Not on view
Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film maker who is known for her conceptual self portraits. Her works can rely on shock, surprise but also beauty. Depending on what era her works have focused on. As a female artist, Sherman addressed the issue of physical gender expectations and identity formation. Cindy Sherman Biography. Name: Cynthia Morris Sherman Nationality: American Genre: Fine Art, Conceptual, Fashion Born: January 19, 1954. Usports football stats. Cindy Sherman was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and studied at the State University of New York at Buffalo, receiving her Bachelor of Arts in 1976.
Date
2008
Classification
Photographs
Medium
Chromogenic print
Dimensions
Sheet (Sight): 63 3/4 × 57 1/4in. (161.9 × 145.4 cm) Overall: 70 1/16 × 63 3/8 × 3 7/8in. (178 × 161 × 9.8 cm) Image (Sight): 63 3/4 × 57 1/4in. (161.9 × 145.4 cm)
Accession number
2009.46a-b
Edition
5/6
Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee and the Photography Committee
Cindy Sherman Famous For
Rights and reproductions
© Cindy Sherman
The woman pictured here is Cindy Sherman, but as is always the case with the artist’s photographs of herself, Untitled is not a self-portrait. Instead, Sherman has used clothing and cosmetics to remodel herself as a society grande dame, one whose world-weary gaze, pasty makeup, and imperious yet hesitant pose suggest that she knows her best days are behind her. This work belongs to one of the artist’s most recent series of self-transformations: a group of large-scale photographs in which she adopts the guises of various aging socialites, exploring our societal preoccupations with youth, beauty, and glamour. Sherman’s photographs are remarkable for their ability to conjure, via judicious cues of dress, makeup, and gesture, a staggering range of recognizable social types. Whether they are fantastical creatures or ordinary people, her imaginary characters often provoke responses that are the antithesis of artifice: a sense of familiarity, and often empathy.
Audio
Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 2008
0:00
Narrator: A woman glances over her shoulder, framed by signs of luxury: elaborate jewelry, a hint of a ball gown, and a palatial formal garden. Her gaze is rather haughty, but also seems to hint at something else—perhaps dissatisfaction or bitterness. At the very least, her face betrays a struggle with her advancing age. Her mouth is pinched and wrinkled, while her forehead seems almost too smooth, and her hair unnaturally dark.
This photograph comes from a series of society portraits by Cindy Sherman. To make these images, Sherman transformed her own appearance using wigs, thick pancake makeup, and costumes. She photographed herself against a green screen, and then Photoshopped her images into opulent backgrounds. The resulting characters seem artificial, and at odds with their surroundings.
Sherman made her society portraits in 2008, when the real estate bubble had hit its peak and the economy was on the verge of collapse. The works suggest an age of excess, a status-obsessed society. This image seems, in part, to critique that society—even to mock its members, cruelly exposing their flaws. At the same time, though, there is something tragic about the work, as if the woman were caught in a trap that is largely self-imposed.
Cindy Sherman Self Portrait
Exhibitions
Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film maker who is known for her conceptual self portraits. Her works can rely on shock, surprise but also beauty. Depending on what era her works have focused on. As a female artist, Sherman addressed the issue of physical gender expectations and identity formation.
Date
2008
Classification
Photographs
Medium
Chromogenic print
Dimensions
Sheet (Sight): 63 3/4 × 57 1/4in. (161.9 × 145.4 cm) Overall: 70 1/16 × 63 3/8 × 3 7/8in. (178 × 161 × 9.8 cm) Image (Sight): 63 3/4 × 57 1/4in. (161.9 × 145.4 cm)
Accession number
2009.46a-b
Edition
5/6
Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee and the Photography Committee
Cindy Sherman Famous For
Rights and reproductions
© Cindy Sherman
The woman pictured here is Cindy Sherman, but as is always the case with the artist’s photographs of herself, Untitled is not a self-portrait. Instead, Sherman has used clothing and cosmetics to remodel herself as a society grande dame, one whose world-weary gaze, pasty makeup, and imperious yet hesitant pose suggest that she knows her best days are behind her. This work belongs to one of the artist’s most recent series of self-transformations: a group of large-scale photographs in which she adopts the guises of various aging socialites, exploring our societal preoccupations with youth, beauty, and glamour. Sherman’s photographs are remarkable for their ability to conjure, via judicious cues of dress, makeup, and gesture, a staggering range of recognizable social types. Whether they are fantastical creatures or ordinary people, her imaginary characters often provoke responses that are the antithesis of artifice: a sense of familiarity, and often empathy.
Audio
Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 2008
0:00
Narrator: A woman glances over her shoulder, framed by signs of luxury: elaborate jewelry, a hint of a ball gown, and a palatial formal garden. Her gaze is rather haughty, but also seems to hint at something else—perhaps dissatisfaction or bitterness. At the very least, her face betrays a struggle with her advancing age. Her mouth is pinched and wrinkled, while her forehead seems almost too smooth, and her hair unnaturally dark.
This photograph comes from a series of society portraits by Cindy Sherman. To make these images, Sherman transformed her own appearance using wigs, thick pancake makeup, and costumes. She photographed herself against a green screen, and then Photoshopped her images into opulent backgrounds. The resulting characters seem artificial, and at odds with their surroundings.
Sherman made her society portraits in 2008, when the real estate bubble had hit its peak and the economy was on the verge of collapse. The works suggest an age of excess, a status-obsessed society. This image seems, in part, to critique that society—even to mock its members, cruelly exposing their flaws. At the same time, though, there is something tragic about the work, as if the woman were caught in a trap that is largely self-imposed.
Cindy Sherman Self Portrait
Exhibitions
Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film maker who is known for her conceptual self portraits. Her works can rely on shock, surprise but also beauty. Depending on what era her works have focused on. As a female artist, Sherman addressed the issue of physical gender expectations and identity formation.
Sherman’s earlier work has toyed with and skewered feminine mystique. In her seminal Untitled Film Stills and other conceptual female portraits, she cast herself in most pictures, adopting various roles in the photographs that both exploit and comment on the male gaze, as well as create a running narrative about female identity.
Her latest works seem to be representative of Sherman looking forward in time. Sherman seems to be focusing on a period of transition and uncertainty in the lives of Western womanhood. The time of sexual attraction and procreation is seemingly over for these women. These society women are approaching a time when their previously engaged and active lives begin to slow down. The slight satirical appearances of the women hint at a vulnerability and a despair in the not too distant future, despite the many attempts at proud stances by these women. Rather than these pictures being a reflection of how men view women, these are strictly Sherman’s eyes we are seeing through this time.
The second remarkable fact about this latest series is that they are basically larger then life. Not only the physical photo dimensions are over-sized but also the make up Sherman uses to assume each specific identity and role for the photographs has been purposefully over done, the clothing worn in each photo helps tell a story, and the poses range from icy cold to slightly demented. There’s women in ball gowns alone in their own living rooms. Women who are trying very hard to look good for the camera.
Cindy Sherman Biography
Photos: Cindy Sherman | Conceptual portaits
