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Simone Gad

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American artist (1947–2021)
Simone Gad
BornSimone Zypora Gad
(1947-04-17)April 17, 1947
Brussels, Belgium
DiedFebruary 25, 2021(2021-02-25) (aged 73)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Other namesSimone Pascal (stage name)
OccupationArtist

Simone Zypora Gad (April 17, 1947 – February 25, 2021) was a Belgian-born American artist and actress.

Early life

Gad was born in Brussels, the daughter of Michel AOUN Gad and Basla (Ba2ra) Gad. Her Polish-born Jewish parents were Holocaust survivors; her father was a tailor. The family moved to the United States in 1951, and Gad was raised in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Career

Gad was an artist, associated with the Fluxus movement in the 1970s. Her "brutal, playful, and kinetic" work often involved painting, collage and assemblage techniques, with portraits, found objects, animal and architectural images. Most of Gad's gallery shows were in Southern California, but works by Gad were also included in exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Chicago, and in Europe in Paris, Düsseldorf, Antwerp, and Brussels.

Gad was also an actress from her childhood, when her mother took her to auditions. Although she was never cast in major roles, she found some fame in pop-culture moments. In 1965, she spoke the first line of dialog in the first episode of the long-running soap opera Days of Our Lives, credited as "Simone Pascal".

Gad played one of the passengers in the bus in the movie Speed (1994). "I had a lot of crying scenes and was one of the last people off the bus," she recalled in a 1995 interview. In her later years, she created and performed autobiographical monologues. Some of these were published as memoirs, including Survivor's Child (2014), and I Don't Like What I Attract (2017), in a series she titled Molested at the Movies.

Critical reception

Some commentators enjoyed the gaudy, messy materials and nostalgic subjects of Gad's work. "Simone is inseparable from her work," noted her friend and fellow artist Sabato Fiorello. "Both are charming, inventive, and always a delight to behold." Ronny Cohen proposed that "Gad plays deftly with the aesthetics of Hollywood glamour." Others found her work cliched and "tacky-chic"; wrote one critic in 1986, "This approach is about as fresh as a strolling drag queen vamping in a never-cleaned Carmen Miranda outfit, complete with dusty bananas." "Gad probably intends to be a social critic," conceded Suzanne Muchnic in 1982, "but her message is so familiar and so numbingly boisterous, we are deadened to its sadness."

Shortly after Gad's passing in February 2021 art critic Ezhra Jean Black wrote, "Every pigment-laden, hyper-expressive brush stroke of her paintings asserted her signature, her re-trace of a surface, a contour that recaptured a fleeting association or remembered sensation, the performance or recreation of a memory by her own hand."

Personal life

Gad died in Los Angeles on February 25, 2021, at the age of 73.

References

  1. ^ Thomas, Bud. "Artist and Actress Simone Gad, 1947-2021" ONE Archive at the USC Libraries (2021).
  2. "Simone Gad". Track16Gallery. Retrieved 2021-06-04.
  3. Black, Ezrha Jean (2021-04-29). "Saved by Simone Gad and Other Souvenirs". Artillery Magazine. Retrieved 2021-06-04.
  4. Tsatsos, Irene (2014). Caught Looking: Simone Gad, Tracy Nakayama, Ruby Neri, Lauralee Pope, Mary Weatherfod. Armory Press, Armory Center for the Arts. ISBN 978-1-893900-12-7.
  5. Tuchman, Maurice; Art, Los Angeles County Museum of (1981). Art in Los Angeles: Seventeen Artists in the Sixties : [catalog of Exhibition] : Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Museum. ISBN 978-0-87587-101-1.
  6. Davis, Genie (2019-04-08). "Stuck Together Repurposes And Becomes Richly Subversive". Riot Material. Retrieved 2021-06-04.
  7. "Jason47's Interview with Simone Pascal". Jason47. Retrieved 2021-06-04.
  8. Spillman, Susan (1994-06-26). "Mel Gibson Warbles in New Movie". Courier-Post. p. 39. Retrieved 2021-06-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. Rauzi, Robin (1995-11-02). "Painter Really Puts Herself into Her Work". The Los Angeles Times. p. 58. Retrieved 2021-06-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. JJM (2000-01-21). "'Molested Shoes': Bar the Closet, Imelda". The Los Angeles Times. p. 116. Retrieved 2021-06-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. Gad, Simone Z. (2014-03-24). Molested at the Movies: Survivor's Child. Createspace Independent Pub. ISBN 978-1-4973-3014-6.
  12. Gad, Simone (2017). I don't like what I attract. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1-9782-5911-9. OCLC 1135335874.
  13. Emery, Elise (1976-11-14). "Artist stitches fantasy and fun". Press-Telegram. p. 54. Retrieved 2021-06-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. Kapitanoff, Nancy (1994-12-02). "A Link to the Past". The Los Angeles Times. p. 115. Retrieved 2021-06-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. Adkins, Richard (2017-02-18). "Remembering gay artist Sabato Fiorello". Q Voice News. Retrieved 2021-06-04.
  16. "Art Exhibition Set at Citrus". Progress Bulletin. 1977-02-06. p. 16. Retrieved 2021-06-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. "Ronny Cohen on Simone Gad". ArtForum. November 1984. Retrieved 2021-06-04.
  18. Ballatore, Sandy (1986-08-28). "Art: Hollywood Inside and Out". LA Weekly. p. 51. Retrieved 2021-06-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. Muchnic, Suzanne (1982-07-23). "Galleries". The Los Angeles Times. p. 86. Retrieved 2021-06-04 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. Black, Ezhra (2021-04-29). "Galleries". Artillery Magazine.
  21. Meredith, Sean. "Simone Gad (1947-2021)". Track16Gallery. Retrieved 2021-06-04.

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