Cindy Sherman
Encyclopedia
Cindy Sherman is an American
photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual
portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City
. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship
. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London
in Europe and Metro Pictures gallery in New York. Through a number of different series of works, Sherman has sought to raise challenging and important questions about the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art.
as the youngest by far of five children. Shortly after her birth, her family moved to the township of Huntington
, Long Island.
Sherman became interested in the visual arts
at Buffalo State College
, 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." Sherman has said about this time: "One of the reasons I started photographing myself was that supposedly in the Spring one of my teachers would take the class out to a place near Buffalo where there were waterfalls and everybody romps around without clothes on and takes pictures of each other. I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this. But if we’re going to have to go to the woods I better deal with it early.’ Luckily we never had to do that." Sussler, Betsy http://bombsite.com/issues/12/articles/638 “Cindy Sherman” in BOMB Magazine
Spring 1985, Retrieved August 10, 2011 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. While in college she met Robert Longo
who encouraged her to record her process of "dolling up" for parties, and together with Charles Clough, created Hallwalls
, an arts center.
retrospective included five straight-on head shots dated 1975) Sherman appeared as B-movie
, foreign film and film noir
style actresses. When asked if she considers herself to be acting in her photographs, Sherman said, “I never thought I was acting. When I became involved with close-ups I needed more information in the expression. I couldn’t depend on background or atmosphere. I wanted the story to come from the face. Somehow the acting just happened.” Sussler, Betsy http://bombsite.com/issues/12/articles/638 “Cindy Sherman” in BOMB Magazine
Spring 1985, Retrieved August 10, 2011
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. When talking about one of her centerfold pictures Cindy stated, "In content I wanted a man opening up the magazine suddenly look at it with an expectation of something lascivious and then feel like the violator that they would be. Looking at this woman who is perhaps a victim. I didn't think of them as victims at the time... But I suppose... Obviously I'm trying to make someone feel bad for having a certain expectation."
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." She describes her process as intuitive, and that she responds to elements of a setting such as light, mood, location, and costume, and will continue to change external elements until she finds what she wants. She has said of her process, "I think of becoming a different person. I look into a mirror next to the camera…it’s trance-like. By staring into it I try to become that character through the lens...When I see what I want, my intuition takes over—both in the 'acting' and in the editing. Seeing that other person that’s up there, that’s what I want. It’s like magic.”
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:
In December 1995, the Museum of Modern Art
, New York, acquired all sixty-nine black-and-white photographs in Sherman's Untitled Film Stills series for an estimated $1 million.
in New York City
. With her series Rear Screen Projections, 1980, Sherman switched from black-and-white to color and to clearly larger formats. Centerfolds/Horizontals, 1981, are inspired by the center spreads in fashion and pornographic magazines. The twelve photographs were initially commissioned -- but not used by -- Artforum
's Editor in Chief Ingrid Sischy for an artist's section in the magazine. Close-cropped and close up, they portray young women in various roles, from a sultry seductress to a frightened, vulnerable victim who might have just been raped. About her aims with the self-portraits, Sherman has said: "Some of them I’d hope would seem very psychological. While I’m working I might feel as tormented as the person I’m portraying.” In Fairy Tales, 1985, and Disasters, 1986–1989, Cindy Sherman uses visible prostheses and mannequins for the first time. Between 1989 and 1990, Sherman made thirty-five much larger color photographs restaging the settings of various European portrait paintings of the fifteenth through early nineteenth centuries. Under the title History Portraits Sherman photographed herself in costumes flanked with props and prosthetics portraying famous artistic figures of the past, like Raphael
’s La Fornarina, Caravaggio
’s Sick Bacchus and Judith Beheadding Holofernes, or Jean Fouquet
’s Madonna of Melun.
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
. In 2003, finally, she produced the Clowns cycle, where the use of digital photography enabled her to create chromatically garish backdrops and montages of numerous characters.
. The images Sherman created for these two ‘fashion shoots’ are the antithesis of the glamorous world of fashion. The model in the photographs appears silly, angry, dejected, exhausted, abused, scarred, grimy and psychologically disturbed. Sherman also created photographs for an editorial in Harper's Bazaar
in 1993. In 1994, she produced the Post Card Series for Comme des Garçons
for the brand's autumn/winter 1994–95 collections in collaboration with Rei Kawakubo
. In 2006, she created a series of fashion advertisements for designer Marc Jacobs
. The advertisements themselves were photographed by Juergen Teller
and released as a monograph by Rizzoli. For Balenciaga
, Sherman created the six-image series Cindy Sherman: Untitled (Balenciaga) in 2008; they were first shown to the public in 2010. Also in 2010, Sherman started designing jewelry. In 2011, cosmetic giant M.A.C.
picked Sherman as the face of their fall line. In the three images of the campaign, Sherman uses the line to completely alter her look appearing as a garish heiress, a doll-like ingénue and a full-on clown.
, 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." 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
. She also played a role in The Feature
in 2008, starring ex-husband Michel Auder
, which won a New Vision Award.
opened later that year, Sherman's photographs were the first show.
Sherman has since participated in many international events, including SITE Santa Fe (2004); the Venice Biennale
(1982, 1995); and five Whitney Biennial
s. Cindy Sherman lives and works in New York. In addition to numerous group exhibitions, Sherman's work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum
in Amsterdam (1982), Whitney Museum of American Art
in New York (1987), Kunsthalle Basel
(1991), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
in Washington, D.C. (1995), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
(1998), the Serpentine Gallery
in London and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
(2003), and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin (2006), among others. Major traveling retrospectives of Sherman’s work have been organized by the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam (1996); the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles
and the Museum of Modern Art
in New York (1997); and Kunsthaus Bregenz
, Austria, Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst
, Denmark, and Jeu de Paume
in Paris (2006-2007). In 2009, Sherman was in included in the seminal show The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
.
In 2012, the Museum of Modern Art will mount “Cindy Sherman,” a show that will chronicle Sherman's work from the mid-1970s on and include more than 170 photographs. The exhibition will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
and the Walker Art Center
in Minneapolis.
’s Man Ray Award (2009). In 1981, Sherman was artist-in-residence at the non-profit Light Work in Syracuse, New York.
Untitled #153 (1985), featuring the artist as a mudcaked corpse, was sold by Phillips de Pury & Company
for a record $2.7 million, near the $3 million high estimate. In 2011, a print of Untitled #96, which depicts Sherman as a lovelorn woman clutching a personal ad while lying on a kitchen floor, fetched $3.89 million dollars at Christie's, making it the most expensive photograph at that time. It was a part of an edition of 10 from 1981.
;
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
;
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
;
Tate Modern
, London
;
and the Whitney Museum of American Art
.
in 1984, making her step-mother to Auder's daughter, Alexandra. They later divorced in 1999.
Sherman and musician David Byrne
started dating in 2007.
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 said that 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.
Sherman was referenced in The Other Guys (2010).
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship
MacArthur Fellows Program
The MacArthur Fellows Program or MacArthur Fellowship is an award given by the John D. and Catherine T...
. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London
Sprüth Magers Berlin London
Sprüth Magers is a commerical art gallery owned by Monika Spüth and Philomene Magers, with spaces in London and Berlin, representing such artists including Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Andreas Gursky, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman and Rosemarie Trockel...
in Europe and Metro Pictures gallery in New York. Through a number of different series of works, Sherman has sought to raise challenging and important questions about the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art.
Early years
Cindy Sherman was born on January 19, 1954 in Glen Ridge, New JerseyGlen Ridge, New Jersey
Glen Ridge is a borough in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 7,527. In 2010, Glen Ridge was ranked as the 38th Best Place to live by New Jersey Monthly magazine....
as the youngest by far of five children. Shortly after her birth, her family moved to the township of Huntington
Huntington, New York
The Town of Huntington is one of ten towns in Suffolk County, New York, USA. Founded in 1653, it is located on the north shore of Long Island in northwestern Suffolk County, with Long Island Sound to its north and Nassau County adjacent to the west. Huntington is part of the New York metropolitan...
, Long Island.
Sherman became interested in the visual arts
Visual arts
The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...
at Buffalo State College
Buffalo State College
The State University of New York College at Buffalo, referred to as Buffalo State College, often referred to colloquially as Buff State, is a public, liberal arts college in Buffalo, New York, United States and is part of the State University of New York. Buffalo State was founded in 1871 as the...
, where she began painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
. 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." Sherman has said about this time: "One of the reasons I started photographing myself was that supposedly in the Spring one of my teachers would take the class out to a place near Buffalo where there were waterfalls and everybody romps around without clothes on and takes pictures of each other. I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this. But if we’re going to have to go to the woods I better deal with it early.’ Luckily we never had to do that." Sussler, Betsy http://bombsite.com/issues/12/articles/638 “Cindy Sherman” in BOMB Magazine
Bomb Magazine
BOMB is a quarterly magazine edited by artists and writers. It is composed, primarily, of interviews between creative people working in a variety of disciplines — visual art, literature, music, film, theater and architecture....
Spring 1985, Retrieved August 10, 2011 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. While in college she met Robert Longo
Robert Longo
Robert Longo is an American painter and sculptor. Longo became famous in the 1980s for his "Men in the Cities" series, which depicted sharply dressed businessmen writhing in contorted emotion.-Early life and education:...
who encouraged her to record her process of "dolling up" for parties, and together with Charles Clough, created Hallwalls
Hallwalls
Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center is a non-profit organization in Buffalo, N.Y. that showcases artists of diverse backgrounds in film, video, literature, music, performance, media and visual arts. Since its inception, Hallwalls has been dedicated to promoting artists from multiple backgrounds and...
, an arts center.
Photography
Sherman works in series, typically photographing herself in a range of costumes. To create her photographs, Sherman shoots alone in her studio, assuming multiple roles as author, director, make-up artist, hairstylist, wardrobe mistress, and of course, model. Bus Riders (1976/2000) are a series of photographs that feature the artist as a variety of meticulously observed characters. The photographs were shot in 1976 but, like another series entitled Murder Mystery People, not printed or exhibited until 2000 and are among the artist's earliest work. Sherman uses elaborate costumes and make up to transform her identity for each image, but is photographed in a sparse, obviously staged setting with a wooden chair standing in for the bus seat. In her landmark 69 photograph series, the Complete Untitled Film Stills, (1977–1980; although the 1997 traveling MOCAMuseum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
retrospective included five straight-on head shots dated 1975) Sherman appeared as B-movie
B-movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
, foreign film and film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
style actresses. When asked if she considers herself to be acting in her photographs, Sherman said, “I never thought I was acting. When I became involved with close-ups I needed more information in the expression. I couldn’t depend on background or atmosphere. I wanted the story to come from the face. Somehow the acting just happened.” Sussler, Betsy http://bombsite.com/issues/12/articles/638 “Cindy Sherman” in BOMB Magazine
Bomb Magazine
BOMB is a quarterly magazine edited by artists and writers. It is composed, primarily, of interviews between creative people working in a variety of disciplines — visual art, literature, music, film, theater and architecture....
Spring 1985, Retrieved August 10, 2011
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. When talking about one of her centerfold pictures Cindy stated, "In content I wanted a man opening up the magazine suddenly look at it with an expectation of something lascivious and then feel like the violator that they would be. Looking at this woman who is perhaps a victim. I didn't think of them as victims at the time... But I suppose... Obviously I'm trying to make someone feel bad for having a certain expectation."
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." She describes her process as intuitive, and that she responds to elements of a setting such as light, mood, location, and costume, and will continue to change external elements until she finds what she wants. She has said of her process, "I think of becoming a different person. I look into a mirror next to the camera…it’s trance-like. By staring into it I try to become that character through the lens...When I see what I want, my intuition takes over—both in the 'acting' and in the editing. Seeing that other person that’s up there, that’s what I want. It’s like magic.”
The Untitled Film Stills
The series Untitled Film Stills, 1977–1980, with which Cindy Sherman achieved international recognition, consists of 69 black-and-white photographs. The artist poses in different roles and settings, producing a result reminiscent of stills typical of Italian neorealism or American film noir of the 1940s, '50s and '60s. She avoided putting titles on the images to preserve their ambiguity. Modest in scale compared to Sherman’s later cibachrome photographs, they are all 8 1/2 by 11 inches, each displayed in identical, simple black frames.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 LongoRobert LongoRobert Longo is an American painter and sculptor. Longo became famous in the 1980s for his "Men in the Cities" series, which depicted sharply dressed businessmen writhing in contorted emotion.-Early life and education:...
'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 LorenSophia LorenSophia Loren, OMRI is an Italian actress.In 1962, Loren won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, along with 21 awards, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance...
character from the movie Two WomenTwo WomenTwo Women is a 1960 Italian film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It tells the story of a woman trying to protect her young daughter from the horrors of war. The film stars Sophia Loren, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Eleonora Brown, Carlo Ninchi and Andrea Checchi...
. (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.
In December 1995, the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York, acquired all sixty-nine black-and-white photographs in Sherman's Untitled Film Stills series for an estimated $1 million.
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, were shown for the first time at the Metro Pictures GalleryMetro Pictures Gallery
METRO PICTURES is a New York City art gallery founded in 1980 by Janelle Reiring, previously of Castelli Gallery, and Helene Winer, previously of Artist's Space...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. With her series Rear Screen Projections, 1980, Sherman switched from black-and-white to color and to clearly larger formats. Centerfolds/Horizontals, 1981, are inspired by the center spreads in fashion and pornographic magazines. The twelve photographs were initially commissioned -- but not used by -- Artforum
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
's Editor in Chief Ingrid Sischy for an artist's section in the magazine. Close-cropped and close up, they portray young women in various roles, from a sultry seductress to a frightened, vulnerable victim who might have just been raped. About her aims with the self-portraits, Sherman has said: "Some of them I’d hope would seem very psychological. While I’m working I might feel as tormented as the person I’m portraying.” In Fairy Tales, 1985, and Disasters, 1986–1989, Cindy Sherman uses visible prostheses and mannequins for the first time. Between 1989 and 1990, Sherman made thirty-five much larger color photographs restaging the settings of various European portrait paintings of the fifteenth through early nineteenth centuries. Under the title History Portraits Sherman photographed herself in costumes flanked with props and prosthetics portraying famous artistic figures of the past, like Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
’s La Fornarina, Caravaggio
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...
’s Sick Bacchus and Judith Beheadding Holofernes, or Jean Fouquet
Jean Fouquet
Jean Fouquet was a preeminent French painter of the 15th century, a master of both panel painting and manuscript illumination, and the apparent inventor of the portrait miniature. He was the first French artist to travel to Italy and experience at first hand the Italian Early...
’s Madonna of Melun.
In response to the NEA
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
funding controversy involving photographers Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...
and Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano is an American photographer and artist who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported...
, Sherman produced the Sex series in 1989. These photographs featured pieced-together medical dummies in flagrante delicto
In flagrante delicto
In flagrante delicto or sometimes simply in flagrante is a legal term used to indicate that a criminal has been caught in the act of committing an offence...
. In 2003, finally, she produced the Clowns cycle, where the use of digital photography enabled her to create chromatically garish backdrops and montages of numerous characters.
Fashion
Sherman’s career has also included several fashion series in 1983 and 1993. In 1983, fashion designer and retailer Dianne Benson commissioned Sherman to create a series of advertisements for her store, Dianne B., that appeared in several issues of Interview magazine. In the same year the French fashion house Dorothée Bis offered their own clothes for a series to appear in French VogueVogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
. The images Sherman created for these two ‘fashion shoots’ are the antithesis of the glamorous world of fashion. The model in the photographs appears silly, angry, dejected, exhausted, abused, scarred, grimy and psychologically disturbed. Sherman also created photographs for an editorial in Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
in 1993. In 1994, she produced the Post Card Series for Comme des Garçons
Comme des Garçons
Comme des Garçons, written コム・デ・ギャルソン in Japanese and French for "Like Boys," is a Japanese fashion label headed by Rei Kawakubo, who owns the company with her husband Adrian Joffe....
for the brand's autumn/winter 1994–95 collections in collaboration with Rei Kawakubo
Rei Kawakubo
is a Japanese fashion designer, founder of Comme des Garçons.She is untrained as a fashion designer, but studied fine arts and literature at Keio University. After graduation, Kawakubo worked in a textile company and began working as a freelance stylist in 1967....
. In 2006, she created a series of fashion advertisements for designer Marc Jacobs
Marc Jacobs
Marc Jacobs is an American fashion designer. He is the head designer for Marc Jacobs, as well as Marc by Marc Jacobs, a diffusion line, with more than 200 retail stores in 60 countries. He has been the creative director of the French design house Louis Vuitton since 1997...
. The advertisements themselves were photographed by Juergen Teller
Juergen Teller
Juergen Teller is an artist and fashion photographer.-Life and career:Teller studied at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie in Munich, Germany...
and released as a monograph by Rizzoli. For Balenciaga
Balenciaga
Balenciaga is a fashion house founded by Cristóbal Balenciaga, a Basque designer, born in the Basque Country, Spain. He had a reputation as a couturier of uncompromising standards and was referred to as "the master of us all" by Christian Dior. His bubble skirts and odd, feminine, yet ultra-modern...
, Sherman created the six-image series Cindy Sherman: Untitled (Balenciaga) in 2008; they were first shown to the public in 2010. Also in 2010, Sherman started designing jewelry. In 2011, cosmetic giant M.A.C.
Make-up Art Cosmetics
Make-up Art Cosmetics, better known as M·A·C or MAC Cosmetics, is a manufacturer of cosmetics founded in Toronto, Canada and headquartered in New York City, New York.-History:...
picked Sherman as the face of their fall line. In the three images of the campaign, Sherman uses the line to completely alter her look appearing as a garish heiress, a doll-like ingénue and a full-on clown.
Music and Films
In the early 1990s, Sherman worked with Minneapolis band Babes in ToylandBabes in Toyland (band)
Babes in Toyland was an American alternative rock band formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1987. The band was formed by Oregon native Kat Bjelland , with Lori Barbero and Michelle Leon , who was later replaced by Maureen Herman in 1992...
, 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." Sherman has also worked as a film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
; her first film was Office Killer
Office Killer
Office Killer is a comedy-horror film directed by Cindy Sherman. It was released in 1997 and stars Carol Kane, Molly Ringwald and David Thornton.- Plot :...
in 1997, starring Jeanne Tripplehorn
Jeanne Tripplehorn
Jeanne Marie Tripplehorn is an American film and television actress. She was brought to the public's attention through her supporting role in the 1992 film Basic Instinct, and since 2006 has starred opposite Bill Paxton in the HBO drama Big Love.-Early life:Tripplehorn was born in Tulsa,...
, Molly Ringwald
Molly Ringwald
Molly Kathleen Ringwald is an American actress, singer and dancer. Having appeared in the John Hughes movies Sixteen Candles , The Breakfast Club , and Pretty in Pink , Ringwald has been frequently named the greatest teen star of all time...
and Carol Kane
Carol Kane
Carolyn Laurie "Carol" Kane is an American actress. Kane has worked on the stage, on the screen and in television. She appeared on the television series Taxi in the early 1980s, as the wife of the character played by Andy Kaufman. She received two Emmy Awards for her work...
. She played a cameo role
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
in John Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...
' film, Pecker
Pecker (film)
Pecker is a 1998 comedy-drama film written and directed by John Waters and starring Edward Furlong and Christina Ricci. Like all Waters' films, it was filmed and set in Baltimore; this film in the Hampden neighborhood....
. She also played a role in The Feature
The Feature
'The Feature' is a collaboration between filmmakers Michel Auder and Andrew Neel. Using a vast video ‘library’ that Auder has created over the last 40 years, in combination with original present-day footage of Auder shot by Neel, the two filmmakers are setting out to make a feature length film...
in 2008, starring ex-husband Michel Auder
Michel Auder
Michel Auder was born in Soissons France in 1945. He began making films at the age of 18. He was influenced of the French New Wave and experimental cinema, most notably Jean-Luc Godard and Andy Warhol. In 1969, Auder met and eventually married Viva, one of Warhol’s principal talents. A year later,...
, which won a New Vision Award.
Exhibitions
Cindy Sherman's first solo show in New York at a noncommercial space called the Kitchen in 1980. When the Metro PicturesMetro Pictures
Metro Pictures Corporation was an American motion picture production company founded in late 1915 by Richard A. Rowland . Louis B. Mayer who worked for Metro Pictures Corporation early on. It is not to be confused with MGM which is a much later franchise concerning itself, Goldwyn and Louis B....
opened later that year, Sherman's photographs were the first show.
Sherman has since participated in many international events, including SITE Santa Fe (2004); the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
(1982, 1995); and five Whitney Biennial
Whitney Biennial
The Whitney Biennial is a biennale exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, USA. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932, the first biennial was in 1973...
s. Cindy Sherman lives and works in New York. In addition to numerous group exhibitions, Sherman's work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum
Stedelijk Museum
Founded in 1874, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is a museum for classic modern and contemporary art in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It has been housed on the Paulus Potterstraat, next to Museum Square Museumplein and to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam Zuid...
in Amsterdam (1982), Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
in New York (1987), Kunsthalle Basel
Kunsthalle Basel
Since opening in 1872, Kunsthalle Basel has examined various positions concerning contemporary art. This renowned exhibition space in the Swiss city of Basel has a very long tradition of supporting avant-garde artists and expanding the accepted boundaries of contemporary art. Contemporary art...
(1991), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
in Washington, D.C. (1995), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
(1998), the Serpentine Gallery
Serpentine Gallery
The Serpentine Gallery is an art gallery in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, central London. It focuses on modern and contemporary art. The exhibitions, architecture, education and public programmes attract approximately 750,000 visitors a year...
in London and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, holds the national collection of modern art. When opened in 1960, the collection was held in Inverleith House, at the Royal Botanic Gardens...
(2003), and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin (2006), among others. Major traveling retrospectives of Sherman’s work have been organized by the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam (1996); the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
and the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in New York (1997); and Kunsthaus Bregenz
Kunsthaus Bregenz
The Kunsthaus Bregenz presents temporary exhibitions of international contemporary art in Bregenz, capital of the Austrian Federal State of Vorarlberg...
, Austria, Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located directly on the shore of the Øresund Sound in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the most visited art museum in Denmark with an extensive permanent collection of modern and contemporary art, dating from World War II and up...
, Denmark, and Jeu de Paume
Jeu de paume
Jeu de paume is a ball-and-court game that originated in France. It was an indoor precursor of tennis played without racquets, though these were eventually introduced. It is a former Olympic sport, and has the oldest ongoing annual world championship in sport, first established over 250 years ago...
in Paris (2006-2007). In 2009, Sherman was in included in the seminal show The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
.
In 2012, the Museum of Modern Art will mount “Cindy Sherman,” a show that will chronicle Sherman's work from the mid-1970s on and include more than 170 photographs. The exhibition will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
and the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
in Minneapolis.
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. Among her awards are the Guild Hall Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Arts (2005); American Academy of Arts and Sciences Award (2003); National Arts Award (2001); Jewish MuseumJewish Museum (New York)
The Jewish Museum of New York, an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, is the leading Jewish museum in the United States. With over 26,000 objects, it contains the largest collection of art and Jewish culture outside of museums in Israel. The museum is housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in...
’s Man Ray Award (2009). In 1981, Sherman was artist-in-residence at the non-profit Light Work in Syracuse, New York.
Art market
In 2010, Sherman’s nearly six foot tall chromogenic color printChromogenic color print
Chromogenic color prints are full-color photographic prints made using chromogenic materials and processes. These prints may be produced from an original which is a color negative, slide, or digital image. The chromogenic print process, was nearly synonymous with the 20th century color snapshot...
Untitled #153 (1985), featuring the artist as a mudcaked corpse, was sold by Phillips de Pury & Company
Phillips de Pury & Company
Phillips de Pury & Company is an auction house and art dealership, with offices in London, New York, Geneva, Berlin, Brussels, Los Angeles, Milan, Munich and Paris. Phillips conducts auctions in New York, London and Geneva in the areas of Contemporary Art, Photography, 20-21st Century Design, Art...
for a record $2.7 million, near the $3 million high estimate. In 2011, a print of Untitled #96, which depicts Sherman as a lovelorn woman clutching a personal ad while lying on a kitchen floor, fetched $3.89 million dollars at Christie's, making it the most expensive photograph at that time. It was a part of an edition of 10 from 1981.
Collections
Madison Museum of Contemporary ArtMadison Museum of Contemporary Art
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art — MMoCA, formerly known as the Madison Art Center, is an art museum located in Madison, Wisconsin. A three-story glass facade "icon" on the corner of State and Henry Streets serves as the museum's main staircase, as well as its architectural...
;
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues...
;
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
;
Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
;
and the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
.
Personal life
Sherman married director Michel AuderMichel Auder
Michel Auder was born in Soissons France in 1945. He began making films at the age of 18. He was influenced of the French New Wave and experimental cinema, most notably Jean-Luc Godard and Andy Warhol. In 1969, Auder met and eventually married Viva, one of Warhol’s principal talents. A year later,...
in 1984, making her step-mother to Auder's daughter, Alexandra. They later divorced in 1999.
Sherman and musician David Byrne
David Byrne
David Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
started dating in 2007.
Popular culture
Sherman has been referenced by the electroclashElectroclash
Electroclash is a style of music that fuses New Wave and electronic dance music. It emerged in New York and Detroit in the later 1990s, pioneered by acts including I-F and those associated with Gerald Donald, and is associated with acts including Peaches, Adult, and Fischerspooner...
artists Chicks on Speed
Chicks on Speed
Chicks on Speed is a multi-national musical ensemble, formed in Munich in 1997, when members Melissa Logan, Kiki Moorse and Alex Murray-Leslie met at the Academy of Fine Arts....
in the track "Spoken by Stephanie from Marseille, Yes I Do" from the 2000 K Records
K Records
K Records is an independent record label in Olympia, Washington, co-founded, owned, and operated by Calvin Johnson, formerly of the bands Cool Rays, Beat Happening, The Go Team, The Halo Benders and presently in the bands Dub Narcotic Sound System and The Hive Dwellers...
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
Billy Bragg
Stephen William Bragg , better known as Billy Bragg, is an English alternative rock musician and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, and his lyrics mostly deal with political or romantic themes...
's 1991 album Don't Try This at Home.
The Cherry Poppin' Daddies
Cherry Poppin' Daddies
The Cherry Poppin' Daddies are an American band established in Eugene, Oregon, in 1989. Formed by Steve Perry and Dan Schmid , the band has experienced many membership changes over the years, with only Perry, Schmid and Dana Heitman currently remaining from the original line-up.The Daddies' music...
' 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
Róisín Murphy
Róisín Marie Murphy is an Irish singer-songwriter and record producer, known for her electronic style.Murphy first came to note as part of the electronic music duo Moloko. Her partner in the band was then-boyfriend Mark Brydon. After the two ended their romantic relationship, Murphy released her...
has said that the music video for her song You Know Me Better
You Know Me Better
"You Know Me Better" is a song by Irish recording artist Róisín Murphy from her second solo studio album, Overpowered. Co-written with and produced by Groove Armada's Andy Cato, the track was released as the album's third single on 31 March 2008....
is inspired by Sherman, as well as to having been influenced by her visual style throughout her career.
Sherman was referenced in The Other Guys (2010).
Books
- (2007) Cindy Sherman: A Play of Selves.Hatje Cantz. ISBN 978-3-7757-1942-1.
- (2006) Cindy Sherman: Working Girl.Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis. ISBN 978-0-9712195-8-8.
- (2004) Cindy Sherman: Centerfolds. Skarstedt Fine Art. ISBN 0-9709090-2-0.
- (2003) Cindy Sherman: The Complete Untitled Film Stills. Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-87070-507-5.
- (2002) Elisabeth Bronfen, et al. Cindy Sherman: Photographic Works 1975-1995 (Paperback). Schirmer/Mosel. ISBN 3-88814-809-X.
- (2001) Early Work of Cindy Sherman. Glenn Horowitz Bookseller. ISBN 0-9654020-3-7.
- (2000) Leslie Sills, et al. In Real Life: Six Women Photographers. Holiday House. ISBN 0-8234-1498-1.
- (2000) Amanda Cruz, et al. Cindy Sherman: Retrospective (Paperback). Thames & HudsonThames & HudsonThames & Hudson is a publisher of illustrated books on art, architecture, design, and visual culture. With its headquarters in London, England it has a sister company in New York and subsidiaries in Melbourne, Singapore and Hong Kong...
, ISBN 0-500-27987-X. - (1999) Essential, The: Cindy Sherman. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., ISBN 0-8109-5808-2.
- (1999) Shelley Rice (ed.) Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman. MIT PressMIT PressThe MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .-History:...
. ISBN 0-262-68106-4.
Film and video
- Cindy Sherman [videorecording] : Transformations. by Paul Tschinkel; Marc H Miller; Sarah Berry; Stan Harrison; Cindy Sherman; Helen Winer; Peter SchjeldahlPeter SchjeldahlPeter Schjeldahl, , is an American art critic, poet, and educator.Schjeldahl was born in Fargo, North Dakota. He grew up in small towns throughout Minnesota, and attended Carleton College and The New School...
; 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.
Quotes
- "I can’t work without it. And it has to be the right kind, because if it’s not then I get into a bad mood. I work with a remote so that I can change CDs instantly if I need to. (Sherman talking about her need to have music on while working)"
- "I didn't want to make 'high' art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn't thinking in terms of precious prints or archival quality; I didn't want the work to seem like a commodity."
- "I was supporting myself, but nothing like the guy painters, as I refer to them. I always resented that actually.. we were all getting the same amount of press, but they were going gangbusters with sales."
- "When I do work, I get so much done in such a concentrated time that once I’m through a series, I’m so drained I don’t want to get near the camera."
- "I was feeling guilty in the beginning; it was frustrating to be successful when a lot of my friends weren’t. Also, I was constantly being reminded of that by people in my family making jokes."
- "If I knew what the picture was going to be like I wouldn’t make it. It was almost like it was made already.. the challenge is more about trying to make what you can’t think of."
- "The work is what it is and hopefully it’s seen as feminist work, or feminist-advised work, but I’m not going to go around espousing theoretical bullshit about feminist stuff."