Cindy Sherman

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Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman, Photo by Nathaniel Paluga 2008
Birth name Cindy Sherman
Born January 19, 1954 (1954-01-19) (age 55)
Glen Ridge, New Jersey
Nationality American
Field photographer
Training Buffalo State College
Works Complete Untitled Film Stills, 1977-1980
Awards MacArthur Fellowships

Cindy Sherman (born January 19, 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey) is an American photographer and film director of Office Killer, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Award.

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[edit] Early years

Cindy Sherman was born on January 19, 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, USA. Shortly after her birth, her family moved to the township of Huntington, Long Island.

Sherman became interested in the visual arts at the University at Buffalo, where she began painting. Frustrated with what she saw as the medium's limitations, she abandoned the form and took up photography. "[T]here was nothing more to say [through painting]," she later 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." She spent the rest of her college career focused on photography. Though Sherman had failed a required photography class as a freshman, she repeated the course with Barbara Jo Revelle, whom she credits with introducing her to conceptual art and other contemporary forms.[1] While in college she met Robert Longo, and together with Charles Clough, created Hallwalls, an arts center.

[edit] Photographic career

Sherman works in series, typically photographing herself in a range of costumes. For example, in her landmark 69 photograph series, the Complete Untitled Film Stills, (1977-1980) Sherman appeared as B-movie, foreign film and film noir style actresses. A series, dated 2003, features her as clowns. Although Sherman does not consider her work feminist, many of her photo-series, like the 1981 "Centerfolds," call attention to the stereotyping of women in films, television and magazines.

In response to the NEA funding controversy involving photographers Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, Sherman produced the Sex series in 1989. These photographs featured pieced-together medical dummies in flagrante delicto. Like much of Sherman's work, many critics find the series both disturbing and funny.

In her work, Sherman is both revealed and hidden, named and nameless. She explained to the 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." [2]

In 2006, The Jeu de Paume museum in Paris hosted an exhibition of Sherman's works, “Cindy Sherman: A Retrospective.” It included works spanning 30 years from 1975 to 2005.

What emerges through these images is a subtle analysis of individual identity, both the fantasies that it generates and the forces that shape it. This immersion in the uncertain, conflictual zones where individual identity struggles with the collective imaginary, stereotypes and issues of symbolic power, can be either playful or—when it touches on horror and repulsion, on the decay and dismembering of the body—very dark.

[3]

[edit] The Untitled Film Stills

The Untitled Film Stills are all black and white photos in which Sherman places herself as an unnamed actress in shots reminiscent of foreign films, Hollywood pictures, B-movies, and film noir. Sherman used her own possessions as props, or sometimes borrowed, as in Untitled Film Still #11 in which the doggy pillow belongs to a friend. The shots were also largely taken in her own apartment. The Untitled Film Stills fall into several distinct groups:

  • The first six are grainy and slightly out of focus (e.g. Untitled #4), and each of the 'roles' appears to be played by the same blonde actress.
  • The next group was taken in 1978 at Robert Longo's family beach house on the north fork of Long Island. (Sherman met Longo during her sophomore year, and they were a couple until late 1979)
  • Later in 1978, Sherman began taking shots in outdoor locations around the city. E.g. Untitled Film Still #21
  • Sherman later returned to her apartment, preferring to work from home. She created her version of a Sophia Loren character from the movie Two Women. (E.g. Untitled Film Still #35 (1979))
  • She took several photographs in the series while preparing for a trip to Arizona with her parents. Untitled Film Still #48 (1979), also known as The Hitchhiker, was shot at sunset one evening during the trip.
  • The remainder of the series was shot around New York, like Untitled #54, often featuring a blonde victim typical of film noir.

[edit] Other works

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 1980s "Fairy Tales and Disasters" sequence, are shown at the Metro Pictures Gallery in New York City.

In 2006, Sherman created a series of fashion advertisements for designer Marc Jacobs. The advertisements themselves were photographed by photographer Juergen Teller and released as a monograph on April the 4th by Rizzoli.

In the early 1990s, Sherman worked with Minneapolis band Babes in Toyland, photographing covers for the albums Fontanelle and Painkillers, creating a stage backdrop used in live concerts, and acting in the promotional video for the song "Bruise Violet."

[edit] Film career

Sherman has also worked as a film director; her first film was Office Killer in 1997, starring Jeanne Tripplehorn, Molly Ringwald and Carol Kane. She played a cameo role in John Waters' film, Pecker.

[edit] Awards

In 1995, Sherman was the recipient of one of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowships, popularly known as the "Genius Awards." This fellowship grants $500,000 over five years, no strings attached, to important scholars in a wide range of fields, to encourage their future creative work.

[edit] Personal life

Sherman and musician David Byrne started dating in 2007.[4]

[edit] Popular culture

Sherman has been referenced by the electroclash artists Chicks on Speed in the track "Spoken by Stephanie from Marseille, Yes I Do" from the 2000 K Records album The Re-Releases of the Un-Releases. The song refers to Sherman through the lyrics, "...got more faces than Cindy Sherman." Sherman was also the topic of the song "Cindy of a Thousand Lives", from Billy Bragg's 1991 album Don't Try This at Home.

The Cherry Poppin' Daddies' song "Grand Mal" contains a reference to Sherman's work in the description of the narrator's love interest: "She takes Cindy Sherman pictures/And she cuts herself."

She's also the subject of The Shermans' song, "Cindy Sherman".

Singer Róisín Murphy has admitted the music video for her song You Know Me Better is inspired by Sherman, as well as to having been influenced by her visual style throughout her career.

[edit] Books

[edit] Interviews

[edit] Film and video

  • Cindy Sherman [videorecording] : Transformations. by Paul Tschinkel; Marc H Miller; Sarah Berry; Stan Harrison; Cindy Sherman; Helen Winer; Peter Schjeldahl; Inner-Tube Video. 2002, 28 minutes, Color. NY: Inner-Tube Video.
  • Two filmmakers completed a feature documentary, Guest of Cindy Sherman, about one of the filmmakers' former relationship with Sherman. She was initially supportive, but later opposed the project.[5][6]

[edit] Bibliography

  • Michael Kelly, "Danto and Krauss on Cindy Sherman", In: M. A. Holly & K. Moxey (eds.), Art history, Aesthetics, Visual studies. Massachusetts: Clark Art Institute, 2002.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Belasco, Daniel http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-131200189.html Art in America, 2005-4-1
  2. ^ New York Times, 1 February 1990, "A Portraitist's Romp Through Art History."
  3. ^ Cindy Sherman at Jeu de Paume, ARTINFO, May 17, 2006, http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/15426/cindy-sherman-at-jeu-de-paume/, retrieved on 2008-04-17 
  4. ^ George Rush (2009-02-22). "Ex-'Head' David Byrne talks about working with Brian Eno". Daily News. http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/2009/02/22/2009-02-22_exhead_david_byrne_talks_about_working_w.html. Retrieved on 2009-04-03. 
  5. ^ [ http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/filmguide/Statement_Cindy_Sherman.html Cindy Sherman's disavowal of the film, retrieved June 24, 2008]
  6. ^ http://www.papermag.com/blogs/2008/04/cindy_sherman_speaks.php Cindy Sherman's response retrieved June 24, 2008]

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Sherman"
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