MUSE
CINDY SHERMAN
“Being able to make a living doing something one truly loves to do – is my definition of success.”
Cindy Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits depicting herself as various imagined characters. For over four decades, she has explored the meaning of identity, subverting the visual and cultural codes of celebrity, gender, and photography as an artform.
Sherman was born in 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. An early interest in painting inspired her to take visual arts at Buffalo State College in 1972. But, frustrated by the “limitations of painting as a medium of art,” she abandoned painting, turning instead to photography. “I was meticulously copying other art,” she said years later. “I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.”
While at college, Sherman began to develop her visual style through the camera. By dressing herself as different characters in clothes gathered from thrift-stores and later by adding exaggerated make-up, she was able to accentuate the characters, giving them an unsettling appearance that would become her trademark.
This character development has been at the heart of Sherman’s work ever since. Her inspiration often comes from mass-media stereotypes—to some degree familiar to her audience, under increasingly grotesque and disconcerting layers—but also from real people and art-historical imagery. Her work can be described as painterly; although a medium she deserted early on, there is an essence of classical portrait painting evident in many of her photographs.
It is Sherman’s use of photography over other media that captivates so thoroughly. The viewer is tricked—willingly—into believing in the worlds she creates. We know the images are constructed by the artist, but the medium of photography allows an acceptable and convincing reality that a painting never could.
“I think people are more apt to believe photographs, especially if it’s something fantastic. They’re willing to be more gullible. Sometimes they want fantasy. Even if they know it’s fake they can believe anything. People are accustomed to being told what to believe in.”
Sherman is considered a leading light of the Pictures Generation artists, a group that, in response to the mass media landscape surrounding them in the mid-1970s, appropriated images and inspiration from advertising, film, television, and magazines. Her skill was—and is—to take that glossy, mass media imagery and subvert it. But only to a point. At first glance, her images look “normal;” only on closer investigation do the grotesque and disturbing emerge.
“I like making images that from a distance seem kind of seductive, colorful, luscious and engaging, and then you realize what you’re looking at is something totally opposite. It seems boring to me to pursue the typical idea of beauty, because that is the easiest and the most obvious way to see the world. It’s more challenging to look at the other side.”
Sherman’s work remains challenging and fascinating in equal measures, and her uncompromising approach is as evident today as it was in her first exhibition in 1980. She is often cited as an influence by photographers, film makers, and writers, and has enjoyed major exhibitions of her work across the US and Europe. She lives and works in New York City.
“My photographs are certainly not self-portraits or representations of myself, though unfortunately people always keep saying they are.”
HAPPENING
Thursday, December 16, at 7pm
Piano Sonatas by Beethoven and Liszt
With Ana Glig
Ana Glig (Gligvashvili) is an award-winning concert pianist praised for her ability to “capture hearts” by Musical America. A native of Georgia, she can trace her first musical impressions to her early childhood and Georgian polyphonic singing. A recipient of Alfred Cortot’s prize for the best interpretation of romantic music, Glig has performed in Europe and the United States in solo and chamber settings.
As an orchestra soloist, Glig has debuted with Georgia and Israeli symphonic orchestras. In the review of her album “Reminiscences,” Fanfare Magazine recognized her playing for its “…sensitivity” with an “ability to finely capture some of Georgia’s haunting, elusive film melodies…as well as anyone on disc.”
$20
RESERVE YOUR SEAT!