Simmons, Artist. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  102. ↑ Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Laurie Simmons, Artists. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  103. ↑ Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Laurie Simmons, People. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  104. ↑ National Gallery of Art. Laurie Simmons, Artists. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  105. ↑ Philadelphia Museum of Art. New Bathroom/Woman Standing, Laurie Simmons, Objects. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  106. ↑ HEC. " St. Louis Art Museum opens new exhibit featuring prints, drawings, paintings, objects in 'The Artist and the Modern Studio'," 2016. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  107. ↑ San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Laurie Simmons, Artist. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  108. ↑ Tate. Laurie Simmons, Artists. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  109. ↑ Walker Art Center. Laurie Simmons, Artists. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  110. ↑ Weatherspoon Art Museum. Laurie Simmons, Artists. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  111. ↑ Brooklyn Museum. Women in the Arts Award, 2013. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  112. ↑ American Academy in Rome. All Fellows. Retrieved April 9, 2024.
  113. ↑ Sabino, Catherine. "See Lena Dunham, Molly Ringwald, and Candice Bergen at ICP luncheon honoring Laurie Simmons," Haute Living, November 7, 2016. Retrieved April 10, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.