By Rochelle Roberts
Welcome to “…Is that Art? Friday” week 5!
Cindy Sherman is an American artist know for the photographs she takes of herself. In these photographs, she is often dressed up in a number of disguises and costumes, from Renaissance women, to monsters and clowns to Society women with perfect hair and large houses. Sometimes she stages whole scenes where she poses as different characters in the same photograph. Although she appears in many of her photographs, she maintains that they are not self-portraits, but instead depictions of characters. Her breakthrough work was her Untitled Film Stills series (1977-1980), comprising of 70 black and white photographs of the artist assuming different roles of women in films and other performance media like advertising. Her work is often considered to be a critique on the way women are seen in society, tackling issues of stereotypes and identity, as well as the absurdity of life through the characters she creates.
In an age where nearly everyone is taking selfies and posts them all over social media, it is interesting that Sherman, who many would consider to be a selfie-taker, chooses to distance herself from this term. In a 2017 article for W Magazine, Sherman is quoted as saying “I actually hate the idea of selfies… I really kind of cringe at th[e] thought [of being called a selfie queen]”. Despite her dislike of the word, Sherman’s “selfies” on Instagram have been undoubtably successful and can be seen as part of her ongoing exploration of the self and how appearances are shaped by the world and culture we live in. Since her account went public in 2017, Sherman has acquired 317K followers to date. The pictures from her feed show a different side to her work, despite recurring familiar themes. The works she exhibits in galleries and at art fairs have a distinctly polished look. There is great detail in each image, each costume thought out carefully. The Instagram pictures, on the other hand, seem to be more experimental and light-hearted. Often in these images, Sherman distorts her face using apps on her phone, which are used generally to make people look more beautiful. By manipulating the app to make herself look strange and sometimes grotesque, Sherman appears to be challenging our views of what beauty really is and what it can reveal. The portraits often show her close-up in front of an artificial-looking background, often brightly coloured. And she herself looks artificial too, with her weird blazing skin and overly false makeup, yet we somehow always know it is her, even if she is in a disguise. But how much of what she puts on Instagram informs her more serious work?
At Art Basel Miami Beach last year, Sherman’s gallery Metro Pictures displayed her new tapestry works, the first non-photographic work she has produced. These tapestries pictures of herself that she had previously posted on Instagram. Because the images were not high enough resolution, she could not make them into photographic prints, so instead tried a new medium. This seems to indicate that her Instagram work should perhaps be viewed as part of her ongoing practice. That these images help the artist to think through or formulate ideas for other works which she might term more serious. Instagram is often use by artists to increase their audience and seem current, and as a way to show their followers works-in-progress or experiments. This can make the relationship between the viewer and the artist seem more intimate because the viewer feels as though they are getting an insight into the artist’s world and process. Sherman’s Instagram is no exception. Along with the manipulated images of herself, which themselves seems to illuminate some inner workings of her mind, she also posts pictures from behind the scenes at photo shoots or in her studio. Shown through the lens of Instagram, Sherman is opening a window into her work that we might not otherwise have access to.
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Footnotes
Images taken from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/03/cindy-sherman-interview-retrospective-motivation
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About the writer
Rochelle Roberts is a writer based in London. Her writing is often inspired by paintings and photographs by a variety of different artists, as well as works by other poets. In 2019 she was shortlisted for Streetcake magazine's Experimental Writing Prize. By day she works for the arts publisher Lund Humphries as Assistant Editor.
Rochelle has an MA in Creative Writing and Publishing from City, University of London and a BA in English Language and Creative Writing from the University of Westminster.She has been mentored by the poet Rebecca Tamás and is in the process of completing a poetry course at Faber Academy, led by Richard Scott and Maurice Riordan. She is currently working on her first pamphlet.
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