David Simpson (born 1928) is an American abstract painter who lives and works in
Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...
. In 1956 Simpson graduated from the
California School of Fine Arts
San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...
(now the
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...
) with a
BFA; and in 1958 he earned an
MFA, from the
San Francisco State College
San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...
. Since 1958 Simpson has had more than 70 solo exhibitions of his paintings in galleries and museums worldwide. His paintings have been included in hundreds of group exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe. During the early 1960s Simpson was included in two seminal group exhibitions: ''Americans 1963'' at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York curated by
Dorothy Canning Miller
Dorothy Canning Miller (February 6, 1904 – July 11, 2003) was an American art curator and one of the most influential people in American modern art for more than half of the 20th century. The first professionally trained curator at the Museum ...
and
Post-Painterly Abstraction Post-painterly abstraction is a term created by art critic Clement Greenberg as the title for an exhibit he curated for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964, which subsequently travelled to the Walker Art Center and the Art Gallery of Toront ...
curated by
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formal ...
in 1964; that traveled to the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...
the
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...
and the
Art Gallery of Toronto
The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Bev ...
.
Simpson is an artist and teacher whose work is associated with the
minimalist
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
,
monochrome
A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...
, and
color field movements.
Early life and education
David Simpson was born in
Pasadena, California
Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district.
I ...
in 1928 to Frederick Simpson, an interior decorator and expert on 19th century fabrics and furniture and Mary Adeline White, a housewife. After Frederick died in 1936, Mary supported Simpson and his older brother, Robert, by working at the
National Tuberculosis Association
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, ce ...
. In 1952, Simpson met art student Dolores Debus. The two were married the following year in
Sierra Madre, California
Sierra Madre (Spanish for "mother range") is a city in Los Angeles County, California, whose population was 10,917 at the 2010 U.S. Census, up from 10,580 at the time of the 2000 U.S. Census. The city is in the foothills of the San Gabriel Vall ...
. Simpson has a stepson, Gregory Vose, born in 1949, and a daughter, Lisa Simpson, born in 1953.
Military
Simpson joined the
Navy
A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...
in 1945, when he was seventeen-years-old. For three years, he served as a
Hospital Corpsman
A hospital corpsman (HM r corpsman is an enlisted medical specialist of the United States Navy, who may also serve in a U.S. Marine Corps unit. The corresponding rating within the United States Coast Guard is health services technician (HS) ...
stationed near the Mexican border in
El Centro, California
El Centro (Spanish for "The Center") is a city and county seat of Imperial County, California, United States. El Centro is the largest city in the Imperial Valley, the east anchor of the Southern California Border Region, and the core urban ar ...
. After staying on an extra year to help fellow hospital staff with the repercussions of war, Simpson left the Navy in 1949.
Education
Simpson used payments from the
G.I. Bill
The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...
to attend the
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...
, earning his BFA in 1956. He went on to receive his Master of Arts and Junior College Teaching Credential from
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...
(then San Francisco State College) in 1958. While in school, Simpson worked the graveyard shift at a gas station and managed the campus cafeteria to cover tuition costs. Simpson has said that studying under professors like
Clyfford Still
Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980) was an American painter, and one of the leading figures in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediately follo ...
,
David Park, and
Elmer Bischoff
Elmer Nelson Bischoff (July 9, 1916 – March 2, 1991) was a visual artist in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Bischoff, along with Richard Diebenkorn and David Park, was part of the post- World War II generation of artists who started as abstract p ...
helped him realize that he, too, could make a living teaching and producing art.
The Six Gallery
In 1954, Simpson co-founded the
Six Gallery at 3119 Fillmore Street in San Francisco alongside
Wally Hedrick
Wally Bill Hedrick (1928 – December 17, 2003)Gerald D. Adams, San Francisco Chronicle, Wally Hedrick: Iconoclastic Painter, Sculptor, Wednesday, December 24, 200/ref> was a seminal American artist in the 1950s California counterculture,Peter ...
, a
neo-expressionist
Neo-expressionism is a style of late modernist or early- postmodern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s. Neo-expressionists were sometimes called '' Transavantgarde'', ''Junge Wilde'' or ''Neue Wilden'' ('The new wild ones'; 'N ...
painter and integral member of the
Beat
Beat, beats or beating may refer to:
Common uses
* Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area
** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols
** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men
* Battery (c ...
movement ;
Deborah Remington
Deborah Remington (June 25, 1930 – April 21, 2010) was an American abstract painter. Her most notable work is characterized as Hard-edge painting abstraction.
She became a part of the San Francisco Bay Area's Beat scene in the 1950s. In 1965, ...
, an abstract artist known for
hard-edge painting
Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and C ...
abstraction; Jack Ryan, a poet; Hayward King, an artist who became the director of the Richmond Art Center, and
Jack Spicer
Jack Spicer (January 30, 1925 – August 17, 1965) was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'' won the American Book Award for poetry. H ...
, a poet and faculty member at the San Francisco Art Institute. Before it was turned into one of the inaugural student-run cooperative galleries in the area, the space had been an auto-repair shop.
Herb Caen
Herbert Eugene Caen (; April 3, 1916 February 1, 1997) was a San Francisco humorist and journalist whose daily column of local goings-on and insider gossip, social and political happenings, and offbeat puns and anecdotes—"A continuous love let ...
wrote in the ''
San Francisco Examiner
The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863.
Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst, and flagship of the Hearst Corporat ...
'' on September 26, 1954 that the Six Gallery was "sponsored by six people interested in art, music, poetry, integrity and other worthwhile things."
Many well-known artists, including
Joan Brown
Joan Brown (born Joan Vivien Beatty; February 13, 1938 – October 26, 1990) was an American figurative painter who lived and worked in Northern California. She was a member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.Glu ...
and
Manuel Neri
Manuel John Neri Jr. (April 12, 1930October 18, 2021) was an American sculptor who is recognized for his life-size figurative sculptures in plaster, bronze, and marble. In Neri's work with the figure, he conveys an emotional inner state that is re ...
, held their first one-person shows at the Six Gallery.
On October 7, 1955,
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
read his famous poem, "
Howl
Howl most often refers to:
*Howling, an animal vocalization in many canine species
*Howl (poem), a 1956 poem by Allen Ginsberg
Howl may also refer to:
Film
* ''The Howl'', a 1970 Italian film
* ''Howl'' (2010 film), a 2010 American arthouse b ...
" publicly for the first time at a reading at the Six Gallery.
"Howl's" future publisher
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, an ...
, the poet
Michael McClure
Michael McClure (October 20, 1932 – May 4, 2020) was an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets (including Allen Ginsberg) who read at the famous ...
, and
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Of French-Canadian a ...
were in the audience, but Simpson, home sleeping after a night shift at his gas station job, missed the reading.
The Six Gallery closed in 1957.
Connection with Jay Defeo
In 1953, Simpson and Dee lived in the same house as Hedrick and his wife, the artist
Jay Defeo
Jay DeFeo (March 31, 1929 – November 11, 1989) was a visual artist who first became celebrated in the 1950s as part of the spirited community of Beat artists, musicians, and poets in San Francisco. Best known for her monumental work ''The Rose' ...
(best known for her ten-foot masterpiece, The Rose), on Bay Street in San Francisco. During that time, Simpson and Dee ran the San Francisco Art Institute's cafeteria to help with Simpson's tuition fees. During their shifts at the cafeteria, Defeo babysat the Simpson's newborn daughter, Lisa.
Defeo, who worked in numerous mediums including drawing, collage, photography, jewelry, and sculpture, was the subject of a retrospective at the
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
in 2013.
Academic work
In 1959, Simpson accepted a teaching position at the
American River Junior College
American River College (ARC) is a public community college in unincorporated Sacramento, California. It is part of the California Community Colleges System.
History
The college was opened in 1955 as American River Junior College, on the site ...
, near
Sacramento, California
)
, image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg
, mapsize = 250x200px
, map_caption = Location within Sacramento C ...
, where he taught for two years before joining the teaching staff of
Contra Costa Junior College in
San Pablo, California
San Pablo (Spanish for "St. Paul") is an enclave city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city of Richmond surrounds nearly the whole city. The population was 29,139 at the 2010 census. The current Mayor is Rita Xavier. Curr ...
. In 1965. Simpson became an assistant professor in the art department of the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
. Five years later, he was promoted to full professor with tenure. After teaching at Berkeley for twenty-five years, Simpson retired in 1990.
Career
Simpson has had three notable artistic periods during which he produced cohesive works of particular resonance and importance. These phases are the Landscape-Based Abstractions, the Relational Abstractions, and the Interference Paintings.
Landscape-based abstractions/horizontal stripe paintings (1955-1963)
"During the last several years I have been interested in paintings made up primarily of horizontal stripes and bands. Some of these appear as landscape—some as pure paintings. I've always been more interested in the painting than the landscape," –David Simpson, 1962.
From the beginning of his career Simpson has described himself as a
reductive rather than
minimalist
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
painter. His reductive, abstract landscapes of this period were inspired by the level earth floor and color-smeared sky of the
Sacramento Valley
, photo =Sacramento Riverfront.jpg
, photo_caption= Sacramento
, map_image=Map california central valley.jpg
, map_caption= The Central Valley of California
, location = California, United States
, coordinates =
, boundaries = Sierra Nevada (ea ...
. Simpson has related these works to "Indian blankets, or East-Indian madras, or the American tradition of landscape."
Their abstract glazes and references to fog and sky caught the attention of the critic
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formal ...
, who included Simpson in his seminal 1964 exhibition
Post-Painterly Abstraction Post-painterly abstraction is a term created by art critic Clement Greenberg as the title for an exhibit he curated for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964, which subsequently travelled to the Walker Art Center and the Art Gallery of Toront ...
at the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...
alongside thirty other artists including
Frank Stella
Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Stella lives and works in New York City.
Biography
Frank Stella was born in M ...
,
Thomas Downing,
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s u ...
, and
Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly (May 31, 1923 – December 27, 2015) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, c ...
. In 1958, Simpson had the first solo exhibition of his career at the
San Francisco Art Association gallery, and two years later he participated in the International Sky Festival in
Osaka, Japan
is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the List of cities in Japan, third most populous city in Ja ...
, both times showing his horizontal stripes paintings.
Relational abstractions (late 1970s to early 1980s)
"I placed blocks of color bands right around the edge of the painting instead of in the center. I wanted to keep the center open.
t was
T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is deri ...
very different from the traditional American landscapes I'd been doing earlier. I wanted to create space so you had room to breathe again in aesthetic terms. I likened them to dense fog pressed up against a window pane."—David Simpson
Influenced by
Piet Mondrian
Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (), after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian (, also , ; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being ...
,
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latv ...
, and the
Russian avant-garde
The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of avant-garde modern art that flourished in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, approximately from 1890 to 1930—although some have placed its beginning as early as 1850 and its e ...
, Simpson's abstract paintings of the 1970s and 1980s consist of flat, color-blocked rectangles, squares and other geometric shapes seeming to vibrate from relational energy.
These meticulously-envisioned paintings involve minute spatial calculations. They depict vividly-colored geometric configurations in push-pull interactions of marked reverberation and intensity.
Particularly notable works from this period include ''Red Square'' (1974), ''Barrio'' (1979), ''Quatro Camino'', (1980), ''Five Square Rotation'', (1982), and ''Intra Muros'' (1983). About Simpson's ''Red Square''—which takes its name from Russian painter and geometric abstract art pioneer
Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich ; german: Kasimir Malewitsch; pl, Kazimierz Malewicz; russian: Казими́р Севери́нович Мале́вич ; uk, Казимир Северинович Малевич, translit=Kazymyr Severynovych ...
's famous ''
Red Square
Red Square ( rus, Красная площадь, Krasnaya ploshchad', ˈkrasnəjə ˈploɕːətʲ) is one of the oldest and largest squares in Moscow, the capital of Russia. Owing to its historical significance and the adjacent historical build ...
'' painting (1915)—Kenneth Baker wrote in 2001, "Each shape pulses with assertions of its own position and scale in the picture's internal space."
In 2009, the Modernism Gallery in San Francisco held a solo show of Simpson's relational abstraction paintings.
Interference paintings (late 1980s - present day)
In the late 1980s, Simpson began experimenting with interference paints, soon becoming fascinated with the mercurial characteristics of the medium. Interference paints, which have only six pigment variations containing micro-particles covered with titanium oxide, reflect and refract light, giving rise to nuances of color and optical illusions of depth. Using only one color pigment for each painting and a specially-designed, hand-crafted trowel, Simpson applies on average about thirty coats of paint to each canvas, creating a modulated surface space with which the paint interacts in ripples and layers.
In 2011, Simpson had his seventh solo show, Nonsense Poems, at the Haines Gallery in San Francisco, which featured 19 new interference paintings with one-syllable titles such as Blink and Ring.
Three paintings of particular importance during this period are ''April First'' (2012), ''Enthrone'' (2013), and ''Mississippi'' (2012).
Simpson has created hundreds of interference paintings since he began working with interference pigment more than twenty years ago.
Critics and collectors
The Panza collection
Giuseppe Panza di Biumo (1923-2010) was a pre-eminent contemporary art collector based in
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
and
Varese, Italy
Varese ( , , or ; lmo, label= Varesino, Varés ; la, Baretium; archaic german: Väris) is a city and ''comune'' in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, north-west of Milan. The population of Varese in 2018 has reached 80,559.
It is the c ...
, and a major collector of Simpson's work. He began purchasing
abstract expressionist
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...
pieces in the late 1950s before moving on to
pop art,
minimalism
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
, and
conceptualism
In metaphysics, conceptualism is a theory that explains universality of particulars as conceptualized frameworks situated within the thinking mind. Intermediate between nominalism and realism, the conceptualist view approaches the metaphysical co ...
. He spent the following twenty years amassing one of the most important private collections of postwar American art in the world—over 2,500 pieces by artists including
Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin (April 1, 1933 – November 29, 1996) was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.
Early life and career
Daniel Nicholas Flavin ...
,
Carl Andre
Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear and grid format sculptures and for the suspected murder of contemporary and wife, Ana Mendieta. His sculptures range from large public art ...
, and
Donald Judd
Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism (a term he nonetheless stridently disavowed).Tate Modern websit"Tate Modern Past Exhibitions Donald Judd" Retrieved on February 19, 2009. In ...
.
He exhibited the paintings in his 130-room villa in Varese, eventually even converting the stables into galleries for his growing collection.
Dr. Panza bought his first Simpson painting in 1990. He went on to acquire over 140 of Simpson's works, mostly his earlier iridescent metallic paintings and then his later interference pigment paintings.
Simpson has described Dr. Panza as simultaneously "supportive and critical, generous and parcimonious,
ndvery opinionated."
Dr. Panza died in 2010 at the age of 87. His home was turned into a public museum run by Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano, the Italian national trust, in 2000.
Upon his death, Dr. Panza donated a large number of Simpson's interference paintings to the
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, is an art museum at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, in Delaware Park. the museum's Elmwood Avenue campus is temporarily closed for construction. It hosted e ...
in
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...
.
Critical reception
"In the 1970s, Simpson's painting would have taken its place more readily in the narrower context of color-field abstraction, a tendency more associated with New York than the Bay Area. How lucid and soulful Simpson's big paintings of the period look today. They may appear to present themselves wholly at a glance, because they conceal nothing, but it takes time to size up how any one of these pictures operates in terms of color, composition or visual poetics."—Kenneth Baker.
"Spending time with a David Simpson painting, one experiences shifts of light and color like that which happens when looking at the sky or ocean. Those transitions may appear subtle or spectacular, depending on a work's size and the conditions of its installation, but each canvas is active and also activates viewers in the space around it. In the mid 1980s, Simpson began working with interference paints, an acrylic coated in micro-particles of mica, which upon interacting with light, cause effects like the swirling spectrum of colors visible on the surfaces of oil puddles or soap bubbles. Simpson's skill with the medium is masterful."—Louis Grachos.
"If anything, Simpson's paintings became more predictable before they grew less so. By the time he was preparing to leave for Sacramento, he'd cast aside cubism to make straightforwardly expressionist landscapes—thickets of childlike brushstrokes that were skillful exercises in the standard Bay Area style of the period. The transition that followed was both radical and natural. His surroundings completely changed, Simpson enlisted primitivism in a wholly new way. Specifically he took up the stacked structure commonly seen in children's drawings, which he ingeniously applied to the extreme horizontals of the Sacramento skyline? No longer was Simpson's primitivism a mannered affectation. It was fully internalized to his composition."—
Jonathon Keats
Jonathon Keats (born October 2, 1971) is an American conceptual artist and experimental philosopher known for creating large-scale thought experiments. Keats was born in New York City and studied philosophy at Amherst College. He now lives ...
.
Survey book
In May 2016,
Radius Books
Radius Books is a non-profit art book publishing company, with a focus on photography, fine art and monographs, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Co-publishing partners include David Zwirner Gallery, Harvard Peabody Museum Press, Temple University ...
published a survey book of Simpson's life's work entitled, ''David Simpson Works 1965-2015''. Featuring essays and 120 color illustrations, the book traces Simpson's progression through numerous artistic phases. About the book Simpson has said, "
tis an exquisite creation. It does a wonderful job of showing how my work varied and developed over the years."
The survey book includes exhibition reviews from the Richmond Independent and the ''
San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'', as well as the transcription of a conversation between Simpson and the art critic Kenneth Baker.
Selected public and private collections
*
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, is an art museum at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, in Delaware Park. the museum's Elmwood Avenue campus is temporarily closed for construction. It hosted e ...
, Buffalo, New York
*
Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of ...
, Baltimore, Maryland
*
Colgate University
Colgate University is a private liberal arts college in Hamilton, New York. The college was founded in 1819 as the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York and operated under that name until 1823, when it was renamed Hamilton Theologi ...
, Hamilton, New York
*
Columbia Broadcasting System
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainmen ...
, New York City, New York
*
Crocker Art Museum
The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States, located in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1885, the museum holds one of the premier collections of Californian art. The collection includes American works dating f ...
, Sacramento, California
*
David Owsley Museum of Art Ball State University
The David Owsley Museum of Art (DOMA) is a university art museum located in the Fine Arts building on the campus of Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, the United States of America. The museum's name was changed on October 6, 2011, from the ...
, Muncie, Indiana
*
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art ("The Johnson Museum") is an art museum located on the northwest corner of the Arts Quad on the main campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Its collection includes two windows from Frank Lloyd W ...
, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
*
Honolulu Museum of Art
The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single col ...
, Honolulu, Hawaii
[Honolulu Museum of Art wall label, ''Daybreak'' (study), 1995, accession TCM.2003.28.3]
*
IBM Corporation, San Jose, California
*
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chicago, Illinois
*
Laguna Art Museum
The Laguna Art Museum (LAM) is a museum located in Laguna Beach, California, on Pacific Coast Highway. LAM exclusively features California art and is the oldest cultural institution in the area. It has been known as the Laguna Beach Art Associati ...
, Laguna Beach, California
*
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA), formerly known as the Madison Art Center, is an independent, non-profit art museum located in downtown Madison, Wisconsin.
MMoCA is dedicated to exhibiting, collecting, and preserving modern and co ...
, Madison, Wisconsin
*
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, New York City, New York
*
National Collection of Fine Arts
The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds ...
, Washington, DC
*
Oakland Museum of California
The Oakland Museum of California or OMCA (formerly the Oakland Museum) is an interdisciplinary museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California, located adjacent to Oak Street, 10th Street, and 11th Street in Oakland, Cali ...
, Oakland, California
*
Panza Collection, Varese, Italy; Lugano, Switzerland
*
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...
, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
*
Phoenix Art Museum
The Phoenix Art Museum is the largest museum for visual art in the southwest United States. Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the museum is . It displays international exhibitions alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,000 works of ...
, Phoenix, Arizona
*
Reed College
Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...
, Portland, Oregon
*
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...
, San Francisco, California
*
Seattle Art Museum
The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM) is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington, United States. It operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) in Volunteer Park on Cap ...
, Seattle, Washington
*
Shasta College
Shasta College is a public community college in Redding, California, with branch campuses in Burney, Weaverville, and Red Bluff. It was founded in 1950 and later moved to a much larger campus while the original campus became the new locati ...
, Redding, California
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University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, California
*
University of Nebraska
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...
, Lincoln, Nebraska
References
External links
ArtnetDavid Simpson - University of Wyoming Art Museum interviewPeyton Wright Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Simpson, David
Living people
1928 births
20th-century American painters
American male painters
Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area
Painters from California
Abstract expressionist artists
American contemporary painters
20th-century American male artists