Read Catalog - Charles Simonds

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Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 By John Hallmark Neff Charles Simonds's Engendered Places: Towards a Biology of Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 2 By John Hallmark Neff On the Loose with the Little People: A Geography of Simonds's Art ...................................... 26 By John Beardsley Simonds: Life Built to Dream Dimensions ............................ 3 I By Daniel Abadie Three Peoples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 s By Charles Simonds Plates Mythologies ................................................. 40 Dwellings ........................ , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Ritual Architectures and Cosmologies ........................... 53 " ," Temenos, Birthscape ................................... 6o Niagara Gorge, La Placito, Park Modell Fantasy, Stanley Tankel Memorial, Growth House ............................................... 62 Floating Cities ............................................... 66 Circles and Towers Growing ................................... 68 Commentaries by John Hallmark Neff House Plants ................................................. 86 Exhibitions, Commissions, Projects, Films, Public Collections ................................................ 89 Selected Bibliography ............................................. 92 7
Introduction Reunited for this exhibition, the 12 works that comprise the sequence Circles and Towers Growing were conceived in 1978, completed the following year, and shown soon after at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne and the Nationalgalerie, Berlin.! Subsequently, only parts of the whole were exhibited.2 This is the first showing of this extraordinary cycle in the United States, and, with the addition of a new cycle of three pieces constructed for this exhibition, the most extensive opportunity yet to see the work of Charles Simonds. That this is so is because only some aspects of the artist's work are intended for viewing in museums. Although Simonds has acquired an art world following over the last decade, much of his time and energy has been devoted to ten1porary "Dwellings," tiny structures of unfired clay bricks inconspicuously inserted with tweezers into crumbling walls, onto ledges and window sills in neighborhoods where the concerns of both museums and the art market are worlds away. Over 300 Dwellings and ritual structures for his imaginary race of migrating "Little People" have been built all over the world since the winter of 1971: from the Lower East Side of New York (over 200 alone), to California, the British Isles and Western Europe, to Australia and China. A few have survived, but most have succumbed to the elements, children's games, or efforts to take them home. Consequently, there is no large body of portable works from which to assemble an exhibition. There has been little opportunity to view the work except for one or two pieces or a single installation at a time. The result has been to create a quasi-legendary aura about the work, so that Simonds's Dwellings survive primarily as an oral tradition, as memory. This situation the artist willingly accepts as a consequence of the way he has chosen to work. Simonds's biography is likewise by choice limited to an outline of events. He was born November 14, 1945 in New York, the younger son of two Viennatrained psychoanalysts, and raised on the Upper West Side. His grandparents had immigrated to the United States from Russia. He attended the New Lincoln School in Manhattan, then the University of California at Berkeley where he majored in art, receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967. He married in 1968 and attended Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, earning his Master of Fine Arts in 1969. From 1969 to 1971 he taught at Newark State College, having moved back to New York where he shared a building at 131 Chrystie Street with artists Gordon Matta-Clark and Harriet Korman. He began in 1970 his ritual Mythologies in the Sayreville, New Jersey claypits and other more impromptu street activities with Matta-Clark around New York and the vicinity. At this time the first Dwellings were made outdoors. From 1971 to 1972 Sin1onds lived in a building on 28th Street owned by his brother, who managed rock bands which occupied the other floors. First in Jeffrey Lew's loft at I 12 Greene Street and later at 98 Greene Street, Simonds joined friends in informal, experimental art activities and performances. In 1971 he met art historian and critic Lucy Lippard with whom he has lived on Prince Street since 1972. In that year he came to know Robert Smithson. During the 1970s, as his work became known beyond a small group 9
Page 3 and 4: ! I - I 'vi r ....--' I \ \
Page 5: Exhibition Tour Museum of Contempor
Page 9 and 10: y Clive Phillpot, Librarian of the
Page 11 and 12: the question, just as formal analys
Page 13 and 14: miniature landscapes into an instru
Page 15 and 16: source. As has been noted in anothe
Page 17 and 18: Certainly Simonds seeks to undergo
Page 19 and 20: 4 "I think of the dwellings in a ve
Page 21 and 22: I9 Bib. I I978, Simonds and Molderi
Page 23 and 24: 33 Bristow, The Sex Life of Plants,
Page 25 and 26: miniature landscape and dwellings w
Page 27 and 28: uildings into a community park and
Page 29 and 30: Simonds: Life Built to Dream. Dimen
Page 31 and 32: toms, justified their constructions
Page 33: Three Peoples By Charles Simonds Th
Page 36 and 37: gradually deposited in front of it
Page 38 and 39: Mythologies The Mythologies embody
Page 41 and 42: Plate 2. Body - Earth, 1971. Stills
Page 43 and 44: Plate 4· Dwelling, Dublin, 1980. 4
Page 46 and 47: Plate 8. Charles Simonds building D
Page 48 and 49: Plate 11. Dwelling, Kunsthaus Zuric
Page 50 and 51: Plate 14. People Who Live in a Circ
Page 52 and 53: Plate 16. Labyrinth, 1972. Collecti
Page 54 and 55: Plate 18. Gate of Souls, 1981, deta
Page 56 and 57:
u D ," Temenos, Birthscape These in
Page 58 and 59:
Niagara Gorge, La Placita, Park Mod
Page 60 and 61:
Plate 2 7. Proposal for a Stanley T
Page 62:
Floating Cities Charles Simonds's F
Page 65 and 66:
The third landscape also shows us t
Page 67 and 68:
Number 10 (pl. 41) From the first v
Page 69 and 70:
containing seeds which anticipated
Page 71 and 72:
*Plate 33. Number 2 (Untitled), 197
Page 73 and 74:
*Plate 35· Number 4 (Untitled), 19
Page 75 and 76:
•Plate 37. Number 6 (Untitled), 1
Page 77 and 78:
*Plate 39. Number 8 (Untitled), 197
Page 79 and 80:
*Plate 41. Number ro (Ritual Tower)
Page 81 and 82:
*Plate 43· Number 12 (Untitled), 1
Page 83 and 84:
*Plate 45· Stone Sprout, 1981. Col
Page 85 and 86:
One-Person Exhibitions I9?S-?6 Cent
Page 87 and 88:
Commissions, Projects, Films Commis
Page 89:
Art Institute of Chicago. Small Sca
Page 92 and 93:
Knight, C. "Some recent art and an
Page 94:
Museum of Contemporary Art Board of
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