Laurie Simmons at the Jewish Museum

“...young women assume dolls’ attributes in social media selfies and vie for celebrity status.”


Sarah Thornton, “Canada’s hippest academic” (1) stated in her talk at the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto) last fall that artists’ freedoms intensified with Duchamp’s urinal sculpture, Fountain (1917). In its wake, “contemporary art made belief a central concern”—belief that an object is art because the artist says so, and that the artist has the authority to say so. Thornton elaborated that maintaining that authority is not easy, and branding is key.

Laurie Simmons, about whom Thornton writes in the book, 33 Artists in 3 Acts (Norton & Company, 2014), has always addressed belief in one way or another. She has been photographing constructed realities, such as dollhouse interiors, throughout her career. Recently, her attention has turned to life-size Japanese sex dolls, cosplay, and Doll Girls. In the latter subculture, which is the focus of How We See, her current exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan, young women assume dolls’ attributes in social media selfies and vie for celebrity status.

The way I see it is that belief in the artist’s skill is paramount. The viewer must believe that what is presented in the gallery has greater cultural worth than image search results on the Internet for ‘Doll Girls.’ Otherwise, why pay admission? Pristinely printed 70 x 48” images that tower over the viewer and command attention in an ornate room certainly fit the bill.

Simmons’ head and shoulder portraits feature models with eyes drawn on their lids. Eyelashes are drawn above, and in one work, they are even affixed. With the lids closed, the upper lashes thicken and accentuate the lower lashes. As a security guard mentioned when I struck up a brief conversation, many people do not immediately notice this trickery. In fact, when I was there, one visitor was most concerned with comparing a model to Miley Cyrus. Only in person is it evident that the texture of the eyelids mimics canvas as much as it looks like skin. On occasion, there is evidence of the artist’s hand (2) on the lid, such as a slight angle interrupting the smooth curve of the iris, acting as a clue to this intervention. I like that she has also lined the models’ lips, which I have always found to be a bizarre strategy. In a way, it calls the larger world of cosmetics into question, rather than just the Doll Girls subculture.

Simmons’ interest in beautification is longstanding. Thornton writes that as a child, Simmons had memorized the names of lipstick and nail polish colours. Perhaps it’s because I have Thornton on my mind, but Simmons’ work strikes me as something of a sociological survey, in that judgment seems to be withheld in the depiction of the Doll Girls. This may be because Simmons doesn’t consider herself to be an ardent feminist (for more on this, see my post on this blog from October 2010 about her artist talk at the International Center of Photography). I’m aware that I’m projecting my own feminist values when I see elements of the women’s white clothing (3), such as the word ‘no’ on the collar, as signs of protest.

In the arc of art history, rationally, the portraits shouldn’t feel disturbing. A connection could be made to ancient white marble statues that appeared to have blank eyes, but which we now know were painted in polychrome. In Western painting, there is a long tradition of women not meeting the viewer’s objectifying gaze. Early daguerreotypes featured subjects with their eyes closed because of the dreadfully long exposure time needed. And then came the surrealists, who were fascinated by the act of sleeping and capturing it in images. All the same, Simmons’ six portraits read as disturbing. Maybe it’s that their vacant stares make them feel like robots. Maybe it’s that they have warm backgrounds in colours reminiscent of lava lamps, underscoring a sense of artificiality. Maybe it’s that Simmons, who I think of as giving life to the inanimate, has stolen some of the figures’ humanity and their dignity seems not to have suffered.

How We See made headlines when fellow Pictures Generation colleague Richard Prince nabbed one of Simmons’ images from her popular Instagram account, printed it and exhibited it as his own (as is his way). This brings us back to Duchamp’s urinal. Given that the original was lost, is Alfred Stieglitz’s documentation or the replica any less believable as Fountain than the original?

The exhibition end date has been extended to August 16.

Image: How We See/Anmari (Pink/Black Shirt), 2015. Reproduced in 2019 via fair use/dealing. Source: http://www.lauriesimmons.net/photographs/how-we-see (1) Webb, Ann. Introduction to presentation by Sarah Thornton, “33 Artists in 3 Acts.” Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON. 20 Oct. 2014.

(2) The makeup artists are Landy Dean and James Kaliardos. Simmons, Laurie. “Laurie Simmons,” Artforum. 11 Mar. 2015 http://artforum.com/words/id=50603

(3) The designer is Rachel Antonoff. Hering, Deirdre. “The Lifeless Eyes of Laurie Simmons’s Human Dolls,” Hyperallergic. 22 July 2015 http://hyperallergic.com/224074/the-lifeless-eyes-of-laurie-simmonss-human-dolls/

The incidental feminist

“…an artist may actually be driven by something less weighty like focusing on the things they like, be they alligator purses or cakes.”

Laurie Simmons’ discussion with writer/curator Marvin Heiferman at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan took an interesting turn last night when the thorny question of feminist intent came up. She stated that she does not want to repudiate her reputation as a feminist artist, but that making feminist art is not her agenda. It is easy to see how her oeuvre has been cast in this light when you consider photographic works like Walking Cake I (1989), in which a fuchsia and white cake with precariously lit candles dwarfs porcelain legs, replacing the female torso and head entirely; Underneath (1998), a series of women’s widespread legs with miniature houses below; and Color Pictures (2007-09), a series that incorporates cut-out female porn stars with overlaid undergarments in dollhouse settings.

Simmons recalled that the very first review of her work cast her as a feminist. While it was not a reading that she intended, she was not indifferent to its impact. She rightly asked, “How much was I influenced by the first review of my work?” The dialogue that is established between artist and audience is bound to be influential, though not necessarily symbiotic. That first review has also coloured people’s subsequent expectations of her work. She sounded immune to reactions that her work has strayed from appropriately feminist subject matter, for she said, “I don’t think I was ever there in the first place.” Simmons considers herself to be a political person, but not a purposefully political artist.

She does not see her work as ardently feminist because there is no element of anger. Rather, she feels like an observer, which reminded me of photographer Susan Anderson, about whom I recently blogged. Simmons’ work has always been about women, but not about questioning their roles: “I make my work about women because that’s what I am and that’s what I know…the condition of being a woman is so interesting to me.” She has rarely made work about men. “I can’t. I try,” she explained. (I was nodding my head when she said this, having recently made my second piece in a decade that addresses male socialization. As to her comment about anger, I have to wonder if my feminist angst helps or hinders my work. Unlike Simmons, I am not an incidental feminist. I have to wonder, after writing blog post after blog post to contextualize my work in feminist art historical scholarship, will I be seen as an overbearing feminist?).

Although great importance can be attached to presumed artistic motivation, an artist may actually be driven by something less weighty like focusing on the things they like, be they alligator purses or cakes. Simmons loves fashion, so she has engaged in collaborations with designers like Thakoon Panichgul, who made a line of clothing from fabric featuring a rose on legs and Peter Jensen, who made paper dolls wearing tiny garments, which Simmons photographed in her characteristic style in dramatically lit interiors. Jensen’s model in a pink satin dress with juxtaposed massive overlaid pearls has the effect of wearing shackles, drawing attention to the blurred line between the quirky and the subversive in Simmons’ work. Even though her approach to work sounds lighthearted and playful when she describes it, this is not to say it is not consuming and powerful. When you really get into your work--and, I would argue, the same is true of the viewer’s engagement with your work--Simmons said, “[I]t knocks you off your feet. It destroys you.”