Activity: Text as art
3. Gary Simmons (b. 1964)
16
Choose a word from the word map and explore how different presentations of that word convey different meanings and interpretations. Write the word small, big, backwards, smudged, in color, in line or not. Which version is most successful in expressing your intentions as an artist? What do your classmates think? Select the most effective rendition and write an artist statement explaining your intention and the reasons for your artistic choices. Photograph and share the statement with museumeducation@oscars.org.
Balcony Seating Only , 2017 Oil paint on aluminum, mounted on steel
Reflect
• What do you notice when looking at this artwork? What are the first thoughts that come to mind as you view it?
• Why do you think the artist smudged the letters? How would the meaning of this piece change if the letters were not smudged?
Information
Gary Simmons’s large-scale sculpture, created from oil paint on aluminum mounted on steel, is inspired by a historical photograph of the exterior of a segregated theater in Anniston, Alabama, with signage that indicates a separate entrance for people of color. In Balcony Seating Only , the racially charged word COLORED is rendered with the artist’s “erasure drawing” technique whereby the text is smudged, giving it a ghostly quality. The word is set on an incline, suggesting stairs leading to a different space: a visual reminder of the segregated spaces African American moviegoers were forced to inhabit as both viewers and filmmakers. Simmons here conjures the past with his technique of partially erasing but at the same time draws sharp attention to the injustices suffered by African Americans throughout US history, and particularly the history of cinema in America.
Explore: Group discussion
• What can we learn from the past by referencing it in the present? In what ways have we progressed since the time period of segregation? In what ways have we not? • How does Simmons’s work convey the physical experience of being separated and segregated because of one’s race? How do his choices magnify that experience? • How would the meaning of this installation
Gary Simmons, Balcony Seating Only , 2017
change if the word COLORED were small? Not angled? Not blurred?
*Words set in ALL CAPS are defined in the Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts (section F of this guide).
*Words set in ALL CAPS are defined in the Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts (section F of this guide).
Powered by FlippingBook