Cindy Sherman | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Sherman in 2016 | |
| Born | Cynthia Morris Sherman (1954-01-19)January 19, 1954 (age 71) Glen Ridge, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Citizenship | USA |
| Education | State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo |
| Known for | Photographic self-portraits |
| Notable work | Untitled#96,Untitled#153,Complete Untitled Film Stills, 1977–1980 |
| Spouse | |
| Awards | |
Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954)[2] is an Americanartist whose work consists primarily ofphotographicself-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters.
Her breakthrough work is often considered to be the collectionUntitled Film Stills, a series of 70 black-and-white photographs of herself evoking typical female roles inperformance media (especiallyarthouse films and popularB-movies).
Sherman was born in 1954, inGlen Ridge, New Jersey, the youngest of the five children of Dorothy and Charles Sherman.[3][4] Shortly after her birth, her family moved to the township ofHuntington, Long Island. Her father worked as an engineer forGrumman Aircraft.[5] Her mother taught reading to children with learning difficulties.[6] Sherman has described her mother as good to a fault, and her father as strict and cruel.[7] She was raisedEpiscopalian.[8]
In 1972, Sherman enrolled in thevisual arts department atBuffalo State University, where she majored in painting. During this time, she began to explore the ideas which became a hallmark of her work: She dressed herself as different characters, cobbled together from thrift-store clothing.[9] Frustrated with what she saw as the limitations of painting as a medium of art, she abandoned it and took up photography. "[T]here was nothing more to say [through painting]", she recalled. "I was meticulously copying other art, and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead."[10] Sherman has said about this time:
"One of the reasons I started photographing myself was that supposedly in the spring one of my teachers would take the class out to a place near Buffalo where there were waterfalls and everybody romps around without clothes on and takes pictures of each other. I thought, ‘Oh, I don't want to do this. But if we're going to have to go to the woods I better deal with it early.’ Luckily we never had to do that."
[11] She spent the remainder of her college education focused on photography. Though Sherman had failed a required photography class as a freshman, she repeated the course with Barbara Jo Revelle, whom she credited with introducing her to conceptual art and other contemporary forms.[12] At college she metRobert Longo, a fellow artist who encouraged her to record her process of "dolling up" for parties.[13] This was the beginning of herUntitled Film Stills series.[9]
In 1974, together with Longo,Charles Clough andNancy Dwyer, she createdHallwalls, an arts center intended as a space that would accommodate artists from diverse backgrounds. Sherman was also exposed to the contemporary art exhibited at theAlbright-Knox Art Gallery, the two Buffalo campuses of theSUNY school system, Media Studies Buffalo, and the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts, andArtpark, in nearbyLewiston, N.Y.[14]
It was in Buffalo that Sherman encountered the photo-based conceptual works of artistsHannah Wilke,Eleanor Antin, andAdrian Piper.[15] Along with artists likeLaurie Simmons,Louise Lawler, andBarbara Kruger, Sherman is considered to be part of thePictures Generation.[16] She graduated with aBA in 1976.[17]
Sherman works in series, typically photographing herself in a range of costumes. To create her photographs, Sherman shoots alone in her studio, assuming multiple roles as author, director, make-up artist, hairstylist, wardrobe mistress, and model.[18]
Bus Riders (1976–2000) is a series of photographs that feature the artist as a variety of meticulously observed characters.[19] The photographs were shot in 1976 for the Bus Authority for display on a bus. Sherman used costumes and make-up, includingblackface, to transform her identity for each image, and the cutout characters were lined up along the bus's advertising strip. Some critiques say that this work showed insensitivity to race through the use of blackface makeup[20][21] while others state that it was rather with the intention of exposing racism embedded in society.[22] The American theatre criticMargo Jefferson has written, "[The African-American figures] all have nearly the same features, too, while Ms. Sherman is able to give the white characters she impersonates a real range of skin tones and facial features. This didn't look like irony to me. It looked like a stale visual myth that was still in good working order."[23]
Other early works involved cutout figures, such as the Murder Mystery and Play of Selves.
In her landmark photograph seriesUntitled Film Stills, (1977–80), Sherman appears as B-movie and film noir actresses. When asked if she considers herself to be acting in her photographs, Sherman said, "I never thought I was acting. When I became involved with close-ups I needed more information in the expression. I couldn't depend on background or atmosphere. I wanted the story to come from the face. Somehow the acting just happened."
Many of Sherman's photo series, like the 1981Centerfolds, call attention to stereotypes of women in society, films, television and magazines. When talking about one of her centerfold pictures Sherman stated, "In content I wanted a man opening up the magazine suddenly look at it with an expectation of something lascivious and then feel like the violator that they would be looking at this woman who is perhaps a victim. I didn't think of them as victims at the time... Obviously I'm trying to make someone feel bad for having a certain expectation".
She explained toThe New York Times in 1990, "I feel I'm anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren't self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear."[24] She describes her process as intuitive, and that she responds to elements of a setting such as light, mood, location, and costume, and will continue to change external elements until she finds what she wants. She has said of her process, "I think of becoming a different person. I look into a mirror next to the camera…it’s trance-like. By staring into it I try to become that character through the lens ... When I see what I want, my intuition takes over—both in the 'acting' and in the editing. Seeing that other person that’s up there, that’s what I want. It's like magic."
The seriesUntitled Film Stills (1977–1980), with which Cindy Sherman achieved international recognition, consists of 69 black-and-white photographs. The artist poses in different roles (librarians, hillbillies, and seductresses), and settings (streets, yards, pools, beaches, and interiors),[25] producing a result reminiscent of stills typical of Italian neorealism or American film noir of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.[26]
Sherman avoided putting titles on the images in order to preserve their ambiguity.[27] She would often pose her heroines as alone, expressionless, and in private. An overarching characteristic of her heroines were those that did not follow conventional ideas of marriage and family; they were rebellious women who either died as that or who were later tamed by society.[9] In this series, the gaze seems to come from another subject – "usually a man" – to highlight the concept of themale gaze.[28]
Modest in scale compared to Sherman's later cibachrome photographs, they are all 8 1/2 by 11 inches, each displayed in identical, simple black frames.[29]Sherman used her own possessions as props, or sometimes borrowed, as inUntitled Film Still #11 in which the doggy pillow belongs to a friend. The shots were also largely taken in her own apartment.TheUntitled Film Stills fall into several distinct groups:
TheMuseum of Modern Art in Manhattan purchased the series for an estimated $1 million in 1995.[33]
Untitled Film Still #21 was listed as one of the 100 influential photographs byTIME Magazine.[34]
In addition to her film stills, Sherman has appropriated a number of other visual forms—the centerfold, fashion photograph, historical portrait, and soft-core sex image. These and other series, like the 1980sFairy Tales and Disasters sequence, were shown for the first time at theMetro Pictures Gallery in New York City.[35]
It was with her seriesRear Screen Projections, 1980, that Sherman switched from black-and-white to color and to clearly larger formats.Centerfolds/Horizontals, 1981, are inspired by the center spreads in fashion and pornographic magazines. The twelve (24 by 48 inches) photographs were initially commissioned — but not used — byArtforum's Editor in Chief Ingrid Sischy for an artist's section in the magazine.[36] She poses either on the floor or in bed, usually recumbent and often supine.[37] About her aims with the self-portraits, Sherman has said: "Some of them I'd hope would seem very psychological. While I'm working I might feel as tormented as the person I'm portraying."[11]
In 1982, Sherman began herPink Robes series which includes Untitled #97, #98, #99 and #100.[38]
InFairy Tales, 1985, andDisasters, 1986–1989, Cindy Sherman uses visible prostheses andmannequins for the first time.[26] Provoked by the 1989NEA funding controversy involving photographs byRobert Mapplethorpe andAndres Serrano at theCorcoran Gallery of Art, as well as the wayJeff Koons modeled his porn star wife in his "Made in Heaven" series,[31] Sherman produced theSex series in 1989. For once she removed herself from the shots, as these photographs featured pieced-together medical dummiesin flagrante delicto.[39]
Between 1989 and 1990, Sherman made 35 large, color photographs restaging the settings of various European portrait paintings of the fifteenth through early 19th centuries under the titleHistory Portraits.[40][41]
Sherman usesprosthetic limbs andmannequins to create herSex Pictures series (1992).Hal Foster, an American art critic, describes Sherman'sSex Pictures in his articleObscene, Abject, Traumatic as "[i]n this scheme of things the impulse to erode the subject and to tear at the screen has driven Sherman […] to her recent work, where it is obliterated by the gaze."[42]
ReviewerJerry Saltz toldNew York magazine that Sherman's work is "[f]ashioned from dismembered and recombined mannequins, some adorned with pubic hair, one posed with a tampon in vagina, another with sausages being excreted from vulva, this was anti-porn porn, the unsexiest sex pictures ever made, visions of feigning, fighting, perversion. … Today, I think of Cindy Sherman as an artist who only gets better."[43]
Greg Fallis of Utata Tribal Photography describes Sherman'sSex Pictures series and her work as follows: "With herSex Pictures, Sherman posed medical prostheses in sexualized positions, recreating—and strangely modifying—pornography. An example of this can be seen in her work entitledUntitled,#264. Sherman displays herself with a body made of prosthetic. Her face is the only part of her that shows but is covered by a gas mask meant to emphasize the parts of the female body that tend to be over-sexualized.[44][45]
"I'm trying to erase myself more than identify myself or
reveal myself. That's a big, confusing thing that people have
with my work: they think I'm trying to reveal these secret
fantasies or something. It's really about obliterating
myself within these characters."
Between 2003 and 2004, Sherman produced theClowns cycle, where the use of digital photography enabled her to create chromatically garish backdrops and montages of numerous characters. Set against opulent backdrops and presented in ornate frames, the characters in Sherman's 2008 untitledSociety Portraits are not based on specific women, but the artist has made them look entirely familiar in their struggle with the standards of beauty that prevail in a youth- and status-obsessed culture.
Her exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 2012 also presented a photographic mural (2010–11)[47] accompanied by films selected by Sherman.[48] In this mural, she photoshopped her face with a decorative backdrop to transform herself into a fictitious environment. Along with other characters, Sherman toys with the idea of reality and fantasy together.[49] Based on a 32-page insert[50] Sherman did forPOP using vintage clothes fromChanel’s archive, a more recent series of large-scale pictures from 2012 depict outsized enigmatic female figures standing in striking isolation before ominous painterly landscapes the artist had photographed in Iceland during the2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull and on the isle of Capri.[51]
In 2017, she collaborated on a "selfie" project with W Magazine that was based on the concept of the "plandid", or "the planned candid photograph". Sherman utilized a variety of photo-correction apps to create her Instagram portraits.[52]
From 2019 she showed self-portraits executed astapestries by a Belgian workshop.[53][54]
Sherman's career has also included several fashion series, including designs for Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, and Marc Jacobs.[55] In 1983, fashion designer and retailer Dianne Benson commissioned her to create a series of advertisements for her store, Dianne B., that appeared in several issues ofInterview magazine.[56]Untitled #122 from this collection was especially iconic; by working to deemphasise the clothing, she played with the conventions of fashion photography popular at this time.[57] Sherman also created photographs for an editorial inHarper's Bazaar in 1993.[58] In 1994, she produced thePost Card Series forComme des Garçons for the brand's autumn/winter 1994–95 collections in collaboration withRei Kawakubo.[59]
In 2006, Sherman created a series of fashion advertisements for designerMarc Jacobs. The advertisements themselves were photographed byJuergen Teller and released as a monograph by Rizzoli. ForBalenciaga, Sherman created the six-image seriesCindy Sherman: Untitled (Balenciaga) in 2008; they were first shown to the public in 2010.[60] Also in 2010, Sherman collaborated withAnna Hu on a design for a piece of jewelry.[61] She returned to working with Teller on Marc Jacobs' Spring/Summer 2024 campaign.[62]
In the early 1990s, Sherman worked with Minneapolis bandBabes in Toyland, providing photographs for covers for the albumsFontanelle andPainkillers, creating a stage backdrop used in live concerts, and acting in the promotional video for the song "Bruise Violet."[63] She also worked as a film director.
Sherman moved from photographs to film with her movieOffice Killer in 1997, starringJeanne Tripplehorn,Molly Ringwald andCarol Kane. Dorine, played by Carol Kane, is a stand-in for Sherman. They have a shared interest in arranging bodies, like a puppeteer, in diorama-like scenes.[64] According to authorDahlia Schweitzer,Office Killer is full of unexpected characters and plot twists. Schweitzer considers the film to be a comedy, horror, melodrama, noir, feminist statement, and an art piece.[64] The film got negative reviews. In a review forThe New York Times, art criticRoberta Smith states that the film lacks the artist's usual finesse and is a retrospective of her work - "a fascinating if lumpish bit of Shermaniana."[65] Movie critic colleague to Roberta Smith, Stephen Holden, called the film "sadly inept."[66]
Later, she had acameo role inJohn Waters' filmPecker, and also appeared inThe Feature in 2008, starring ex-husbandMichel Auder, which won a New Vision Award.[citation needed] Echoing similar grisly and gory elements as herUntitled Horror series, the film includes several artistically executed murder scenes.Office Killer grossed $37,446 and received generally poor reviews, which called the film "crude" and "laugh-free."[67]
In 2009, Paul Hasegawa-Overacker and Tom Donahue completed a feature documentary,Guest of Cindy Sherman, about the former's relationship with Sherman. She was initially supportive, but later opposed the project.[68]
In the catalog essay[69] by Philipp Kaiser for Sherman's 2016 exhibition at the Metro Pictures Gallery, he mentioned six short films that Sherman made while in college, and how they were the precursors that eventually led toOffice Killer being created. The catalog also includes a conversation between Sherman and the director of the exhibit,Sofia Coppola, in which Sherman admits that she may star in an upcoming film project.[66]
Sherman's first solo show in New York was presented at a noncommercial spaceThe Kitchen in 1980.[70] When theMetro Pictures Gallery opened later that year, Sherman's photographs were the first show.[71] "Untitled Film Stills" were shown first at the non-profit gallery Artists Space where Sherman was working as a receptionist.[31] Her first solo exhibitions in France were presented by Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris.[citation needed]
Sherman has since participated in many international events,[72] includingSITE Santa Fe (2004);[73] theVenice Biennale (1982, 1995);[74] and fiveWhitney Biennials.[74] In addition to numerous group exhibitions, Sherman's work was the subject of solo exhibitions at theStedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1982),[75]Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1987),[76]Kunsthalle Basel (1991),[77]Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. (1995),[78] theSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1998), theSerpentine Gallery in London and theScottish National Gallery of Modern Art (2003),[79] andMartin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin (2007),[80] among others. Major traveling retrospectives of Sherman's work have been organized by theMuseum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam (1996);[81] theMuseum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and theMuseum of Modern Art in New York (1997), which was sponsored byMadonna;[82][83] andKunsthaus Bregenz, Austria,[84]Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Denmark,[85] andJeu de Paume in Paris[86] (2006–2007). In 2009, Sherman was included in the seminal show "The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984" at theMetropolitan Museum of Art.[87]
In 2012, the Museum of Modern Art mountedCindy Sherman, a show that chronicled Sherman's work from the mid-1970s on and include more than 170 photographs. The exhibition travelled to theSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art and theWalker Art Center in Minneapolis.[88] In 2013, Sherman was invited to organize a show within that year'sVenice Biennale.[89]
In 2016, after asabbatical from her studio which was spent "coming to terms with health issues and getting older," Sherman produced and staged her first photo gallery in five years. The series, "The Imitation of Life," named after a1959 melodrama byDouglas Sirk, tackles aging by presenting Sherman in highly stylizedglamour portraits inspired by the divas of oldHollywood, such asGloria Swanson,Mary Pickford, andRuby Keeler. The series was exhibited in 2016 at theMetro Pictures Gallery in New York City, and also at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles. In 2017 it was shown at theSpruth Magers gallery inBerlin, Germany, and at theWexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.[90][91]
In 2019, theNational Portrait Gallery, London, organized a major retrospective of Sherman's works from the mid-1970s to the present.[92] In 2024, at theGoulandris Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, Sherman's first exhibition in Greece was held, gathering together over a hundred of her early works.[93]
In Sherman'sImitation of Life series of 2016 she poses, in vintage costume and theatrical makeup, as a variety of ageing actress-like women.[90]
When writing about Sherman's "Film Stills" in the journalOctober, the scholar Douglas Crimp states that Sherman's work is "a hybrid of photography and performance art that reveals femininity to be an effect of representation."[94]
However, Sherman does not consider her work or herself to be feminist, stating "The work is what it is and hopefully it's seen as feminist work, or feminist-advised work, but I'm not going to go around espousing theoretical bullshit about feminist stuff."[95]
Many scholars emphasize the relationship Cindy Sherman's work has with the concept of thegaze. In particular, scholars likeLaura Mulvey have analyzed Sherman'sUntitled series in relation to themale gaze. In a 1991 essay on Sherman, Mulvey states that ″the accouterments of the feminine struggle to conform to a facade of desirability haunt Sherman's iconography,″ which functions as a parody of different voyeurisms captured by the camera.[96]
Others question whether this confrontation with the male gaze and a feminine struggle was an intentional consideration of Sherman's,[97][98] and whether this intentionality is important in considering the feminist standpoint of Sherman's photography.
Sherman herself has identified an uncertainty toward theUntitled series' relationship with the male gaze. In a 1991 interview with David Brittain inCreative Camera, Sherman said that "I didn't really analyze it at the time as far as knowing that I was commenting upon some feminist issue. The theories weren't there at all... But now I can look back on some of them, and I think some of them are a little blatantly obvious, too much like the original pin-up pictures of those times, so I have mixed feelings about them now as a whole series."[99]
In addition to questions of the gaze, Sherman's work is also given feminist analysis in the context ofabjection. Scholars like Hal Foster[100] and Laura Mulvey interpret Sherman's use of the abject via the grotesque in 1980s projects likeVomit Pictures as de-fetishizing the female body.[96]
Scholar Michele Meager interprets Sherman as having been "crowned a resistant celebrity" to feminist theory.[101]
In 2010, Sherman's nearly six foot tallchromogenic color printUntitled#153 (1985), featuring the artist as a mud-caked corpse, was sold byPhillips de Pury & Company for $2.7 million, near the $3 million high estimate.[102] In 2011, a print ofUntitled#96 fetched $3.89 million at Christie's, making it the most expensive photograph at that time.[103]
Sherman was represented by Metro Pictures for 40 years and also bySprüth Magers before moving toHauser & Wirth in 2021.[104]
In April 2023,Phillips NY auctioned the 159 cm x 359 cm sized-Untitled #546 (2010) for a well above-estimate $355,600.[46]
Sherman's work is often credited as a major influence for contemporary portrait photographers. One such photographer isRyan Trecartin, who manipulates themes of identity in his videos and photography.[105] Her influence stretches to artists in other art mediums, including painterLisa Yuskavage, visual artistJillian Mayer, and performance artistTracey Ullman.[105]
In April 2014, actor and artistJames Franco exhibited a series of photographs at thePace Gallery calledNew Film Stills, in which Franco restaged twenty-nine images from Sherman'sUntitled Film Stills.[106] The exhibit garnered mainly negative reviews, calling Franco's appropriations 'sophomoric,' 'sexist,' and embarrassingly clueless.'[107][108]
Sherman lived with artistRobert Longo, from 1974 to 1980, who also included her in his 'Men in the Cities' series of photographs.[109] She married directorMichel Auder in 1984, making her stepmother to Auder's daughter, Alexandra, and her half-sisterGaby Hoffmann.[110] They divorced in 1999.[citation needed] She was then in a 5-year relationship with Paul Hasegawa-Overacker, creator of a documentary film about Sherman.[111] From 2007 to 2011, she had a relationship with the artistDavid Byrne.[112]
Between 1991 and 2005,[113] Sherman lived in a fifth-floorco-op loft at 84 Mercer Street inManhattan'sSoho neighborhood; she later sold it to actorHank Azaria.[114] She bought two floors in a 10-story condo building overlooking theHudson River inWest Soho,[50][113] and currently uses one as her apartment and the other as her studio and office.[115]
For many years, Sherman spent her summers in theCatskill Mountains.[116] In 2000, she bought songwriterMarvin Hamlisch's[116] 4,200-square-foot house on 0.4 acre inSag Harbor for $1.5 million.[117] She later acquired a 19th-century home on a ten-acre waterfront[118] property on Accabonac Harbor inEast Hampton, New York.[119][120]
Sherman has expressed contempt for social media platforms, calling them "so vulgar."[66] However, she maintains an activeInstagram account[121] featuring her selfies.[122]
Sherman serves on the artistic advisory committee of the New York City-basedStephen Petronio Company[123] and on the Artists Committee of theAmericans for the Arts.[124] Along with David Byrne, she was a member ofPortugal'sEstoril Film Festival's jury in 2009.[125]
In 2012, she joinedYoko Ono and nearly 150 fellow artists in the founding ofArtists Against Fracking, a group in opposition tohydraulic fracturing to remove gas from underground deposits.[126]
In 2023, Sherman served on the jury that choseSarah Lucas as first winner of theNew Museum’s $400,000 Hostetler/Wrigley Sculpture Award.[127]
Ahead of the2024 United States presidential election, Sherman was one of 165 leading contemporary artists who contributed pieces toArtists for Kamala, an online sale with all proceeds raised going directly toKamala Harris’ campaign.[128]
Works by Sherman are held in the following collections:
[Sherman] has said that Dorine is 'a stand-in' for herself ... The most compelling similarity ... [is] their shard interest in arranging bodies ... Dorine, like Sherman, is a puppeteer, an arranger of her own dioramas ...Office Killer is full of unexpected characters and bizarre plot twists, a comedy/horror/melodrama/noir/feminist statement/art piece.
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