CINDY SHERMAN

Curator of 20th century portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, London, Paul Moorhouse introduces the key achievements of Cindy Sherman's career. Born in 1954, she is one of the most celebrated female artists of her generation. Manipulating herself as a model, she uses make-up, prosthetics and props to build up a tableaux and charades and play with imagery to conjure many diverse personae. These alter egos are set in dramatic contexts alluding to the visual conventions of film, TV and the media. Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein promoted a Pop Art movement in the USA and created new, figurative art that investigated the social revolution brought about by mass media and the values of popular culture. Cindy Sherman along with other contemporaries extended Pop's engagement with the Look of the contemporary world and responded to a society saturated by media-generated images. They explore the impact of cinema and many of these photographs can be seen with a Hitchcock film influence, television with the impact of Mary Tyler Moore and others, advertising, magazines, newspapers, catalogues and other publications which shaped how people think about themselves and their surroundings. Described as 'post modern', Sherman's approach shuns painting, drawing and sculpture and instead uses photography. It refers to more commonplace ways of representing urban existence as she interrogates modern life from media to pornography, often imbuing them with unexpected often enigmatic significance. Today her pioneering body of work has extended the language and potential of photography in unprecedented ways. The book ends with society photographs and clowns and along the way there are many images of Sherman herself in costume, of broken dolls in pornographic poses, contorted figures, disaster photographs taken between 1986 and 1990, pastiches of the Madonna and Child or Renaissance masterpieces with exposed breasts or lactating, a broken body with bottom in the air, distressed looking women, women carrying out everyday tasks, in silver gelatine prints and colour images. Often disturbing, inventive and creative, this is a fine Phaidon Press publication with complete list of works. Colour.
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