Cindy Sherman, 2008, Metro Pictures, New York
Lately, I keep popping up to the ‘new’ old Cindy Sherman versions of herself. Odd old Sherman-ladies were posing at the latest POP magazine edition in a supplement for Chanel haute couture (full catalogue at The Terrier and Lobster). She incarnates posh-folk female statures in a bucolic technicolor background, with no make-up at all and even highlighting her wrinkles and black circles. Sherman is discovering the process of ageing and thus she turns it into the one and only art form she knows: herself.
Cindy Sherman in Chanel Haute Couture in Pop Magazine
Quite the same spirit dominates her upcoming London exhibition in Sprueth Magers (April 16 to May 27 2011). A series of wall-sized posters represent Sherman-ageing-women which all share some kind of aristocracy and social hierarchy as a comment on modern society’s obsession for image and status. Sardonic disguises and image manipulation are Sherman’s best assets but role playing and gender identification have been for years now a common ground for most performance artists. So, what makes Cindy Sherman such a success?
Cindy Sherman, 2008, Metro Pictures, New York
The press release from her upcoming exhibition states that ‘Cindy Sherman has been working as her own model for more than 30 years now’ which means she was taking photos of herself by ‘taking’ other people’s images -with a preference for glamour B-movies queens of fifties and sixties. Film Stills, a series of archetypical women, was Sherman’s early work and the most recognisable since then. Sherman as a housewife, a mistress, an actress, a women in tears, in despair and so forth.
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still#58, 1980, MoMa collection
Coming out at late 70s and with a decade of performance art already preceded her, Sherman has been quickly acknowledged with an intellectual substance that some of her rivals would say she didn’t have to sweat for. She has been commissioned by the Artforum magazine for a ‘centrefold’ while a set of her Film Stills was bought by MoMa for one million dollars, raising their value and leading to a Christie’s auction in 1999 where one of the Film Stills sold for a $190,000. So, what’s special about her and why some artists make the leap while some others staying in the ‘friends&family’ phase ?
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still#21, 1978, MoMa collection
30years are quite a lot of time to be occupied with yourself -even for a performance artist where identity politics have been an old time classic trend. Apart from the blames of egocentric-ism and self-obsession, which could also fit to a lot of her encounters, Sherman could also be accused for ‘easy-tricky-flashy games’. The audience is attracted by the seductiveness of her seductive ‘objects’. Her celluloid femme fatales, like Sherman in Bardo-style lighting cigarette, have something of stolen beauty. But again all the above accusations could apply to many others and the making of art history is never that unfair. BECAUSE:
1. Sherman found quickly her own trick: to turn the camera to herself 2. She stuck with this and developed it to perfection -every raised eyebrow, every rouged cheek is a work of extensive detailed 3. Glamour and self portraiture as a commodity become her tools of manipulation and stretched the Warholian idea from the 2d flatness of the screening image to her 3dimension own self via an image 4. Cindy is everywhere but we fairly know who Cindy is 5. Her creations are alienated and fictional but also human filtrated with years of hard labour where Sherman was delving into the feminine socio-structure.
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #469, 2008, Metro Pictures, New York
Her recent old dames are just a natural continuity of her work carrying a sense of vanity and wisdom, and borrowing to Sherman the elixir of eternity. That’s why a year before I picked a postcard without knowing it belongs to her and is still hanging on my room
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #122, 1983 (ESTIMATE $80,000-100,000 SOLD AT $116,500)
