Through her penetrating photographs of herself masquerading as invented personae, Cindy Sherman has become one of the most influential artists of her generation. She uses makeup, wigs, prostheses, and props to transform herself into a sex kitten, drug addict, party girl, aging diva, and even a corpse as well as many familiar but unclassifiable “types.” Although she serves as her own model, her photographs are not self-portraits; rather, they are investigations of the construction of identity in American culture through stereotypes that are deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness.
Education, Untitled Film Stills
Sherman was born in New Jersey and grew up in a suburban community on Long Island. While studying at Buffalo State College in the mid-1970s, she became interested in photography and was introduced to work by feminist artists, such as Lynda Benglis and Hannah Wilke, who performed some of their work for the camera. In 1977, Sherman made the first of her Untitled Film Stills, a series of 69 black-and-white photographs in which she posed in tableaux suggestive of film stills or publicity shots. Conjuring narratives that are familiar but nonspecific, the series straddles a line between fact and fiction while drawing no distinction between acting, role-playing, and disguise. Today the Untitled Film Stills are recognized as an early example of Postmodernism.
Centerfolds, History Portraits, Society Portraits, Recent Work
Sherman’s second major series, the Centerfolds (1981), are large-scale, horizontally oriented color photographs that show women in postures of vulnerability or helplessness—the artist’s answer to the classic Playboy centerfold. The example in the Walker’s collection from this series suggests a scene from a horror movie or thriller: in an empty, starkly lit room, a young girl crouches on the floor, staring anxiously off camera at some unseen danger. In the History Portraits (1988–1990), she posed as figures familiar from Old Master paintings to explore the representation of social status and power as it can be read through the history of art. The Society Portraits (2008) reveal the pathos of older, upper-class women who struggle to maintain their beauty as they age.
In an unnamed 2016 series, Sherman has returned to the theme of movie stars, but this time her photographs suggest aging but still glamorous divas from cinema’s Golden Age, such as Gloria Swanson and Mary Pickford. In these latest pictures, the artist also seems to be acknowledging her own status as a longtime star in the contemporary art world.
Recognition
Sherman’s work has been collected by numerous museums worldwide. She has been featured in dozens of exhibitions, including a retrospective survey organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2012. Among her many awards are a MacArthur Fellowship (1995) and a National Arts Award for Artistic Excellence (2002).
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