LORNA SIMPSON (1960 - )
Backdrops circa 1940s.

Color screenprint diptych on felt panels, 1998. 660x851 mm; 26x33⅜ inches. Signed, dated and numbered 12/35 in pencil, left panel, lower left verso. Printed by Jean-Yves Noblet at Noblet Sérigraphie, NY. Published by Karen McCready at Karen McCready Fine Arts, NY.

Other impressions are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art and Harvard Art Museums.

In Backdrops circa 1940s, Lorna Simpson confronts the lowly stereotypical roles given to African American women in film. The image woman on the left is blurred - its low contrast is achieved by printing on felt, rendering her skin, hair, and dress almost indistinguishable from the stage set. On the right, a detail of singer and activist Lena Horne, taken from the 1943 movie I Dood It, is also obscured - the edges of the support sever her face and body. Due to Jim Crow laws, Horne’s musical scenes were cut from the version of the film sent to Southern venues. The illegibility of the women in each image aligns with Simpson's exploration of the marginalization of black women in American culture. However, in Backdrops circa 1940s., Simpson's composition imagines an alternative history where Horne is both singing and celebrated. Weems' text below the images indicates they date from the 1940s, further contrasting their sense of nostalgia and glamour with the brutal history of the decade.