Artist Focus: Cindy Sherman
'We’re all products of what we want to project to the world. Even people who don’t spend any time, or think they don’t, on preparing themselves for the world out there – I think that ultimately, they have for their whole lives groomed themselves to be a certain way, to present a face to the world.' Cindy Sherman
Provocative and captivating, Cindy Sherman’s strikingly physical photographs are demandingly dramatic and powerful. Exploring the multiple depictions of the female body and notion of identity, Sherman transforms herself into a horde of various characters. The present works, which were created between 1977 to 1993, reflect the essence of the photographer’s practice which has become synonymous with dramatized impersonations and satirical portraiture, challenging the various depicted motifs. Typically using her own body in varying guises, the present examples use powerful chiaroscuro to add drama, intensity and humour. Through the deliberate poses, Sherman depicts herself in these works as an object of the viewer’s gaze. The artist's permanent legacy within the history of art is recognised at the major retrospective of the artist’s works shown at the National Gallery of Art, London, during the summer of 2019.
Created in the year that Sherman started her famously renowned suite of sixty-nine Untitled Film Stills, Film Still #62, 1977, executed in black and white, sees Sherman masquerading as a female character borrowed from the glamourised images of 1950's cinema and film noir, tapping into the American fascination with peeping behind-the-scenes of famed characters only captured on the big screen.
Exemplifying the horror and absurdity that Sherman explored in her Fairy Tale series, Untitled #155, 1985, is strange and surreal, liberated from the limitations of reality, Sherman appears to be constructed, non-human, with plastic, doll-like skin, so extreme is the makeup. 'In horror stories or in fairy tales, the fascination with the morbid is … a way to prepare for the unthinkable… the real horrors of the world are unmatchable, and they’re too profound. It’s much easier to absorb – to be entertained by it, but also to let it affect you psychologically – if it’s done in a fake, humorous, artificial way' (Cindy Sherman, quoted in Cindy Sherman: Retrospective, exh. cat., The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1998, p. 8).
From 1989-90 Sherman created her own renderings of Historical Portraits - whilst not generally replicating any specific painting, Sherman recreates types from the genre. This is portrayed in Untitled #208, 1990, through the thinking pose of Sherman's 'philosopher' at her desk on which sits a small replica of a human skull and empty candle stand, echoing historic vanitas and memento mori still lifes. Through these portraits Sherman often pokes fun at the historical tradition of idealising and exaggerating certain aspects of the female anatomy. In Untitled #275 , 1993, Sherman langours on a heavily draped couch in the pose of an idealised odalisque. Here, amusingly her enhanced pendulous breasts fall forward as she looks out, inviting the art historical debate on the female/ male gaze.
Spanning across three of the artist’s systematic evolving set of series, the present works exemplify Sherman’s comments on the historical view of the female body with her characteristic sardonic wit. As Sherman stated 'I see humour in almost everything, in even the grotesque things, because I don’t want people to believe in them as if they were documentary that really does show true horror. I want them to be artificial, so you can laugh or giggle at them, as I do when I watch horror movies.' (Cindy Sherman, 2012.)