Lorna Simpson: Memory, Photography, Spectatorship

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LORNA

SIMPSON

memory, photography, spectatorship

By Lise Lotte Pel MA Thesis, American Studies

Faculty of Humanities University of Amsterdam

Supervised by Dr. George Blaustein Second reader Dr. Eduard van de Bilt

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Abstract

This thesis addresses issues of historical memory, photography and spectatorship in the work of African American conceptual artist Lorna Simpson. Simpson uses language ambiguity and wordplay in her image-text based pieces as a force to reflect on the history of lynching and she uses the juxtaposition of imagery with language to criticize dominant ways of seeing and reading representations of African American men and women. Central is Simpson’s move from working in the documentary tradition into conceptualism. The camera no longer functioned as an extension of her gaze to capture the truth; instead it became a means to visualize an idea and to criticize the act of looking. In her conceptual pieces she used the strategy of denial in relation to the figure to comment on spectacle and dominant

spectatorship. The detached gestures of the figure and the fragmentation of the body are a comment on the spectacle of the black male and female body in slave auctions, lynching and in video footage of police brutality against African Americans. Simpson withheld her

audience a direct interaction with the figure and so erased the body from spectacle and objectification. Ultimately Simpson fully removed the figure from her work, on the one hand as a response to the silence that surrounded the AIDS epidemic when bodies literally

disappeared. On the other hand as a response to invisible racist structures in society and to the dominant racial gaze.

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List of Illustrations

1. Fred Wilson, Guarded View (1991) 7

2. Lorna Simpson, Necklines (1989) 24

3. Lorna Simpson, Untitled (Two Necklines) (1989) 26

4. Ken Gonzalez-Day, Erased Lynching (2012) 29

5. Lorna Simpson, You’re Fine (1988) 31

6. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, La Grande Odalisque (1814) 32

7. Lorna Simpson, Twenty Questions (A Sampler) (1986) 35

8. Lorna Simpson, Gestures/Reenactments (1985) 37

9. Lorna Simpson, Hypothetical? (1992) 42

10. Hyppolyte Bayard, Le Noyé (Self Portrait of a Drowned Man) (1840) 48

11. Sol Lewitt, Wall Drawing #16 (1969) 49

12. N.A.A.C.P. Rubin Stacy anti-lynching flyer (1935) 52

13. Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #14 (1977) 55

14. Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #34 (1979) 56

15. Lorna Simpson, Guarded Conditions (1989) 57

16. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991) 61

17. Lorna Simpson, The Park (1995) 64 18. Lorna Simpson, The Bed (1995) 67

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Preface

During a course about art in the second part of the twentieth century at the City University of New York, Hunter College we discussed conceptualism. We had to read Sol LeWitt’s

“Paragraphs on Conceptualism” from 1967. The ideas and thoughts that do not lie at the surface of conceptual art pieces immediately intrigued me. During this class we got many examples of conceptualism, but from the beginning on I wondered why there were no examples of artworks made by African American conceptual artists. We did shortly discuss Fred Wilson’s Guarded View (1991) [Fig.1], in which he commented on the status of museum guards.

Fig 1. Fred Wilson, Guarded View. 1991. Wood, paint, steel and fabric. Dimensions variable. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. From: Pinterest.

Wilson argued that a black man only made an entry into a museum or gallery in the function of a guard, for example; there were not many black people in the position of a curator. He added that in the position of a guard you are also sort of on display, but unlike a piece of art you are ignored. While we analyzed this piece I wondered why this was the only work we

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spoke about made by an African American artist. In the tradition of conceptualism there had to be more black artists. There too must have been black women who worked in this tradition. I did some research and came across conceptual artist Lorna Simpson. I started to read myself in to the stories about her work, which immediately interested me. Because we did not speak about this in class I went to the Studio Museum in Harlem to get more information about the history of African American art. This was a very inspiring visit and from then on I knew I wanted to learn more about dialogues between the history of African Americans in the United States and the production of modern and contemporary art that commented on social and political debates. While thinking about a subject for my master thesis I knew it had to be about Lorna Simpson. Right now at the end of this thesis I can say that the writing has been a challenging, but insightful project. I would like to thank Dr. George Blaustein for his

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This thesis is about contemporary African American art; in specific there is a focus on the work of conceptual artist Lorna Simpson, whose artworks are about fact, fiction, history and memory within the discourse of African American representation. In 2007 the Whitney Museum of American Art featured Simpson’s work in a 20-year retrospective. By this time Simpson’s career included her to be the first African American woman to have work shown at the Venice Biennale in 1990 to solo exhibitions in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary art. Highlighted in the retrospective at the Whitney were Simpson’s image and text works, her felt pieces and film installations, which shows the divergence of Simpson’s artistic work. Her most famous pieces are the image and text ones she started to create in the 1980s after she stopped working in the documentary photography tradition.

Simpson’s work investigates the construction of historical memory and trauma in that there are often references to black history in the United States. In a review of the

Retrospective in the Whitney Museum of American Art by Time Out magazine they called her trademark black-and-white photographs in which the “physical identity” of the portrayed figures are “deliberately obscured” antiportraits.1_{But as stated these antiportraits “say as}

much about what is not depicted as what is.”2_{As Simpson herself questioned: “It is a portrait,}

but who is the subject?”3_{This is the duality in Simpson’s work; Simpson approach is}

revealing in that what is not shown. In her photo-text pieces she often shows her models from the back, with their arms folded and their face hidden. Her art is philosophical and conceptual; it is up to the audience how they appropriately interact with her work.

I.

Academic studies about African American art had been invisible up until the 1970s. Art historian Sharon F. Patton states that research on African American art was mostly done by a network of researchers in the black community she calls the “alternative academy.”4_What

opened up academic debates in the 1970s was the “conjunction of postmodernism with the

1 Jane Harris, “Lorna Simpson,” Time Out, March 8, 2007, accessed May 30, 2017, https://www.timeout.com/newyork/art/lorna-simpson.

2 Ibid.

3 “Lorna Simpson (2013),” Vimeo Video, posted by “Jeu de Paume / magazine,” 2015, https://vimeo.com/95425626.

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discipline of art history.”5_{All types of artistic production were taken into account within the}

frame of history, culture and society.6_{Non-white and women artists became more subject of}

academic research. Black women in the United States have used various forms of cultural production to create their own voice and show their struggle to fight oppression of both sexism and racism. One way to challenge misrepresentations and invisibility was the

production of fine art. With women escaping the harsh reality of slavery in creative outlets to more political and social engaged art during the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro movement. Art as activism started to intensify in the 1960s and 1970s “when the feminist and Black Power movements dramatically altered the kinds of images that African American women created.”7

Tanisha Monconjae Jackson states in “Defining Us: A Critical Look at the Images of Black Women in Visual Culture and Their Narrative Responses to these Images” (2010) that central in the artworks by African American women are issues of “marginalization,

misrepresentation and a lack of agency or voice.”8_{Jackson focuses on the representation of}

black women and argues that throughout history these images have always been problematic and stereotypical. Her major argument is that these representations are serving the dominant culture and confirm superiority; they “teach viewers about society’s overall value and overall notions of what it means to be a black woman.”9_{Jackson states that black women artists}

created “counter-narratives” to fight these existing stereotypes and to gain a voice that should be heard.10

Art historian Lisa E. Farrington confirmed this argument in Creating Their Own Image: The History of African American Women Artists (2005) by stating that “a persistent theme in the art of African American women has been the configuration of their own image without racial or gender stereotypes”, mainly to “deconstruct the persistent falsehoods that have dogged black female iconography.” 11_{Simpson engages in these debates, but within the}

tradition of conceptual art and photography. In an article by Farrington called

“Conceptualism, Politics, and the Art of African-American Women” (2005) she stated that 5 Sharon F. Patton, African-American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 12.

6 Ibid.

7 Lisa E. Farrington, Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 5.

8 Tanisha Monconjae Jackson, “Defining Us: A Critical Look at the Images of Black Women in Visual Culture and Their Narrative Responses to these Images,” (PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2010), 163.

9 Ibid., 161-162.

10 Ibid., 161.

11 Lisa Farrington, Creating Their Own Image: The History of African American Women Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1.

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black women “engaged with a fervor never before seen in their history” in conceptualism as cultural activism.12_{Farrington argues that the “emphasis on cerebral processes, the excision of}

the art object, and the replacement of traditional modes and venues with others conceived “outside the box” of museum and gallery spaces, greatly appealed to black women artists.”13

African American female artists who engaged in this tradition include Carrie Mae Weems, Lorraine O’Grady and Adrian Piper. These black female artists slowly got visibility in the 1990s. With the art world diversifying African American art became essential to raise awareness about cultural, political and social issues.

A cover of New York Newsday from their January 19, 1990 issue states next to a picture of Lorna Simpson: “The Outsider Is In; it looks like the ‘90s art scene is going to be about artists who weren’t male enough or white enough for the ‘80s.”14_{In this article}

journalist Amei Wallach stated: “This year, outsiders are in … And lots of museums,

galleries, magazines and collectors are standing in line to seize the moment with artists whose skin colors, languages, national origins, sexual preferences or strident messages have kept them out of the mainstream.”15_{Art historian Elizabeth Broun stated in African American Art:}

Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era and Beyond (2012) that “over the past half-century, museums sought out and embraced these artists who are essential to our culture.”16

This thesis will not focus on the visibility of Simpson’s work, although visibility is a major theme within her work itself. Important is to note that Simpson started to gain more attention in a time when the academy and museums became more and more open to work by African American artists and women in general. Within academic writing about the history of African American art by women the theme of stereotypes is often written about. This is not something that will be discussed in this thesis. There will be references to representations of African American women that Simpson is fighting against, but stereotyping will not have a main focus. It still is important to note that many black female artists in the conceptual tradition did fight against these stereotypes, by either enlarging them in their works or by showing opposite representations. Within the tradition of African American art and conceptualism fighting dominant readings, perceptions and prejudices forms an important part. Much of the interpretation of the artwork is up to the viewer; which means that there is 12 Lisa E. Farrington, “Conceptualism, Politics, and the Art of African-American Women,” Notes in the

History of Art 24.4 (2005): 67.

13 Ibid.

14 Huey Copeland, “Bye, Bye Black Girl,” Art Journal 64.2 (2005): 65.

15 Amei Wallach, “Lorna Simpson: Right Time, Right Place,” New York Newsday, September 19, 1990, II: 8.

16 Richard J. Powell and Virginia Mecklenburg, African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, The Civil Rights

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an ambiguity. On the one hand these artists are fighting against dominant readings, on the other hand they let the audience run free by offering them multilayered works that are open for interpretation. This ambiguity does form a large part of this thesis by asking questions about the role of Simpson as a photographer, the figure as an object for the viewer and the dominant readings of the audience. Many African American female artists fought against the invisibility of black women in society, but also in the art world in specific. Simpson has her own method of tackling these issues by consciously exposing and withholding her audience of access to the black male and female body.

II.

In previous research about Simpson’s work the construction of meaning has been a major part of debates about her work, as the subjects of gender, race and class are. Beryl J. Wright stated in “Back Talk: Recoding the Body” (1996) about Simpson’s work that it ultimately “demands reflection upon how meaning is constructed by the artist and the viewer, not merely as corrective description but as an imaginative, poetic system of visual signs.”17_{According to}

Wright Simpson opens up debates about readings of the black female body by the dominant spectator “as sexual voyeur, empirical determinist, or universal humanist.”18_{He states that her}

work is all about decoding visual and linguistic signs. In this thesis there will be a broad exploration of Simpson’s work, which will be placed in this debates about historical memory, truth in photography, the black female and male body as spectacle and the dominant gaze of the viewer.

Simpson’s career as a documentary photographer is often ignored in scholarship, but this has played a mayor role in the construction of her later pieces. Okwui Enwezor does discuss documentary photography shortly at the beginning of his essay “Repetition and Differentiation – Lorna Simpson’s Iconography of the Racial Sublime” (2006). He discusses Simpson’s relationship to the camera, to photography and to truth, but there is no larger context about how her experience in working in the documentary tradition has contributed to the construction of her conceptual pieces.

A canonical essay in the writings about Simpson’s work is Kellie Jones’ article “(Un)Seen & Overheard: Pictures by Lorna Simpson” in Lorna Simpson (2002). Jones never explicitly mentioned Simpson’s transition from documentary photography into conceptualism. 17 Beryl J. Wright, “Back Talk: Recoding the Body,” Callaloo 19.2 (1996): 407.

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In this thesis this transition will be broadly investigated, in which there will be a focus on the documentary photography tradition and conceptual art.

More academic research is written about Simpson’s second methodological transition in which representations of the black male and female figure disappeared from her work. In “Felt Surface, Visible Image: Lorna Simpson’s Photography and the Embodiment of Appearance” (2011) by Brooke Belisle there is an investigation of her felt photographs. Belisle explores how “Simpson’s engagement of race and gender is structured by a broader investigation of how the surface of the body and the photograph relate, how identity becomes embodied and represented as visible” in Simpson’s photographs from the mid-1990s.19_Elena

Gross also investigates Simpson’s later work in “Looking, Reading, Feeling, Image, Text, Body” (2016) by questioning what happened with the interaction between the audience and Simpson’s works when her method changed. According to Gross Simpson broadened the body, from the black female body to a more universal kind of body.20

The major historiographical debates this thesis moves into deal with historical memory, spectatorship, truth and representation. Simpson’s work reflects on the memory of the history of African American’s in the United States, by referring to the history of slave auctions, the history of lynching and to the recorded police brutality against black Americans. Simpson interferes in debates about the representation and reading of the black female and male body and the interaction that these images have with the audience. The dialogue Simpson has with truth is related to her move from documentary photography into

conceptualism. The debates surrounding the documentary tradition deal with the assumption that documentary photographs represent the truth, that the viewer is a witness of events. Simpson criticized this assumed truth and moved into conceptualism, in which she

constructed photographs in combination with text to reflect on the act of meaning giving and the racial and sexual gaze. Simpson places her photographs in the context of historical

memory and refers to political events that happened in the 1980s and 1990s. By doing this she interferes in the debate of the photograph as an image invested with social and political meaning that not only lies at the surface.

Much scholarship is focused on Simpson’s dialogue with debates about identity, gender, race and class. Her works are multilayered, but to come to the core of her work these subjects should be taken off of her work, because there is more underneath. As argued by 19 Brooke Belisle, “Felt Surface, Visible Image: Lorna Simpson’s Photography and the Embodiment of Appearance,” Photography & Culture 4.2 (2011): 157.

20 Elena Gross, “Looking, Reading, Feeling, Image, Text, Body,” Sightlines. http://viscrit.cca.edu/elena-gross/. 42.

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Beryl J. Wright “the general trust of these debates involved a deconstruction of the network of normative assumptions, facts, and systems of logic that formed the basis of individual and collective knowledge.”21_{The deconstruction of Simpson’s multilayered works includes “a}

broad investigation of how representations of those persons operating along the margins of culture had historically been structured to be read by the viewer as a linguistic code that supported prevailing power relationships.”22_{This thesis will argue that Lorna Simpson’s}

textual and visual strategies intent to evoke critical thought about the historical experience of African Americans in the United States and about the dominant reading of the black body as spectacle.

III.

In the first chapter of this thesis the focus will be on how Simpson evokes historical memory by the use of wordplay and juxtaposition. The works that will be analyzed in relation to wordplay are Necklines (1989) [Fig.2], Untitled (Two Necklines) (1989) [Fig.3], You’re Fine (1988) [Fig.5], and Twenty Questions (A Sampler) (1986) [Fig.7]. All of the analyzed works in chapter one are placed in the context of history and in the context of political events that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s when Simpson created these art works. What is powerful is the relationship to the historical memory of lynching and its response to police brutality and racial violence in the 1990s. Furthermore the works will be read in the frame of the Reagan presidency, which recalled questions about unconscious racist rhetoric.

In Necklines and Untitled (Two Necklines) Simpson comments on the visual spectacle during and after the lynching of African American men and women. In these two works she is not imitating lynching photography, but she does refer back to these photographs as prove of white supremacy and as prove of white savagery by the use of puns. The wordplay recalls critical thought from the viewer about dominant ways of looking and the meaning with which historical images are invested. The questions that arise are related to how wordplay evokes critical thought both historically and aesthetically.

In You’re Fine Simpson focuses on the position and historical experience of black women in the United States, by focusing on intimacy and the act of observing. You’re Fine shows that there is awkwardness and intimacy in the act of observing people. In this work Simpson criticizes the scrutiny of black women in the workplace, in the medical sphere, on 21 Beryl J. Wright, “Back Talk: Recoding the Body,” Callaloo 19.2 (1996): 397.

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the street and during slavery. By the use of an underlying layer of humor and wordplay Simpson comments on the act of judging one another because of race, sex and class. The use of an underlying layer of humor in You’re Fine recalls questions about the photographic medium and the documentary tradition: What does it mean to use the camera as an extension of the gaze to observe people and to capture private moments?

Twenty Questions (A Sampler) is the last work that will be analyzed in relation to wordplay and it will form a bridge to the analysis of the juxtaposition of text and image in Simpson’s work. Twenty Questions (A Sampler) is a critique on the unconscious processes of racism and sexism in social structures. There are hidden racist discourses in language, in questions and in written texts, but there is also unconscious racism and sexism in the

judgment of body language of people from marginalized groups. This is the link to what will be analyzed in Gestures/Reenactments (1985) [Fig.8] and in Hypothetical? (1992) [Fig.9] in which the focus will be on the juxtaposition of text with the image.

In Gestures/Reenactments Simpson investigates the prejudices that come with reading black male body language. By using the text together with images she shows how

representations of black men are filled with racial judgments. This work evokes questions about unconscious processes of meaning giving in a racial frame and about unconscious feelings of discomfort in relation to black men. This directly relates to what will be discussed in Hypothetical? In this work Simpson started to dig into different ways of interpreting the dominant social and political structures that were part of the reading of the video footage and aftermath of the Rodney King beating in 1992.

The first chapter moves back in time. For the argument about wordplay and the power of the pun there is importance in analyzing Necklines and Untitled (Two Necklines) first, because Simpson uses wordplay here to reflect on history. You’re Fine can be placed in the discourse of the 1980s, documentary photography and conceptualism and therefore it is placed after the analysis of the other two works that specifically focus on history. The analysis of Twenty Questions (A Sampler) is the last one to be analyzed in the frame of Simpson’s use of wordplay. This work of art relates to unconscious racist patters in spoken language and in the reading of body language, which refers to what will be discussed in

Gestures/Reenactments and in Hypothetical?

The interlude in this thesis will focus on documentary photography as a mode of distributing truthful representations and conceptualism as a response to this implication. Simpson started working in the documentary tradition, but while a graduate student in

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performance and film at the University of California in San Diego in 1985 she became critical of the objectivity and authority with which documentary photographs are invested.

Surrounded by a number of experimental artists such as conceptual artist Allan Kaprow, poet David Antin and performance artist Eleanor Antin Simpson was influenced by conceptual art and performance art. Simpson was part of a network of artists, who were active in San Diego at that time. With her, Antin and Kaprow were Fred Lonidier, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula and Carrie Mae Weems. Their photographic work was a response to the

documentary tradition and the notion of truth. Instead they started to work within the frame of conceptual photography and they “engaged in political critique.”23_{In the interlude Simpson’s}

re-examination of the photographic medium and the role of the audience as active meaning givers of images will be analyzed. This eventually leads to what will be argued in the second chapter.

In the conceptualist tradition the artists thinks out the concept, in the case of Simpson this is a critique on or a dialogue with historical memory and with political and social debates of the 1980s and 1990s. But eventually it is up to the viewer to deconstruct this piece of art. This practice of deconstruction is related to the representation of the figure and the

representation of the body in the second chapter. In this last chapter there will be an analysis of Guarded Conditions (1989) [Fig.15] and of two pieces from the Public Sex series (1995).

Guarded Conditions is a direct critique on the black female and male body as

spectacle in slave auctions. Simpson questions this spectacle by using the strategy of denial in relation to the figure. She only shows the back of the figure, she shows no faces and the gestures represent distance. This part of the second chapter will focus on how Simpson uses the figure to comment on this spectacle and on dominant spectatorship. This critique on the body as spectacle came in 1989, not knowing how much of a spectacle the black male body became in the 1990s with the Rodney King beating and the eventual riots in Los Angeles, the O.J. Simpson trial and the reveal on national television by LA Lakers basketball player Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. and tennis player Arthur Ashe that they had AIDS. This is were the analysis of The Park (1995) [Fig.17] and The Bed (1995) [Fig.18] from the Public Sex series will engage in. Simpson fully removed the body from her work in 1995, which recalls questions about interaction, spectatorship and intimacy. The Park will be linked to the AIDS epidemic and the bodies that literally disappeared. The questions that arise from this work of

23 Jill Dawsey and Pamela M. Lee, The Uses of Photography: Art, Politics, and the Reinvention of a Medium (San Diego: University of California Press, 2016), 15.

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art relate to the act of looking and of being a voyeur. The Bed will be connected to fear of the black body and the act of being looked at.

Eventually the readings of Simpson’s works will lead to the conclusion of this thesis. In the conclusion a link between the context of the cultural wars of the 1980s and 1990s and Simpson’s visual and textual strategies will be made. This will be linked to Simpson’s re-examination of the photographic medium and how she uses photography as a powerful weapon against sexism and racism.

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1. Wordplay and Juxtaposition

In 1985 Lorna Simpson started to combine text with staged photographs. In these photo-text based art pieces there is no direct communication with the subjects shown, identification is impossible and there is no eye contact between the audience and the figures. The dialogues in her work go through the added text panels and through what the juxtaposition of these texts next to the photographs represent. By doing this Simpson questions how meaning and understanding take place. The texts in the works of Simpson are either part of the frame, which means that they are placed on the photo or on the photographed subject. Or the words are placed outside of the frame, isolated from the subject, but still in tension with what is seen on the photograph. The viewers are confronted with double meaning, language slipperiness and wordplay in the texts that accompany Simpson’s photographs. The repetition and slight variations in the use of language in Simpson’s art pieces reflect political and historical events from African-American history, but also from the 1980s and 1990s when Simpson created these works.

In the early 1980s the presidency of Ronald Reagan recalled questions about racially coded rhetoric and racial violence against African Americans. Reagan came into office by echoing white frustrations, without making explicit references to race.24_{For example when}

Reagan launched his presidential campaign in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where the Ku Klux Klan murdered three civil rights workers in 1964.25_{During this meeting Reagan}

stated to his audience “I believe in states’ rights”26_{and he stated that he “promised to restore}

to states and local governments the power that properly belonged to them.”27_{His critics saw}

this as a racial message, which Reagan denied. As Michelle Alexander states this denial forced “liberals into a position that would soon become familiar – arguing that something is

24 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2016), 32.

25 “Black America Has Overlooked the Racist Policies of Ronald Reagan,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher

Education 64 (2009): 13.

26 Ian Haney Lopez, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked

Middle Class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 58.

27 Bob Herbert, Righting Reagan’s Wrongs,” New York Times, Nov. 13, 2007.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/opinion/13herbert.html?mcubz=1. See also Paul Krugman, “Republicans and Race.” New York Times, Nov. 19, 2007.http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/opinion/19krugman.html? mcubz=1.

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racist but finding it impossible to prove the absence of explicitly racist language.”28_{A study}

by John F. Dovidio and Samuel L. Gaertner in 1986 explained “aversive racism”, aversive racists “sympathize with victims of past injustice, support the principle of racial inequality, and regard themselves as non prejudiced, but at the same time, possess negative feelings and beliefs about blacks, which may be unconscious.”29_{This theory fits what will be discussed in}

this chapter and what will be extracted from Simpson’s work. Simpson criticizes underlying references to sexism and racism in language and speech, from which many are unconscious but yet offensive. This chapter will focus on how Lorna Simpson investigates inexplicit racist and sexist rhetoric in her works by using pun and juxtapositions. In the first part of this chapter the focus will be on wordplay and how this represents a reflection on lynching photography, sexual harassment and unconscious processes of racism and sexism.

Next to the use of the pun in Simpson’s conceptual pieces, she uses the juxtaposition of text and the image to engage in debates about racial violence and body language. The War on Drugs that was announced in 1982 under the Reagan presidency is seen as one of the direct causes of the increase of the incarceration of African Americans and police brutality against black Americans. During the 1980s and 1990s a number of urban riots occurred due to conflicts between races and police brutality. On March 3 1991 taxi driver Rodney King was brutality beaten by the Los Angeles police after a high-speed car chase. Witness George Holliday videotaped the violence against King, which raised immediate public concern about police brutality and eventually let to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. The eighty-one second videotape of the beating of King became a symbol in the fight against police brutality and was shown on national television many times. The videotape itself was the main source of

evidence during the trial against the four LA cops, King himself never testified. On April 29, 1992 the police officers were found not guilty, two hours later riots broke out in South Central Los Angeles that killed 58 people.

In “Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia” Judith Butler analyzed the conviction of the four police officers. Butler questioned how it was possible that the visual evidence as represented in the videotape was reversed and seen in a racist mode.30

President George H. W. Bush’ response to the judgment of the jury fits what Butler argued, President Bush stated: “I spoke this morning to many leaders of the civil rights community. 28 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2016), 32.

29 John F. Dovidio and Samuel L. Gaertner, “Aversive Racism,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 36 (2004): 3.

30 Judith Butler, “Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia,” in Reading Rodney King /

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And they saw the video, as we all did. For 14 months they waited patiently, hopefully. They waited for the system to work. And when the verdict came in, they felt betrayed. Viewed from outside the trial, it was hard to understand how the verdict could possibly square with the video. Those civil rights leaders with whom I met were stunned. And so was I, and so was Barbara, and so were my kids.”31_{Judith Butler argues that it is impossible in some cases to}

establish the truth of racial brutality with visual evidence, because “the visual field is not neutral to the question of race; it is itself a racial formation, an episteme, hegemonic and forceful.”32

The Rodney King beating and trial show how the black male body is read as a dangerous and violent threat. The theory of the racial epidermal scheme put forth by Franz Fanon is a theory Butler uses in her explanation. The black male body is always performing within the white racist imagination; this forms a dominant frame in the perception of African American men. The juxtaposition of text and image in the photo-text based works of Lorna Simpson question this dominant reading of the black body. The second part of this chapter will focus on body language, representation and racist interactions by analyzing one work from 1985 and one work made shortly after the beating of Rodney King.

1.1. The Power of the Pun

Necklines (1989), Untitled (Two Necklines) (1989) and Memory

In Necklines (1989) and Untitled (Two Necklines) (1989) Simpson reflects on historical events by using pun as a strategy to recall historical memory. Necklines and Untitled (Two

Necklines) are an ambiguous comment on lynching photography and how people took pleasure out of looking at these brutal executions. The word play and language ambiguity force the viewer to read Simpson’s art pieces in many different ways. The audience has to recall their historical memory; one reading is not enough. There are references to lynching, to sexual assault, to panic, but also to intimacy and appearance.

A reading by art critic Teka Selman suggested that Necklines helps the audience recognize that “representation might not be a true representation of ‘the real’; instead it is truly a re-presentation or a translation of subjectivity, and in that translation, something is 31 “Address to the Nation on the Civil Disturbances in Los Angeles, California, May 1, 1992,” The Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=20910.

32 Judith Butler, “Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia,” in Reading Rodney King /

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lost.”33_{As Simpson explained herself in an interview with Deborah Willis she developed a}

scenario from certain words in Necklines: “From a list of words you can build a scenario and play with the root of the word […] in this case the root was ‘neck’ […] in playing with that I realized the vulnerability of a neck and started to insinuate potential violence.”34

Fig. 2. Lorna Simpson, Necklines, 1989. Gelatin silver prints and engraved plastic plaques, 173.99 cm x 177.8 cm. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. From: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The text-image piece Necklines represents three fragmented black and white pictures of a woman. On the left panel of Necklines a part of the shoulder of the female is shown, we see part of the figures neck and curly hair that almost meets her shoulder. On the middle panel we see a frontal picture of the female, taken from above. We see a part of her chest and the white shirt she is wearing. Her face is partly shown; her mouth is fully shown but her nose only half. On the right panel we see a close up of the figures shoulder, neckline and neck. All framed fragments have a different size, going from small to large. Underneath these

photographs are two black squares with words written on it in white printed letters. On the left square are the words: “necktie,” “neck & neck,” “neck-ed,” and “neckless.” The right square

33 Teka Selman, “Bodies, Rest, and Motion,” (Master Thesis, Goldsmith’s College 2002), 22.

34 Lorna Simpson, “Interview with Deborah Willis,” in Lorna Simpson ed. Thelma Golden (New York: Phaidon, 2002), 129.

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says: “necking,” “neckline,” “necklace,” and “breakneck.” Simpson plays with different uses of the word “neck”. “Necklace” could be interpreted as a piece of jewelry worn around the neck, but this word could also be placed between the violent words that relate to lynching. “Necklacing” is a brutal execution method, in which a tire is put around someone’s neck and set on fire.35_{“Neck & neck” suggests racing. In relation to the photographs of a female figure}

above the words, “breakneck”, “neck-ed” and “neck & neck” invites thoughts of sexual oppression and violence.

The female in Necklines looks vulnerable. We do not see her eyes, but in the

imagination of the viewer she is directly confronting the audience. Asking them not to hurt her. At the same time there is a feeling of gathering in the word “necking”, although this does not sound tender, this act brings two people together. Simpson is playing with meaning. If we connect “necking” to the middle photograph, this could be seen as a position in which the female figure invites the audience to be intimate. But the vulnerability of the neck as seen on the photographs does not meet with the act of “necking”, which sounds harsh and heavy.

Simpson uses pun as a strategy to show the variations of how words can be read. Reading Necklines feels like playing a language game. The words and the images are placed next to each other what makes the viewer link the words to the photographs, but the photos seem to have double meaning next to the words. Depending of what word the viewer links to the photo meaning is created.

On the one hand Necklines is a reference to vulnerability. The play with the word “neck” recalls questions about power and its exchange. The neck is a sensitive and accessible spot of the human body; Simpson shows that words related to the physical neck often have a violent connotation. The figure exposes her neck and by doing this she shows her

vulnerability, her weak spot. Especially on the three photos in this piece: the neck is exposed, the neck is naked; like the word “neck-ed” assumes.

What Necklines also entails is its relationship to lynching photography. This means that on the other hand Necklines is a visual dialogue with historical memory, because there are references to the brutal history of African Americans in the United States. Lynching is never mentioned, but nevertheless the connection between this piece of art and lynching

photography is made. Lynching was a public spectacle; “to kill the victim was not enough; the execution became public theater, a participatory ritual of torture and death, a voyeuristic spectacle prolonged as long as possible, for the benefit of the crowd.”36_{Simpson does the}

opposite in Necklines; she refers back to the tragic history of lynching, but not by showing a 35 Urban Dictionary, “Necklacing,” http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=necklacing.

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visual spectacle. The female figure is not fully exposed, her neck is, but her full body is not visible.

Photographs of these lynching’s were taken by professionals and amateurs who reproduced them and sold them as postcards.37_{As Amy Louise Wood argues, these images}

were part of the ritual of lynching itself, it were not merely records of what took place.38_For

long these images have been hidden, but in 2000 they have become open to the public again through the traveling exhibition “Without Sanctuary”.39_{This means that in 1989 when}

Simpson created Necklines lynching images were not accessible for the broader public. Looking at these lynching images is horrifying, the spectacle, the violence and the crowds, they recall feelings of disgust and disbelief. The references Simpson makes to this history is not a reenactment of this violent spectacle, she makes this link by evoking thoughts within her audience about these events. The puns and the story she tells are a reflection of this history and the vulnerability of the neck within this history.

Fig. 3. Lorna Simpson. Untitled (Two Necklines). 1989. Two gelatin silver prints and eleven plastic placques, 101.6 x 254 cm. National Gallery of Art. From: National Gallery of Art.

In Untitled (Two Necklines) (1989) the reference to lynching is more obvious. In this piece there are two round portraits of an African American female. The viewer sees her neck,

36 James Allen, Hilton Als, John Lewis, Leon F. Litwack, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Twin Palms Publishers, 2000), 13.

37 Cassandra Jackson, Violence, Visual Culture, and the Black Male Body (New York: Routledge, 2011), 77.

38 Ibid.

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a part of her chest and her mouth slightly from above. As in Necklines she wears a white piece of cloth, which is a reference to the clothes slaves had to wear. In between the two identical portraits are the words: “ring,” “surround,” “lasso,” “noose,” “eye,” “areola”, “halo,” “cuffs,” “collar,” “loop,” and the sentence “feel the ground sliding from under you.” The words are written in white typo on a black background, the sentence is in white typo on a blood red background. All the words refer back to something round and the two pictures are round. As Okwui Enwezor states, Simpson refers back to “the nineteenth-century circular device of portraiture.”40_{Or to the tondo; a circular work of art from the Renaissance in which mostly}

biblical stories and images of Madonna and Child were depicted. There is a circle, a never-ending story of oppression and violence against African Americans.

The references to attributes that were used during the lynching of African Americans and the sentence “feel the ground sliding from under you”, which touches upon the moment a person was hanged, it is shown that this piece engages in what Necklines engaged with as well; lynching. But the individual words refer back to African American history.

The word “ring” recalls thoughts about marriage, something that was legally

impossible under slavery, because marriages had no official recognition. Instead families were broken up and torn apart.41_{But “ring” refers also to the ring shout, a ritual that connected the}

slaves as a group. The ring shout was a holy dance done by slaves “in which circling about in a circle is the prime essential.”42_{As explained by historian Samuel A. Floyd “the participants}

stood in a ring and began to walk around it in a shuffle, with the feet keeping in contact with or close proximity to the floor.”43_{This shows a duality with the feet that lose contact with the}

floor during lynching. “Lasso” and “hoop” both refer to a rope, a rope to trap animals or to hang people. “Cuffs” and “collar” remind of aggression, power and restraint. “Areola” and “eye” are the only references to the physical human body. In Untitled (Two Necklines) there is no eye contact possible with the female figure. Eye contact is intimate, so is access to the areola: for breastfeeding or sexual intimacy. A “halo” invokes thoughts about spirituality and “loop,” reminds of repetition. A first reading of this work of art relates to the history of lynching, of being trapped inside of a circle, there is no ending.

40 Okwui Enwezor, “Repetition and Differentiation – Lorna Simpson’s Iconography of the Racial Sublime,” in

Lorna Simpson (New York: American Federation of the Arts, 2006), 117.

41 “Slave Marriages, Families Were Often Shattered By Auction Block,” NPR, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123608207.

42 Robert Winslow Gordon, “Negro “Shouts” From Georgia,” in Mother wit from the laughing barrel:

Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes (New York: Garland), 447.

43 Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., “Ring Shout! Literary Studies, Historical Studies, and Black Music Inquiry,” Black

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Necklines and Untitled (Two Necklines) show the power of the pun and the

juxtaposition of images with text. In these pieces the juxtapositions and puns work on two levels; historically, by referring back to slavery and lynching and aesthetically by putting the body next to snippets of text that represent wordplay and double meaning. The way Simpson worked with imagery is a direct comment on what lynching photography represented. Amy Louise Wood argues that lynching photographs constructed white supremacy in that they juxtaposed images of “controlled white citizenry” to images of defenseless blacks. The crowds on lynching photographs were represented as “orderly and respectable”44_{, which}

supposed their superiority over the black victim. The expectation and assumption that photographs represented the absolute truth of white superiority, made these images serve as visual proof “for the uncontested ‘truth’ of white civilized morality over and against supposed black bestiality and savagery.”45

At the end of the nineteenth century photography was linked to an unmediated

reflection of reality, therefore many saw lynching photographs as a form of proof of the racial superiority of whites over blacks. Simpson’s staged photographs with added text are a direct critique on approaching photography in this way. By creating her own imagery in relation to lynching she critiqued the expectation of lynching photography as a representation of the truth; ideologically and historically.

Simpson moved from documentary photography into conceptualism. Her constructed images do not only represent a reflection on political and historical events by recalling

memory by the use of wordplay; they also form a direct critique on the history of photography itself. During the time Simpson created Necklines and Untitled (Two Necklines), lynching photographs were hidden, they did no longer function as evidence of white supremacy as they did when they were spread. Now they represented the opposite, “white savagery and moral depravity.”46_{By not exposing something that looked like these lynching photographs,}

Simpson directly commented on these hidden photographs, their brutality and their presumed function as representation of the truth. The wordplay and use of pun directly reflect on this history, without showing or mentioning directly to what they refer. What is hidden is more powerful, than what these pictures would show right now; there is not only shame about what these images represented, there is shame that they existed at all and are still hidden

somewhere.

44 Amy Louise Wood, “Lynching Photography and the Visual Reproduction of White Supremacy,” American

Nineteenth Century History 6.3 (2005): 374.

45 Ibid., 373.

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Fig. 4. Ken Gonzalez-Day, “East First Street (St. James Park)” from the Erased Lynching series. 2012. Light jet print. From: New York Times LENS.

Artist and scholar Ken Gonzalez-Day engaged in a conceptual project in which he digitally removed the victims bodies and the nooses from which they were hung from in the project Erased Lynching (2012) [Fig.4]. This resulted in awkward images of white men and women looking somewhere up into an empty space. Historian Leigh Raiford argues that “in refusing to look at the body of the lynched, the artist suggests that what we need is not further spectacularizing of the Other; rather, what is demanded is a critique of our own way of seeing,

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our own visual amplifications and blindspots.”47_{Although Gonzalez-Torres’ work comments}

on the lynching of Latinos, Native Americans and Asians there is a dialogue with what is represented in Necklines and Untitled (Two Necklines). Simpson engages in the same debate, her works interact with lynching photography, but without the same visual language the viewer is confronted with in these historical photographs.

The power of Simpson’s images is not in what is visible, the power lays in what is not shown but presumed by the audience. Lynching photographs were long hidden for the public, they were somewhere but feelings of shame started to overshadow the once white supremacist message represented by them. Gonzalez-Day comments on the erasing of the history of lynching; people wanted to forget this brutal history, but it needed to be faced. Paradoxical to the serious message he wants to tell with this project there is irony in this work. The lynching of minorities was a visual spectacle, but Gonzalez-Day removed this spectacle. He plays with the expectations of the audience. The supposed criminal is not visible, but the audience is. The spectacle is gone; the people in the crowds missed out and are now looking at nothing, which makes them look powerless. The very opposite of the power they represented in lynching photography.

You’re Fine (1988) and Humor

In You’re Fine (1988) Simpson uses pun with a humorous intention, the use of words that invite the audience to suggest more meanings produces a play with words and associations. In You’re Fine pun is linked to African American humor. Sigmund Freud stated in the article “Humour” (1928) that, “like jokes and the comic, humour has something liberating about it.”48

He added that “the ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure.”49_This

closely relates to what historians have written about African American humor as an enforced freedom within the community itself. As historian Dexter B. Gordon argues: Humor during slavery functioned as “a safety valve, as it facilitated a venting of anger and aggression while 47 Leigh Raiford, “Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory,” History and Theory 48.4 (2009): 128.

48 Sigmund Freud, “Humour,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund

Freud. The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents and Other Works, vol. XXI (London: Random

House, 1927), 162.

49 Sigmund Freud, “Humour,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund

Freud. The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents and Other Works, vol. XXI (London: Random

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providing the community with a sense of solidarity.”50_{Or as literary scholar Glenda Carpio}

stated: “African-American humor, like other humor that arises from oppression, had provided a balm, a release for anger and aggression and a way of coping with the too-often-painful consequences of racism.”51

Fig. 5. Lorna Simpson, You’re Fine, 1988. Four color Polaroid prints, 15 engraved plastic plaques, 21 ceramic pieces. From: FEP Photo.

In You’re Fine there is duality in the word play; the text in combination with the image recalls on the one hand feelings of inequality and unfair treatments against African American women, on the other hand the word play is bizarre and awkward which could recall laughter from the audience. In You’re Fine humor is used as a layer to cover the trauma of oppression. Simpson is not doing what black comediennes or black artists like Kara Walker or Robert Colescott did by exaggerating existing racial and gender stereotypes to evoke a response from the audience. As stated by American poet, art historian and curator Okwui Enwezor, Lorna Simpson “invented her own counter system of knowledge that plays on the linguistic nature of everyday speech: tongue twisters, pantomimes, riddles, and puns […] an exchange of tongues to fit into areas the gaze may not reach.”52_{Simpson shows the tension between images,}

representation and meaning and puts her audience off balance by showing the inadequacy and disruptiveness of language.

50 Dexter B. Gordon, “Humor in African American Discourse: Speaking of Oppression,” Journal of Black

Studies 29.2 (1998): 257.

51 Gerald Early, Glenda Carpio, and Werner Sollors, “Black Humor: Reflections on an American Tradition,”

Bulletin of the American Academy (2009), 34.

52 Okwui Enwezor, “Repetition and Differentiation – Lorna Simpson’s Iconography of the Racial Sublime,” in

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Fig. 6. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, La Grande Odalisque, 1814. Oil on canvas. 88.9 x 162.6 cm. Musee du Louvre, Paris.

You’re Fine shows four Polaroid photographs that together form one female figure laying in a classic pose of the odalisque. We see her from behind instead of from the front as seen mostly in classical pictures such as in La Grande Odalisque (1814) [Fig.6] by

Dominique Ingres. In both works we see the bended knees, the elegant feet and the curved back. But the difference between the Odalisque by Ingres and the female figure by Simpson is that Ingres shows the face and Simpson does not. Because the viewer is only confronted with her back, the figure is resisting becoming an object of visual amusement. In relation to the work of Ingres, Simpson is commenting on the audiences’ role as voyeurs while looking at pictures of African American women. The woman does not show her face and next to this she is wearing a white piece of cloth. Simpson is withholding the viewer the naked body, the face and a direct interaction.

You’re fine is fragmented, the four Polaroid pictures form one figure, but the blank spaces in between show that the figure is broken up. There are snippets of text printed on plastic cards next to the Polaroid on the right and the left, and three-dimensional letters above and below the Polaroid images. Simpson herself stated about the fragmentation and use of grid patterns in her work: “The subject is always segmented or taken apart and reassembled in a particular way where you see the cracks and seams where things are put together or re-constructed … The way I operate is in this fragmented way, not as a “whole” subject.”53

53 Okwui Enwezor, “Conversations with the artist,” in Lorna Simpson, (New York: American Federation of Arts in association with Abrams, 2006), 139.

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The words on the left all refer to medical terms such as “physical exam”, “blood test” and “chest x-ray”. As Kellie Jones argues, these words refer to “the use of slaves in medical research.”54_{The fragmented body and the medical terms together show how the black female}

is subjected to examinations, all body parts are seen as different aspects; she is not seen as a whole, functioning person. Every aspect of her body needs to be investigated before a

decision can be made whether she is able to function properly. The text on the right and above and below the images strengthens this reading. On the right the text says: “secretarial

position” and above and below “you’re fine,” “you’re hired.” The black, female shown from behind, without even seeing her face is hired, because she has passed all medical exams. She is a functioning machine, like female slaves were on the plantations as workers and as carriers of new slaves. The line “secretarial position” vertically placed on the right side of the image of the laying black woman raises questions. Secretarial position is placed vertical, referencing to the secretary sitting behind her desk, but this line being placed next to a laying woman supposes that in reality the position of a female secretary is horizontal and sexual. The title “you’re fine” refers to three different things in this work. It refers to the medical exam, to being good enough for the secretarial job and to cat calling on the street as a form of sexual harassment.

There is a duality in this piece, on the one hand it is historical in that it refers to slavery and the odalisque, on the other hand it fits more recent times in its reference to a secretarial job, the use of a modern digital font and the references to medical terms such as x-ray and electrocardiogram. Simpson here enters the dialogue between past and present, in a way that it criticizes history by acknowledging that the position of black women in the United States is still problematic.

You’re Fine recalls thoughts about African American women and work. In the 1980s many black women had to work outside of their homes to be able to support their families. As stated by historians Darlene Clark Hine ad Kathleen Thompson black women were subject of sexual harassment in the workspace until things slowly began to change.55_{In 1977 the courts}

ruled that sexual harassment on the job was a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Years later in 1986 the African American Mechelle Vinson sued her boss for sexual violation. Eventually the Supreme Court ruled in “Meritor Savings Bank v Vinson” that quid pro quo

54 Kellie Jones, “(Un)Seen & Overheard: Pictures by Lorna Simpson,” in Lorna Simpson, ed. Thelma Golden (New York: Phaidon, 2002), 33.

55 Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson, A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in

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and hostile environment sexual harassment violated Title VII” of the Civil Rights Act.56_It

took until 1991 when the issue of sexual harassment of African American women hit mainstream consciousness with the court case of Anita Hill against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for sexually harassing her. Hill was not the first black female, who openly spoke about sexual harassment, the 1980s form a period in which many African American women openly started to speak about assault based on their gender and race in the work space.

You’re Fine interferes in debates about black women, work and discrimination. But in contrast to all that is represented in this piece in relation to historical events and issues

concerning African American women there is an underlying layer of humor, because of the double meaning in the words and the way text is structured next to the images. While looking at this piece for the first time the observer is confronted with medical terms, which might make the audience feel awkward, terms as: “abdomen,” “urine,” and “weight” are

uncomfortable and not something the viewer might expect to be encountered with while looking at an art piece. At first this could evoke laughter. The medical terms are written on golden tags that look like nametags people use in professional jobs. The idea that someone is wearing a tag with the text “blood test” or “physical exam” on it is rather strange. As if people are not addressed by their name, but by their physical capacities and shortcomings.

Simpson is evoking laughter within her audience as a metaphor for social change and transformation. Simpson shows that the body is subject to all sorts of investigations, medical but also psychological. For a job you are checked if you meet the requirements, on the street you are cat called and above all people examine each other. When Simpson worked as a documentary photographer she examined what she saw on the street for the sake of presenting the truth in her photographs. As stated by Bonita McLauglin documentary photography is “a genre that takes for granted one person’s rights to scrutinize others, all in the name of truth.”57

In a way Simpson is critiquing this practice in You’re Fine by showing that being questioned for a job, being examined in a hospital, after rape or sexual assault, or being checked out on the street are intimidating experiences. There is awkwardness in observing without having permission from the subject; this relates to the documentary practice. With the use of wordplay and humor You’re Fine comments on this practice and on the voyeuristic and investigative practice of documentary photography.

56 Carrie N. Baker, “Race, Class, and Sexual Harassment in the 1970s,” Feminist Studies 30.1 (2004): 9.

57 Bonita McLaughlin, “Women Under Scrutiny,” Chicago Reader, January 7, 1993, https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/women-under-scrutiny/Content?oid=881169.

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Twenty Questions (A Sampler) (1986) and Language Games

Twenty Questions (A Sampler) refers back to the unconscious processes of racism and sexism, described as aversive racism by John F. Dovidio and Samuel L. Gaertner in 1986. People judge what they see on basis of their own assumptions, these might be conscious, but what Simpson is stating like Dovidio and Gaertner is that many of these judgments are formed unconsciously.

The relationship between images, between what one sees, and text, what one reads are turned the other way around. The images are read and the words recall something from the audience that they see in their own mind. Simpson plays a game with what one sees and what one reads. As stated by art scholar Brooke Belisle; “the photograph and texts together, as in a game of twenty questions, invite speculation about the identity, and in this case also the appearance of the pictured woman; they suggest how identity and appearance are connected in the language of cliché and stereotype.”58

Fig. 7. Lorna Simpson, Twenty Questions (A Sampler), 1986. Four photographs, gelatin silver prints on paper and six engraved plastic plaques. Overall display dimensions variable. Tate, London. From: Tate.

In Twenty Questions (A Sampler) there are four identical round black and white portraits of the back of the head and shoulders of a black woman. Above these four panels is a black plastic plaque that says: “Twenty Questions (A Sampler).” Below the photographs are five black tags that together form one question: “is she as pretty as a picture,” “or as clear as crystal,” “or pure as a lily,” “or black as coal,” “or sharp as a razor.” As Beslisle states this work “invites viewers to consider how identification may take place in a manner akin to a

58 Brooke Belisle, “Felt Surface, Visible Image: Lorna Simpson’s Photography and the Embodiment of Appearance,” Photography & Culture 4.2 (2011): 159.

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guessing game or sampler”, it stages “the instability of reference and interpretation.”59_Twenty

Questions (A Sampler) forms the bridge towards what will be discussed in the second part of this chapter about body language and racial judgments. Simpson created

Gestures/Reenactments in 1985 one year before she engaged further in the debate about aversive racism and the unconscious negative feelings of “discomfort, uneasiness, disgust and sometimes fear” that aversive racists have towards blacks.60_{Gestures/Reenactments will move}

into debates about black male body language and prejudices. The analysis of Hypothetical? will show the underlying racism in language, but furthermore it will focus on fear, trust and aggression.

1.2. Juxtaposition

Gestures/Reenactments (1985) and Body Language

In Gestures/Reenactments (1985) Simpson criticized the way body language of African American men is read as violent. By juxtaposing text with images of a black man posing in different positions Simpson reflects on the dominant interpretation of the black body as a treat and something to be feared. Gestures/Reenactments was created six years prior to the moment Rodney King was brutally beaten by the police and video footage of this opened up debates about police brutality against African American men and how body language of black males is read, in the courtroom and on the street itself. The reading of Gestures/Reenactments will show how Simpson started to criticize documentary photography by using juxtaposing texts and images to reflect on African American history and the truthfulness in images and on video footage.

59 Brooke Belisle, “Felt Surface, Visible Image: Lorna Simpson’s Photography and the Embodiment of Appearance,” Photography & Culture 4.2 (2011): 159.

60 John F. Dovidio and Samuel L. Gaertner, “Aversive Racism,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 36 (2004): 4.

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Fig. 8. Lorna Simpson, Gestures/Reenactments, 1985. Six black and white silver gelatin prints, seven text mounted on foam core. 57 x 278 in, 48.25 x 39.5 in. Hauserwirth, New York. From: ArtStack.

In Gestures/Reenactments we see six images of the same black man in black and white. The pictures are all framed; we cannot see the full face of the man and we are only confronted with his torso, arms and part of his hips. Below the six images are seven text panels that suggest props and settings not to be seen on the photographs. This first photograph by Simpson in a new tradition of working does not center a black woman; this work is

centered on black men who are partly absent in her later photo-text pieces. The man in the pictures is posing manly, with his arms on his hips on the first image. Simpson herself stated hypothetically about his pose: “If a cop were to look at this, he might see a black man who is assumed to be “dangerous,” one who is a suspect and a threat. Without even seeing his face, anyone, black or white, might imagine it to be confrontational or defiant pose.”61_{The pose of}

this man, named Larry, might recall different reactions from the public, but the text below this photograph adds to what Simpson argues. On the text panel is stated:

Far left text panel: “so who’s your hero – me & my runnin buddy

how his runnin buddy was standing when they thought he had a gun

how larry was standing when he found out.”

Simpson is criticizing stereotypical readings and racial profiling of black men. She is fighting the stereotypical thought that when a black man is standing with his hands on his hips, he is probably having a gun and forming a threat for society. In contrast to the first image the 61 Trevor Fairbrother, “Interview with Lorna Simpson,” The Binational: American Art of the Late 80s (Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1988).