Lorna Simpson: Works on Paper - (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

One of the leading artists of her generation, Lorna Simpson (born 1960) came to prominence in the mid-1980s through her photographic and textual works that challenged conventional attitudes toward race, gender and cultural memory with a potent mixture of formal elegance and conceptual rigor. Published on the occasion of her 2013 exhibition at Aspen Art Museum, Lorna Simpson: Works on Paper highlights four recent bodies of work on paper that explore the complex relationship between the photographic archive and processes of self-fashioning, including a new group of works being developed during her time as the AAM's 2013 Jane and Marc Nathanson Distinguished Artist in Residence. As in Simpson's earlier works, these new drawings and collages take the African-American woman as a point of departure, continuing her longstanding examination of the ways that gender and culture shape the experience of life in our contemporary multiracial society. This beautifully illustrated catalogue features new scholarship by New Yorker staff writer Hilton Als, MoMA Chief Curator of Drawings, Connie Butler, LACMA Chief Curator of Contemporary Art, Franklin Sirmans, and the AAM's Nancy and Bob Magoon CEO and Director, Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson.

Review Quotes

The images and essays in the handsome accompanying catalogue are a testament to the connections, departures, and complexity of Simpson's recent output. Throughout the book we see that while Simpson finds new possibilities in drawing, she also nods, sometimes quite slyly, to deep-set traditions. As MoMA curator Connie Butler aptly notes in her essay, " The intimacy of the paper she chooses, consistently the 8 1/2x11 sheet of the notebook or sketchpad, is a scale close to photography's ancient history as well. "--Lauren O'Neill-Butler "Bookforum"