I bought this book several months ago after reading about Cindy Sherman and her boyfriend's adventures in various European cities where her retrospective was being exhibited in art galleries. Her boyfriend, by the way, has one of the most kicka*s online journals (he doesn't like you to call it a 'blog') on the planet.
It's taken me several months to digest her works. This is heavy stuff, folks, make no mistake about it. What I struggled most with was trying to find a theme among the successive phases represented in Sherman's art.
In the end, I think I figured it out. Her art is really about the exploration of identity. In the process, she comments about feminism, overt and hidden sexuality, pornography, advertising, contemporary and classic art, but in the end, how all this onslaught of imagery affects many people's self image.
Sherman is probably best known for her "Film Stills" series from the 70s, in which she pioneered the technique of being a photographer and subject at the same time. She could have stopped there, and probably been a successful artist. In that series, she made up sets that looked like 50s and 60s movie stills. Of course, none of these movies existed.
In the 80s, her photographs became more macabre, exploring death, the despair of lost innocence, and the ominous aspects of sex and the subconscious.
Shortly after this timeframe, she did the "Fashion" series, which really mocks fashion, showing how fashion can be debasing to women, much like pornography; probably even exploring the relationship between fashion and pornography. Many people are accepting and slaves of fashion, yet abhor porn, yet Sherman shows how the two are inextricably related.
In her next phase, Sherman explores the symbolism that old master paintings exerts on modern art, news photography, and advertising, often apparently unintentionally, which raises the point that we're all connected to the collective consciousness as Jung pointed out.
By the mid 90s, Sherman's photography had included grotesque, ripped apart dolls, humans mixed with dolls, gaping pornographic dolls, composite dolls put together from different dolls, mannequins. This phase segued into surrealism, Daliesque imagery made from contorted body parts and more mannequins. This was followed by the "masks" phase, which in turn morphed into the "Hollywood Hamptons" series. Here, one can probably see best what Cindy Sherman is trying to say. While each of the characters she embodies in this series looks bizarre, we've all seen people like this every day. They remind me of Tammy Fay Baker....grotesque and exaggerated makeup. Who are you Tammy Fay? Who are you Cindy Sherman?
Sherman's most recent series is the clowns, which, in hindsight, even though drastically different from each previous phase, makes perfect sense. After all, nobody knows who's really under the clown mask. Many times, not even the clown herself.
Not to be missed if you're into art that explores the nature of consciousness.
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