Lena Dunham’s mom on exhibit,
She gave birth to the ‘voice of a generation,’ Lena Dunham — and a creative vision that has led to a striking new art show
she’s GOING TO Be ON AN ePIsODe OF ‘sCANDAL,’ AND I’M TeRRIFIeD TO see WhAT hAPPeNs TO heR!” — Laurie SimmonS on her daughter, “girLS” Star/creator Lena dunham
LAURIE Simmons — the artist lately known as Lena Dunham’s mother — is sitting on a bench, surrounded by beautiful women. Or, at least, the portraits she made of them: six 70-by48-inch photos that comprise her first NY museum show, “How We See.”
When it opens Friday at the Jewish Museum, what
you’ll see is that the women’s “eyes” aren’t their own — they’ve been painted on their closed lids. Not only that, but each woman is wearing white. Why?
“I wanted them to read like those little school photographs,” says Simmons, who, at 65, is tall and slender, with dark hair and silvery fingernails. “The blouses came from the wonderful designer Rachel Antonoff.”
As in the sister of Jack Antonoff, Lena’s boyfriend?
“Yes,” Simmons smiles. “We like to keep things in the family.”
“Girls” fans may be thrilled to know that Dunham’s mother’s muse was a sex toy — a life-size, latex “love doll” Simmons discovered on a 2009 visit to Japan. She had it shipped to her home in Connecticut, where her assistants dressed it, circled it with candy and draped it in jewelry — images Simmons chronicled in her 2012 book, “The Love Doll.” In time, she learned there were people who actually wanted to look like dolls, and others who gave YouTube tutorials on painting eyes on their own lids. The result is “How We See,” a show that curator Kelly Taxter says concerns “the slippery moment when the self becomes an image and the image defines the self.”
All told, this wasn’t exactly the game plan for a dentist’s daughter from Great Neck. Laurie says she and her two sisters had lots of dolls, “only I was more into cutting off all their hair, if not their heads.”
Her parents didn’t know what to make of her desire to be an artist, she says. They hoped she’d “marry well.” They didn’t intend for her to marry an artist, as she did painter Carroll Dunham.
“My parents couldn’t visualize how we could have a married life as artists without struggling,” Simmons concedes. “And we did struggle, but it turned out OK.”
They raised their daughters, Lena and her younger sister Grace, in Soho, in the same space where they kept their studios. Luckily, she had plenty of objects on hand to amuse them.
“Lena was very interested in dolls, Grace in superheroes,” she says of her daughters, now 28 and 23. Since she’s Jewish and her husband is Protestant —“It helped that my father had just seen ‘Brideshead Revisited’ and [Dunham] looked like Jeremy Irons” — the family celebrated Christmas, Hanukkah and everything in between. The family’s must-watch show was Lisa Kudrow’s “The Comeback,” whose character’s Larry David-esque inappropriateness may have paved the way for those cringe-worthy moments in “Girls.”
Granted, Simmons says, seeing her daughter’s televised nude scenes took some getting used to. “She’s going to be on an episode of ‘Scandal,’ and I’m terrified to see what happens to her!” she adds.
That maternal concern isn’t limited to her daughters. Peche Di, a Thailand-born, transgender model Simmons photographed for “How We See,” found her warm and thoughtful.
“She’s really kind,” Di adds. “That photo was shot on my birthday, and she surprised me with a birthday cake in the studio!”
So how do you raise confident children? Simmons says one of the secrets is knowing when to step out of the way, understanding who your child is and working with that.
Her own mother, now 95, accepted Simmons’ choice 30 years ago, when her art began drawing notice.
“As soon as I was in the Times, she started a scrapbook,” Simmons says. “She just needed a little outside validation.”