Lorna Simpson Source Notes

The first publication on the painting practice of artist Lorna Simpson, whose work combines abstraction and figuration to highlight complexities of memory and representation
 
This revelatory first look at the paintings of Lorna Simpson (b. 1960), an artist who has worked primarily as a photographer for much of her career, examines this significant new development in her practice over the last decade. Simpson’s recent works, midway between photography and painting, advance her incisive explorations of gender, race, and history through bodies that emerge and disappear—peering from inky surfaces or dissolving into landscapes of melting ice. Her paintings draw on documentary photographs and images from vintage Ebony and Jet magazines, combining screen-printed collages of found images with washes of colorful ink on fiberglass, wood, or clayboard. The texts in this volume explore how Simpson’s fascination with time, memory, and the indeterminacy of representation propels her experiments in works that are both figurative and abstract, portraits and landscapes, paintings and photographs.
 
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
 
Exhibition Schedule:
 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(May 19–November 2, 2025)

Lauren Rosati is associate curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art and research projects manager in the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.