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In 2008, Simmons collaborated with the designer [[Thakoon Panichgul]] to create fabrics for his Spring 2009 line. The pattern featured a variation on Simmons' series "Walking & Lying Objects" from the late eighties, which involved various objects that are animated with legs in different positions. The fabric for Thakoon's line was based on legs paired with a rose.<ref>[http://www.wmagazine.com/fashion/2008/11/laurie_simmons Lau, Venessa “Rose Land: A collaboration with artist Laurie Simmons blossoms at Thakoon,” W Magazine, November 2008]</ref>
In 2008, Simmons collaborated with the designer [[Thakoon Panichgul]] to create fabrics for his Spring 2009 line. The pattern featured a variation on Simmons' series "Walking & Lying Objects" from the late eighties, which involved various objects that are animated with legs in different positions. The fabric for Thakoon's line was based on legs paired with a rose.<ref>[http://www.wmagazine.com/fashion/2008/11/laurie_simmons Lau, Venessa “Rose Land: A collaboration with artist Laurie Simmons blossoms at Thakoon,” W Magazine, November 2008]</ref>


The [[Whitney Museum of American Art]] commissioned Simmons to create the seventeenth annual American Art Award for them in 2008. Simmons created a bronze statue, gilded in 24 karat gold, of the iconic museum building standing on legs.<ref>[http://www.lauriesimmons.net/index.php?mode=objectlist&section_id=118&object_id=213 Laurie Simmmons website]</ref> Simmons also used objects on legs in her series "Walking & Lying Objects" from the late 1980s. The first work in this series is a work from 1987 titled "Walking Camera I (Jimmy the Camera)," of Simmons's friend and former roommate, the late artist [[Jimmy De Sana]], wearing an old-fashioned box camera costume. The later photographs that follow use miniatures and small doll legs. "As she animates the objects, Simmons plays out various roles. Her transformed women parade across a simulated stage as if in a fashion show or a musical, wearing the accoutrements with which they are identified."<ref>Howard, Jan, "The Music of Regret," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997</ref>
Simmons also used objects on legs in her series "Walking & Lying Objects" from the late 1980s. The first work in this series is a work from 1987 titled "Walking Camera I (Jimmy the Camera)," of Simmons's friend and former roommate, the late artist [[Jimmy De Sana]], wearing an old-fashioned box camera costume. The later photographs that follow use miniatures and small doll legs. "As she animates the objects, Simmons plays out various roles. Her transformed women parade across a simulated stage as if in a fashion show or a musical, wearing the accoutrements with which they are identified."<ref>Howard, Jan, "The Music of Regret," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997</ref>


Simmons starred in a feature-length film by her daughter Lena Dunham, called [[Tiny Furniture]], which was filmed in 2009 and was featured at the [[South by Southwest]] film festival in 2010. The film won the Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature.<ref>[http://tinyfurniture.com/ Tiny Furniture]</ref>
Simmons starred in a feature-length film by her daughter Lena Dunham, called [[Tiny Furniture]], which was filmed in 2009 and was featured at the [[South by Southwest]] film festival in 2010. The film won the Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature.<ref>[http://tinyfurniture.com/ Tiny Furniture]</ref>

Revision as of 23:47, 26 January 2011

Laurie Simmons is an artist and photographer currently working in New York.

Biography

Laurie Simmons was born in Long Island, New York, in 1949. She received a BFA from Tyler School of Art in 1971.Simmons lives and works in New York City and Cornwall, Connecticut with her husband, the painter Carroll Dunham, and their two daughters, Lena and Grace.[1]

Career

Since the mid 1970s, Simmons has staged scenes for her camera with dolls, ventriloquist dummies, objects on legs and occasionally people, to create images with intensely psychological subtexts.

Simmons’ first mature works, shot in 1976, were black and white images taken in a dollhouse, un-peopled variations on each room in the house, particularly the bathroom, using sunlight and different angles to create a “dazzling, dreamlike stage set.”[2] She then added a housewife doll into a kitchen set, and "...photographed the figure over and over in various positions--standing and sitting at the table, at the counter, in a corner, standing on her head with the kitchen in disarray. The mood is dramatically different than in the bathroom views. The housewife seems hysterical..."[3]

In 1978 Simmons began shooting the figures in the dollhouse in color, to create the "Early Color Interiors" series. At that time, color photography was "...more commonly associated with the artifice of commercial photography while black-and-white was perceived to be more truthful. By using the techniques and processes identified with advertising, fashion, and film, Simmons linked her work to a realm of suspended belief--the realm of fantasy and fiction that sustained many of her memories and longings."[4]

Simmons had her first solo show at Artists Space, a non-profit gallery in New York, in 1979, showing the "Early Color Interiors".[5] A few months after this she exhibited work at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center.[6]

In 1980 Simmons began showing at the gallery Metro Pictures in New York.[7] In the early 1980s she created the series "Color-Coordinated Interiors", which used Japanese dolls called Teenettes, monochrome toys of women who Simmons photographed in front of rear projection images of interior decorated rooms.[8] The dolls matched the color theme of the rooms. Simmons stated about the series,

The series that followed was "Tourism," in 1984, which also used the "Teenette" dolls, but showed them in groups visiting famous places around the world, including the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, the Parthenon, and the Taj Mahal.[9] This series investigated the mediation of these places through photography and media instead of real experience. "She used the same strategy to shoot the "Tourism" series as she used for the "Color-Coordinated Interiors," populating unrealistically pristine postcard views with her dolls via rear projection. The figures are color-cued to the background scene, which was often unintentionally monochromatic due owing to the poor quality of the slide."[10] The slides were collected by Simmons from tourist shops and museum collections.

In 1987 Simmons visited the Vent Haven Ventriloquist Museum in Kentucky and over a period of a few years photographed various dummies and props there, resulting in the "Talking Objects" series.[11]

Simmons had a mid-career retrospective at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1997.[12]

In 2001, Simmons designed, with the architect Peter Wheelwright, an interactive modernist dollhouse called the "Kaleidoscope House." The house was decorated with miniature artwork and furniture by contemporary artists and designers.[13]

Also in 2001, Simmons began her "Instant Decorator" series, which was based on a 1976 interior decorating book of the same name, that provided templates of household rooms for the client to fill with swatches of fabric and paint samples. The series features works that are collage-like and opulently filled with accessories and characters in dramatic mises en scène.[14]

In 2006 Simmons made her first film "The Music of Regret," a mini musical in three acts which premiered at MoMA and starred Meryl Streep.

The film has since screened at museums and festivals worldwide including the Walker Art Center, the Hammer Museum, the Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, the Kunst Film Biennale in Cologne, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan.[15] Some of the imagery in the film is prefigured in a 1994 series of photographs called "Music of Regret," where Simmons had a mannequin made in her likeness, who appears in romantic settings with other, male, ventriloquist dummies. "The title reminds us how a song or melody can stir up memories, particularly of the sentimental years of young romance."[16]

In 2008, Simmons collaborated with the designer Thakoon Panichgul to create fabrics for his Spring 2009 line. The pattern featured a variation on Simmons' series "Walking & Lying Objects" from the late eighties, which involved various objects that are animated with legs in different positions. The fabric for Thakoon's line was based on legs paired with a rose.[17]

Simmons also used objects on legs in her series "Walking & Lying Objects" from the late 1980s. The first work in this series is a work from 1987 titled "Walking Camera I (Jimmy the Camera)," of Simmons's friend and former roommate, the late artist Jimmy De Sana, wearing an old-fashioned box camera costume. The later photographs that follow use miniatures and small doll legs. "As she animates the objects, Simmons plays out various roles. Her transformed women parade across a simulated stage as if in a fashion show or a musical, wearing the accoutrements with which they are identified."[18]

Simmons starred in a feature-length film by her daughter Lena Dunham, called Tiny Furniture, which was filmed in 2009 and was featured at the South by Southwest film festival in 2010. The film won the Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature.[19]

Her work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC; the Hara Museum in Tokyo; the Ellipse Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal and the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam, among others.[20]

Books

"Color Coordinated Interiors 1983." Skarstedt Fine Art, 2007. ISBN 0-9709090-6-3

"Walking, Talking, Lying." Aperture, 2005. ISBN 1-931788-59-6

"In and Around the House: Photographs 1976-78." Carolina Nitsch Editions, 2003. ISBN 0-9740666-0-5

"Photographs 1978/79." Skarstedt Fine Art, 2002. ISBN 0-9709090-3-9

"The Music of Regret." The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997. ISBN 0-912298-69-3

"Laurie Simmons." A. R. T. Press, 1994. ISBN 0-923183-13-2

"Laurie Simmons, San Jose Museum of Art." The San Jose Museum of Art, 1990. ISBN 0-938175-10-6

"Laurie Simmons, Water Ballet/Family Collision." Walker Art Center, 1987. ISBN 0-935640-23-1

"LS Laurie Simmons." PARCO CO., LTD. Tokyo, 1987. ISBN 4-89194-155-3

"In and Around the House." CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, New York, 1983. ISBN 0-939784-046-8

References

  1. ^ Erna Hecey Gallery
  2. ^ Howard, Jan, "The Music of Regret," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997
  3. ^ Howard, Jan, "The Music of Regret," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997
  4. ^ Howard, Jan, "The Music of Regret," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997
  5. ^ Howard, Jan, "The Music of Regret," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997
  6. ^ "Conversation: Laurie Simmons and Marvin Heiferman", Art in America, April 2009, p. 110-121
  7. ^ "Conversation: Laurie Simmons and Marvin Heiferman", Art in America, April 2009, p. 110-121
  8. ^ Howard, Jan, "The Music of Regret," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997
  9. ^ Howard, Jan, "The Music of Regret," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997
  10. ^ Howard, Jan, "The Music of Regret," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997
  11. ^ "Laurie Simmons." A. R. T. Press, 1994.
  12. ^ Howard, Jan, "The Music of Regret," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997
  13. ^ PMWArchitects
  14. ^ Yablonsky, Linda, “Better, More Surreal Homes and Collages ,” The New York Times, 15 February 2004, p. 18
  15. ^ Sperone Westwater
  16. ^ Howard, Jan, "The Music of Regret," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997
  17. ^ Lau, Venessa “Rose Land: A collaboration with artist Laurie Simmons blossoms at Thakoon,” W Magazine, November 2008
  18. ^ Howard, Jan, "The Music of Regret," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997
  19. ^ Tiny Furniture
  20. ^ Sperone Westwater

Sources

PBS: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/simmons/index.html

Guggenheim Museum: http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_works_228_0.html

Museum of Modern Art: http://moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A7015&page_number=1&template_id=6&sort_order=1

Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/hd/pcgn/ho_2004.246.htm

The New York Times: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE1DD103AF937A15752C1A9669C8B63&scp=1&sq=laurie%20simmons&st=cse

The New York Times: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E7D7143DF934A35755C0A9649C8B63&scp=3&sq=laurie%20simmons&st=cse

The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/arts/design/20wart.html?_r=1&scp=19&sq=laurie%20simmons&st=cse&oref=slogin

“Laurie Simmons: Color Coordinated Interiors 1983,” New York: Skarstedt Gallery, 2007.

Linkler, Kate. “Laurie Simmons: Walking, Talking, Lying,” Aperture Foundation, 2005

Laurie Simmons' The Music of Regret has been released on Lowave

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