Commenced in 2003, Cindy Sherman’s Clowns series is a cogent progression of the artist’s interest in disguise, and her concern with portraiture. The first body of her work to be shot with a digital camera. In the present work Sherman continues the dialogue confronted in her profound History Portraits and Film Stills.

With the digitally rendered background evoking circus posters, the Clowns simultaneously represent several mental states, from impersonation and hysterical passion to tragedy. Heightening the psychedelic image through her whimsical use of colour, Sherman intensifies the somewhat familiar yet unidentifiable character. In place of the stereotypical clown, Sherman has constructed a series of characters who take on different emotions; wicked, disturbed, cruel and lustful, they are ‘intense, with a nasty side or an ugly side, but also with a real pathos’ (Cindy Sherman, quoted in Betsy Berne, ‘Studio: Cindy Sherman’, Tate Arts and Culture, 5, May/June 2003, p. 38).

Commenting on the series, Sherman notes ‘I’d been going through a struggle, particularly after 9/11; I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say. I still wanted the work to be the same kind of mixture – intense, with a nasty side or an ugly side, but also with a real pathos about the characters – and [clowns] have an underlying sense of sadness while they’re trying to cheer people up. Clowns are sad, but they’re also psychotically, hysterically happy’ (Cindy Sherman, quoted in Betsy Berne, ‘Studio: Cindy Sherman’, Tate Magazine Arts and Culture, 5, May/June 2003).

An important work by the master of portraiture, Untitled #447 is exemplary of the artist’s profound ability to address the troubled relationship between superficial appearance and inner psychology.