cover #1 laurie simmons

LEG SHOW

Laurie Simmons (born 1949) is a key figure of the Pictures Generation, a group of American artists in the 1980s that included Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, and Robert Longo — artists who used photography and cinema as components in their work.

Simmons created visual stories about domestic American life as seen in ads and films. She photographed figures in dollhouses; collaged objects such as clocks, houses, and cakes atop the bare legs of walking and dancing dolls; and photographed herself as a model in a commercial dreamscape shaped by advertising and movies.

She generated imagery that felt familiar yet oddly constructed, projecting what Richard Prince called the “social science fiction” of contemporary life. Commerce and mass media now produce the dreams people are invited to inhabit, effectively defining lives as though no other choices were available — to the point where objects take revenge:…