Laurie Simmons: In and Around the House
In and Around the House, the first comprehensive survey of early black and white photographs by Art21 artist Laurie Simmons (Season 4), opens tomorrow at Carolina Nitsch Project Room in New York. An opening reception with the artist takes place tonight from 5-7pm. The exhibition is on view through June 28, 2008.
From the website:
“This seminal body of work [made between 1976-78] put Simmons at the forefront of a new generation of artists, predominantly women, whose photographic works began a new dialogue in contemporary art.
The use of set-up photography combined with the notion of child play – the images were shot in the rooms and before the facades of disassembled dollhouses – enabled Simmons to control perception and make reference to both general stereotypes and her own personal memories. As she arranged and rearranged the small vignettes, consisting of female dolls, dollhouse furnishings, miniature props and postcards, she was in her own words ‘… looking for the way your memory white-washes the image when you think about something from the past - making it far more perfect’.”
Carolina Nitsch Project Room is located at 534 West 22nd Street, New York, NY. Gallery Hours are Tuesday - Saturday, 11am to 6 pm.
Expanding the Definition(s): Some Days Are Easier Than Others
Many thanks to those who have helped get the Teaching with Contemporary Art column off to a smooth start! Recently, a few friends and colleagues have mentioned (even e-mailed) about the fact that, well, while Season 4 of Art:21 has won quite a few prestigious awards, the selection of artists chosen can be difficult to transition into the classroom. As educators, how do we get our collective heads around teaching with Season 4 artists such as Mark Dion, Alfredo Jaar, Ursula von Rydingsvard and Laurie Simmons? These aren’t artists that lend themselves easily to K-12 or university-level curriculum, particularly if the course is production-based. How can artists like these, as well as artists such as Ann Hamilton (Season 1), Martin Puryear (Season 2), and Fred Wilson (Season 3) help us work with students in our classrooms?
First… they can help us redefine and expand on what art is and what it’s becoming in the 21st century. There aren’t too many neat little projects that fit perfectly with what some of these artists do, but the segments and related materials on art21.org help us work with students to consider new possibilities for subject matter and ways of working with traditional and non-traditional media. These segments can inspire writing in the classroom just as well as Elizabeth Murray may inspire students to paint in new ways. They can be the catalyst for spirited debate much like Trenton Doyle Hancock can act as a starting point for understanding cartooning or how artists develop/illustrate alter-egos. Mark Dion can teach about the relationship between art and ecology, as well as blurring the line between artist and curator. Alfredo Jaar can teach about public art and how contemporary art often needs a particular setting much like a great work of fiction. Ursula von Rydingsvard teaches how an artist today can create work that relates to landscapes, the human body and psychological states… sometimes simultaneously. And Laurie Simmons can teach that there is a difference between photographers as artists and artists that use photography as a tool.
While it’s hard to incorporate the ever-increasing number of artists that can meaningfully inspire and help guide students, it’s hard to NOT include artists that will help them open up definitions and engage in dialogue about what art is and what constitutes an artist to begin with. Bringing these artists into discussions and/or socratic seminars in the art classroom can have surprising and wonderful benefits. Is it easy? Never. Some days are easier than others. But it’s always worth it. I can tell you stories…..
Image: Untitled Hot Glue Drawing by Karyl DelMundo
Photography on Photography at The Met
Last September, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a new gallery on the second floor dedicated exclusively to contemporary photographs. The second exhibition in this space, Photography on Photography: Reflections on the Medium Since 1960, opens to the public today.
This exhibition, organized by Doug Eklund, Assistant Curator in the Met’s Department of Photographs, includes Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3), Sherrie Levine, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Prince, Thomas Ruff, Vito Acconci, Kota Ezawa, Moyra Davey, Mary Wyse, and others. Malcolm Daniel, Curator in charge of the Department says, “This new selection [from the permanent collection] takes a narrower focus, showing how photographs since Conceptual Art have reflected on the medium itself in their work. With many more works by younger artists, the installation also provides more of a snapshot of where photography is at the moment.” Photography on Photography is on view through October 19, 2008.
Photographs began to enter the Met’s collection as early as 1928. Today their photography collection alone includes more than 20,000 works. A quick search through the Met’s online collection database returns names familiar to Art21 such as Ann Hamilton, William Wegman (both Season 1), Gabriel Orozco (Season 2), Robert Adams, and Laurie Simmons (both Season 4). Learn more about the Met’s photography department and its collection here.
Laurie Simmons | Dancer Greg Sinacori
EXCLUSIVE: Dancer Greg Sinacori during the making of Laurie Simmons’s The Music of Regret (2006) at the Alvin Ailey Dance Studio, New York.
Laurie Simmons stages photographs and films with paper dolls, finger puppets, ventriloquist dummies, and costumed dancers as ‘living objects’, animating a dollhouse world suffused with nostalgia and colored by an adult’s memories, longings, and regrets. Her work blends psychological, political and conceptual approaches to art making, transforming photography’s propensity to objectify people, especially women, into a sustained critique of the medium.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Laurie Simmons.
LEARN: Laurie Simmons is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Romance of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
DISCUSS: What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!
PHOTO | Laurie Simmons, production stills from The Music of Regret - Act III, 2006. © Laurie Simmons, courtesy the artist, Salon 94, and Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Mark Sutton. Artwork courtesy: Laurie Simmons. Thanks: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Laurie Simmons at the Metropolitan Museum on Sunday
THE MUSIC OF REGRET
A film by Laurie Simmons
Sunday, January 27, 2008 at 3pm
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, The Metropolitan Museum
The Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography
In conjunction with the opening of the new Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography, Doug Eklund, assistant curator in the Department of Photographs, moderates a discussion with Laurie Simmons (Art:21 Season 4), who has work in the Museum‚Äôs collection. Simmons’ film is part of the afternoon‚Äôs focal point to explore contemporary photography and filmmaking.
At 2pm, there will a screening of No by Sharon Lockhart, followed by discussion with the artist.
View an excerpt of The Music of Regret on Art21’s YouTube channel.
The ICA Philadelphia’s Puppet Show
Opening tomorrow at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia is The Puppet Show, a group exhibition that looks at the imagery of puppets in contemporary art. Bringing together 29 artists (many of whom have been featured in Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century) and several generations, the exhibition concentrates on sculpture, video and photography. Some of the works involve actual puppets (marionettes, shadow puppets, hand puppets) and artists performing as puppeteers. Other images evoke topics associated with puppetry (manipulation, miniaturization, agency, control). Collectively these works show puppets to be provocative and relevant imagery that moves deep into social, political and psychological terrains.
The Puppet Show takes as a historic point of departure one of the first episodes of avante-garde art history: Alfred Jarry’s 1896 play Ubu Roi that was conceived as a puppet show. Ubu’s reign continues with the work of the South African artist William Kentridge in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company. More recently, puppets have taken hold of pop consciousness by way of films, theater, computer games and animation. On a more political note, current events and national leadership raise questions of agency that cogently relate to puppets. Together with these collective points of reference, The Puppet Show poses a larger cultural question: why do puppets matter now?
Participating artists include: Guy Ben-Ner, Nayland Blake, Louise Bourgeois, Maurizio Cattelan, Anne Chu, Nathalie Djurberg, Terence Gower, Dan Graham and Japanther, Handspring Puppet Company, Pierre Huyghe, Christian Jankowski, Mike Kelley, William Kentridge, Cindy Loehr, Annette Messager, Paul McCarthy, Matt Mullican, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Phillippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija, Laurie Simmons, Doug Skinner and Michael Smith, Kiki Smith, Survival Research Laboratory, Kara Walker and Charlie White.
A fully-illustrated catalog accompanies the exhibition. After the ICA premiere, the show will travel to the Santa Monica Museum of Art; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; and the Frye Art Museum, Seattle.
Related programs by Art21 artists:
Kiki Smith lecture
January 23, 5pm
Penn Museum,
“Basically, art is just a way to think,” says Smith in her Art:21 segment. “It’s like standing in the wild and letting it pull you in whatever direction it wants to go.” Presented by the Penn Humanities Forum. Pre-registration required at www.phf.upenn.edu or 215.573.8280.
Laurie Simmons‘ The Music of Regret
Tuesday, March 4, 7pm
International House,
Artist Laurie Simmons introduces The Music of Regret, a mini-musical in three acts. The film is inspired by distinct periods in Simmons’ work: vintage hand puppets, ventriloquist dummies and walking objects that enact tales of ambition, disappointment, love, loss and regret. Simmons’ puppets come to life in miniature domestic scenes, incorporating musicians, professional puppeteers, Alvin Ailey dancers, cinematographer Ed Lachman and actress Meryl Streep. Watch clips from the film and read interviews in which Simmons discusses the film on her Art:21 webpage here.
The Puppet Show is on view at the ICA through March 30.
Laurie Simmons interview in Artkrush
Photographer and filmmaker Laurie Simmons has been at the forefront of New York’s contemporary art scene since the late ’70s. One of the featured artists in Season 4 of Art:21 ‚Äî Art in the Twenty-First Century, Simmons makes photographs and films that draw from everyday life, fantasies, and pop culture. Artkrush editor Paul Laster interviewed Simmons after her recent return from a two-gallery exhibition in Madrid.
Read the full interview here.
[via Artkrush]
Laurie Simmons showcasing in Madrid
Laurie Simmons is currently exhibiting her recent photographs from the series The Boxes (Ardis Vinklers) as well as her first film The Music of Regret at the Galeria Distrito Cu4tro in Madrid.
The title The Boxes (Ardis Vinklers) refers to a Latvian artist Ardis Vinklers and his three light boxes, which Laurie Simmons discovered in an antiques fair. The new series of photographs continues the theme, which Simmons has been developing for some time, creating scenarios in which appear various of the figures she has constructed. The original paintings of Vinklers set in a dance hall, a bookshop and an art gallery, are combined into her own aesthetic to create her imaginary narratives. Simmons places figures in furnished rooms, using pictures of sophisticated women cut out from various magazines, and one male figure, a doll. The scenes thus constructed are seductive and disturbing, evocative and mysterious, in the way that the figures have no contact with one another, so a strong sense of dislocation and solitude is produced. She also photographs the boxes on their own, empty of their figures, using light and shadow to create silent, austere architectural portraits.
The Music of Regret is a minimusical in three acts, each act relating to a different periods of her artistic life, in which Meryl Streep has a role.
For more than 25 years, in photographs, which combine humor and pathos, Laurie Simmons has exploited apparently outdated sexual stereotypes which continue to operate below the surface of contemporary life. With the incorporation of puppets and costumes her inanimate images have always had their own particular stamp – especially her series of walking objects, where the legs of the women are adorned with objects out of all proportion such as a house, a revolver or a book. The Dada artist Tristan Tzara wrote that “Objects dream and speak when they sleep” and that is exactly what happens in the work of Laurie Simmons.
Laurie Simmons’ segment in Art:21‚ÄîArt in the Twenty-First Century recently premiered on PBS.
The exhibition will be open through November 23, 2007 at Galeria Distrito Cu4tro in Madrid B√°rbara de Braganza 2, Madrid (Spain).
Event photos: Art21 at BAM 10-6-07
Art21 and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) kicked off the holiday weekend with a public screening of the Season 4 episode Romance, followed by a conversation between featured artist Laurie Simmons and Art21 Executive Director Susan Sollins. Laurie and Susan spoke at length about the process of creating The Music of Regret, the artist’s 2006 feature film chronicled in her Art21 segment, and her experience being filmed for the Art:21 series. Many thanks to Bloomberg for sponsoring the post-screening reception.
Event photos: Art21 at MoMA 10-2-07
Last night Art21 hosted a private screening of Romance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A lively panel, featuring MoMA Chief Curator of Film Rajendra Roy as moderator, in discussion with Art21 Executive Producer & Curator Susan Sollins, and Season 4 Romance artists Laurie Simmons, Judy Pfaff, and Lari Pittman, followed the film.
Be sure not to miss Judy Pfaff speaking at SculptureCenter tonight at 7:00pm, along with the first public NYC screening of Romance.
See more pictures from the MoMA event and others at Art21’s Access ‘07 group on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/art21-access07/.
