At The Met, Lorna Simpson’s Paintings Take Center Stage

Lorna Simpson’s ‘Source Notes’: Where memory melts, identity emerges and the ice never lies

Lorna Simpson does not emerge quietly. She manifests—a force of consciousness cloaked in elegance, uncoiling through image and memory like smoke through a locked room. Her work does not ask for permission. It pierces, seduces, dissolves. In a world addicted to the disposable, she traffics in the eternal—layering ink, icon, and ache into compositions that seethe beneath the surface. Each piece is a velvet scalpel, slicing the gauze of constructed…

At The Met, Lorna Simpson’s Paintings Take Center Stage

Lorna Simpson, ‘Night Fall,’ 2023. © Lorna Simpson ; courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth; photo by James WangLorna Simpson’s artwork conjures an electricity that is both seen and felt. The New York–based artist’s cut-paper photo collages, paintings, and films boast an unnameable energy that launches viewers into how meaning can be made and remade through images. Best known for her prolific experiments in conceptual photography, Simpson has al…

The Met Fails to Honor Lorna Simpson as an Exceptional Painter

Lorna Simpson’s paintings draw you right in, their rich blue tones washing over you like a cresting wave. From far away, her largest paintings, measuring nearly 10 feet tall, can appear cool, even a little foreboding, but upon closer inspection, they offer much to admire. You can marvel at the painterliness of these works—their trailing drips, their swooshed strokes made by a squeegee. But these surfaces seem to hide more than they reveal. In …