Lorna Simpson collages

194 Pages·2018·59.245 MB·English

by  Alexander, Elizabeth;Simpson, Lorna

COLLAGES

LORNA SIMPSON
INTRODUCTION BY ELIZABETH ALEXANDER
CHRONICLE BOOKS
SAN FRANCISCO
Art and artist’s statement copyright © 2018 Lorna Simpson.
Essay “Of the black and boisterous hair” copyright © 2018 Elizabeth Alexander.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without
written permission from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-4521-6175-4 (epub, mobi)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.
ISBN: 978-1-4521-6114-3 (hc)
Design by Lorna Simpson & James Wang
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Dedicated to
Zora, Solo, and Simon.
Ls & EA

Table of Contents
Introduction
"Of the black &
boisterous hair"
by Elizabeth Alexander
Artist Statement
by Lorna Simpson
The Collages
Earth & Sky
Ebony
Jet
Riunite & Ice
"Of the black &
boisterous hair"
by Elizabeth Alexander
We start with the Book of Miss Brooks, and her poem,
“The Anniad,” which casts the life of an “ordinary” black
girl, Annie Allen, in epic scale and form:
THINK OF THAUMATURGIC LASS
LOOKING IN HER LOOKING-GLASS
AT THE UNEMBROIDERED BROWN;
PRINTING BASTARD ROSES THERE;
THEN EMOTIONALLY AWARE
OF THE BLACK AND BOISTEROUS HAIR,
TAMING ALL THAT ANGER DOWN.
In Lorna Simpson’s collages, “the black and boisterous”
hair is the universal governing principle. Black women’s
heads of hair are galaxies unto themselves, solar systems,
moonscapes, volcanic interiors. The hair she paints has a
mind of its own. It is sinuous and cloudy and fully alive.
It is forest and ocean, its own emotional weather. Black
women’s hair is epistemology, but we cannot always
discern its codes.
Watercolor is the perfect medium for Simpson here because
of how it holds light and appears to be translucent. But it
is also a wash, a shadow cast over what we cannot know
in these women. Simpson’s portraits invite us to look, by
their sidelong glances or direct gazes. We are compelled,
always, by the phantasmagorical hair, which both invites
and obscures.
In these pictures black women’s phantasmagorical hair
is like smoke, but nothing is turning to ash. It is a non-
consuming smoke, the mesmerizing beauty of smoke as it
curls and wafts and draws a viewer inexorably near.
If black people are “the window and the breaking of the
window,” as William Pope.L asserts (we are reminded
by curator Amanda Hunt), what are black women, in
Simpson’s vision here?
Black women are blue and black and ocher and goldenrod
and magenta. Black women are unfathomable.
Black women are composed, necessarily immaculate. A
black woman could go off at any moment.
Black women are mighty and terrifying.
I do not know a black women who is at leisure. I have
never known a black woman not efficient. Black women
bide their time.
continued
Black women are the shimmering surface and the power
beneath.
What does it mean for a sister to sing that song?
The repetitions in these images suggest that we are
thought of by some as a dime a dozen: undervalued,
yes, but also, abundant. Black women are everywhere
glorious and unsung.
The black woman is elemental, of the earth, magma, and
gem, “malachite and azurite.”
She is Afro-blue.
Before the serpentine coil, the gravity-defying nimbus of
black hair, there is grease and there are plaits and there
are headrags and there are silk sleeping scarves and
satin pillowcases. Simpson doesn’t show us that. Yet we
know it is there.
One soundtrack to these pictures: A woman sings Otis
Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” to her sister, her
girlfriend. Black women, we sing to each other, a black
woman artist singing an epic ode to black female beauty.
Ah black. Ah boisterous. Ah black. Ah beauty.