{"id":116475,"date":"2024-11-14T14:38:37","date_gmt":"2024-11-14T19:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/?post_type=bu-article&p=116475"},"modified":"2024-11-14T14:42:07","modified_gmt":"2024-11-14T19:42:07","slug":"boston-globe-laurie-simmons-when-a-house-is-not-a-home","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/news\/articles\/2024\/boston-globe-laurie-simmons-when-a-house-is-not-a-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Boston Globe feature: Laurie Simmons: when a house is not a home"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Laurie Simmons, “Pink House,” 1998. Courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBoston Globe <\/em>feature – Laurie Simmons: when a house is not a home\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The photographer\u2019s playful yet disquieting images are on display at BU.<\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n
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November 14, 2024<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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This article was originally published in the Boston Globe<\/a><\/em>, by Mark Feeney, on November 14, 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are only 22 photographs in \u201c1998: Works by Laurie Simmons,\u201d but the show feels much larger than that.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201c1998\u2033 runs through Dec. 7 at Boston University\u2019s Stone Gallery. It\u2019s been curated by the Boston Athenaeum\u2019s Lauren Graves. A virtual tour is available at bu.edu\/cfa\/featured-work\/1998-laurie-simmons<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of what accounts for that largeness is straightforward enough. None of the pictures in the show is small, with one as big as 4 feet by 5 feet. Part of it is perceptual: Simmons turns scale inside out. The items she presents so large are themselves small: architectural models, toy furniture and figurines. And part of the largeness is conceptual. These images, which might look at first almost comically simple, engage with some deeply complex themes: domesticity, security, shelter, the unreality of reality. That none of the pictures have mattes makes them almost look like windows (speaking of incongruous architectural features).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A phrase like \u201cunreality of reality\u201d sounds both empty and gimmicky. With \u201c1998\u2033 it\u2019s neither. Simmons stages settings familiar from everyday life: business offices and comfortably middle-class houses. Yet in using miniatures and models, she\u2019s showing reality in an explicitly unreal fashion: artifice that declares its artificiality. Further underscoring the unreality is Simmons\u2019s use of Cibachrome prints, which have the rich, saturated look of magazine advertising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Laurie Simmons, “Modern Office (with Four Women),” 1998. Courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Beyond that, there\u2019s an even more significant unreality here: the sort of matter-of-fact affluence that\u2019s generally taken for granted. Which means it tends to pass unnoticed how unusual such a condition is for many people in this country and most people in the rest of the world. It\u2019s not just physical scale these photographs call into question. It\u2019s moral scale, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simmons, who turned 75 last month, is a member of the Pictures Generation<\/a> group of artists, which emerged in the 1970s. The photographers among them drew heavily on popular culture and tended to stage what they photographed. Landscape held no interest for them. Inscape did. Cindy Sherman\u2019s \u201cUntitled Film Stills\u201d<\/a> series is the quintessential example. What movies were for Sherman, toys (overtly) and advertising (less directly) were for Simmons. She has a further, personal relation to popular culture. The writer-director and actress Lena Dunham is the daughter of Simmons and her husband, the painter Carroll Dunham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title \u201c1998\u2033 comes from the year in which Simmons took the photographs. The gallery website further cites the Taylor Swift album \u201c1989\u2033 as inspiration. Well, if albums with year titles are relevant, why not Prince\u2019s \u201c1999\u2033? Portions of the dwelling in the biggest photo, \u201cPink House,\u201d display a shade that approaches a color His Purpleness would have approved of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Laurie Simmons, “Deluxe-Redding House #11,” 1998.Courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

These pictures are on a continuum with Simmons\u2019s landmark 1976 series \u201cIn and Around the House,\u201d<\/a> albeit with several significant differences. Those pictures of dolls and dollhouses are in black and white, much smaller, and \u201cinhabited.\u201d Most of the settings in \u201c1998\u2033 lack people. They\u2019re up close and impersonal. This adds to their general sense of deadpan eeriness. These pictures aren\u2019t quite alarming, but they\u2019re distinctly unsettling, akin to David Lynch<\/a> without the kinks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, without the kinks isn\u2019t quite right. \u201cHouse Underneath (Standing)\u201d shows a woman, seen from the waist down, lifting her filmy white dress to reveal a house beneath it. Or \u201cRoom Underneath (Gold)\u201d shows a woman from the neck down \u2014 the lack of a face in both photographs makes the women seem as much objects as the dolls are \u2014 wearing a d\u00e9collet\u00e9 gown (organza?) with an image of a room nesting at the vertex of her uncrossed legs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key difference with Lynch is that the image-making he\u2019s famous for involves motion pictures. The ones in \u201c1998\u2033 are still (though Simmons has directed, too). All photographs are still, of course, but these convey a stillness beyond stillness. The explicit artifice contributes to that effect, as does Simmons\u2019s use of lighting. The three \u201cModern Office\u201d pictures have a strong, raking light. In the 10 \u201cDeluxe-Redding House\u201d photographs, odd, unexpected shadows keep showing up. Simmons\u2019s lighting, like her use of scale, helps her impart such unfamiliarity to the ostensibly familiar. In \u201c1998,\u201d a version of the uncanny valley<\/a> takes up residence in an uncanny suburb and uncanny workspace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read Original Article<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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