Will the Real Cindy Sherman Please Stand Up? Cindy Sherman’s photographs are not career have contributed to the mythology up with my work that I’d also like to be a a deep cultural chord with scholars, Eva Respini self-portraits. It is true that she is the model around Sherman the artist, especially as her little more anonymous.”2 curators, artists, students, and collectors for her own pictures, but that is beside the fame has risen. Time and time again, writers Sherman’s sustained, eloquent, and alike. Sherman’s work has found itself point. As a matter of practicality, Sherman have asked, Who is the real Cindy Sherman? provocative investigation into the construc- at the crossroads of diverse theoretical dis- prefers to work alone. To create her photo- This is entirely the wrong question, although tion of contemporary identity and the courses—feminism, postmodernism, and graphs, she assumes multiple roles of it’s almost unavoidable as a critical urge. nature of representation is drawn from the poststructuralism, among others— photographer, model, makeup artist, Curators and critics have suggested which unlimited supply of images provided by with each camp claiming the artist as a hairdresser, stylist, and wardrobe mistress. photographs reveal the real Cindy movies, television, magazines, the Internet, repre sen tative of their ideas. The contra- With an arsenal of wigs, costumes, makeup, Sherman,1 and almost every profile on the and art history. Her invented characters dictory and complex readings of Sherman’s prostheses, and props, Sherman has deftly artist includes an account of how unassu- speak to our current culture of YouTube work reinforce its ongoing relevance to altered her physique and surroundings to ming she is “in person.” But it is Sherman’s fame, celebrity makeovers, reality shows, multiple audiences and, in fact, speak to the create a myriad of intriguing tableaus very anonymity that distinguishes her work. and the narcissism of social media. More contradictory forces at play in our culture and characters, from screen siren to clown Rather than explorations of inner psy cho- than ever, identity is malleable and fluid, at large—the surface appearance of to aging socialite. Through her skillful logy, her pictures are about the projection of and Sherman’s work confirms this, revealing ideas in the form of fleeting images that are masquerades, she has created an astonish- personas and stereotypes that are deep- and critiquing the artifice of identity and often mistaken for content and depth. ing and influential body of work that seated in our shared cultural imagination. how photography is complicit in its making. Like any retrospective of a working amuses, titillates, disturbs, and shocks. Even Sherman’s public portraits are Through a variety of characters and artist, this exhibition and the accompanying The fact that Sherman is in her manu factured, such as the 1983 Art News scenarios, she addresses the anxieties of the catalogue provide an unfinished account of photographs is immaterial, but the ongoing cover (which carried the title Who Does status of the self with pictures that are a career that continues to flourish. Because Fig. 1 speculation about her identity gets to the Cindy Sherman Think She Is?) (fig. 1), frighteningly on point and direct in their she is a prolific artist (some five hundred Cindy Sherman. Untitled (Art News very heart of her work and its resonance. featuring a bewigged Sherman in her studio, appraisal of the current culture of the pictures and counting) and a vast literature cover). 1983. Chromogenic color print, The conflation of actor, artist, and subject enacting the role of the “artist” and recalling cultivated self. already exists on Sherman, I will not attempt 15�⁄₈ x 10��⁄₁₆" (39 x 27.1 cm). The Museum and Sherman’s simultaneous presence figures such as Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Sherman’s work is singular in its vision, here a comprehensive account of her of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Janelle Reiring and Helene Winer in and absence from her pictures has driven and Gilbert & George, whose personas but infinitely complex in the ideas that entire career. Rather, I will try to trace how much of the literature on her, especially in loom large in their work. Sherman has are contained by it and radically original in her work has been received and interpreted relation to debates about authorship in acknowl edged: “Hype, money, celebrity. its capacity for multiplicity. For more than over the last three decades within a critical postmodern art. The numerous exhibitions, I like flirting with that idea ofmyself, thirty years, her photographs have encap- context, and to investigate some of the essays, and catalogues dedicated to her but I know because my identity is so tied su lated each era’s leading ideas, striking dominant themes prevalent throughout 12 13 respini Fig. 3 Cindy Sherman. Left to right: Untitled #364, Untitled #365, Untitled #377, and Untitled #369. 1976. Gelatin silver prints (printed 2000), 7�⁄₁₆ x 5" (18.3 x 12.7 cm) each Fig. 2 Snapshot of Cindy Sherman (left) and friend Janet Zink dressed up as old ladies, c. 1966 Sherman’s work—including artifice and To grasp the scope and inventiveness of conceptual and performance artists. contemporary art first-hand. That’s when secretary for a while), preferring instead to fiction; cinema and perform ance; horror Sherman’s work, it is worth revisiting her Sherman failed a mandatory photography I started to question why I should paint. It focus on her work and learn from studio- and the grotesque; myth, carnival, and fairy formative cultural and artistic influences. course because she wasn’t proficient at the just seemed not to make sense.”6 mates and visiting artists. The programs at tale; and gender and class identity—in She was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, in requisite technical skills. When she took Another influence on Sherman was Hallwalls attracted a number of notable tandem with her techniques, from analog 1954 and grew up in suburban Huntington the class again, her subsequent teacher, the alternative space Hallwalls, located in a artists and filmmakers during Sherman’s and digital photography to collage and film. Beach on Long Island, forty miles from Barbara Jo Revelle, was less concerned with conver ted ice-packing warehouse, where tenure there, including Vito Acconci, Martha Sherman works in a serial fashion; each body Manhattan. Belonging to the first genera- technical perfection and exposed her many artists had studios. Hallwalls was Wilson, Lynda Benglis, Jack Goldstein, of work is self-contained and has an internal tion of Americans raised on television, students to Conceptual art and other estab lished by Longo and Buffalo native Dan Graham, Chris Burden, Bruce Nauman, coherence. In acknowl edgment of this Sherman was fully steeped in mass-media contemporary art movements. Sherman Charles Clough, who both had studios in Nancy Holt, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Irwin, working method, I also examine some of culture, and she recalls watching such TV became aware of and interested in the work the building.7 Their first collaboration was Richard Serra, and Katharina Sieverding, Sherman’s major bodies of work in depth. programs as the Million Dollar Movie and of feminist artists who performed for the an impromptu exhibition of their own as well as critics and curators such as Lucy Together, these transverse readings—across the Mary Tyler Moore Show and such films camera, such as Lynda Benglis, Eleanor work on the wall of the hall between their Lippard, Marcia Tucker, and Helene Winer. themes and series—map out the career of as Rear Window.3 Another activity that kept Antin, and Hannah Wilke,5 as well as male studios (hence the name Hallwalls), and When Winer, director of the New York City one of the most remark able and influential Sherman occupied was dressing up: “I’d artists such as Chris Burden and Vito they soon conspired to renovate and alternative gallery Artists Space, visited artists of our time. try to look like another person—even like Acconci, who used their own bodies as the establish the space as an artist-run gallery, Buffalo, she saw the work of Sherman, an old lady [fig. 2]. I would make myself locus for their art. Equally influential on which offi cially opened in February 1975 and Longo, Clough, Nancy Dwyer, and Michael up like a monster, things like that, which Sherman was meeting fellow art student hosted exhibitions, lectures, performances, Zwack, and offered an exchange exhibition seemed like much more fun than just Robert Longo (whom she dated for several and events. Grants from federal and state of artists associated with Hallwalls at looking like Barbie.”4 Even in childhood, years) in her sophomore year: “Robert sources, such as the National Endowment Artists Space in November 1977, marking Sherman’s invented personas were was really instrumental in opening my eyes for the Arts and the New York State Council the beginning of a long relationship with unexpected, providing the seedlings for her to contemporary art, because in the first on the Arts, which were keen to support Sherman. Hallwalls also cosponsored events diverse artistic oeuvre. year of college, you study ancient history arts outside New York City, helped the with local institutions CEPA and the In 1972, Sherman enrolled at Buffalo in art—and in subur ban Long Island, fledgling organization gain traction. Albright-Knox Art Gallery.8 Buffalo was State College in western New York, where where I grew up, I had no exposure to con- Hallwalls was collaborative in spirit and gaining a reputation for avant-garde art and she initially studied painting. She was adept temporary art.