Lately I have been looking at the work of Cindy Sherman,
particularly the retrospective exhibit at the MOMA. http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/cindysherman/#/0/
Online at this web address you can view the exhibit in its entirety.
The exhibit really does take us through
her entire career starting with work she did before Untitled Film Stills up to
her most recent work in 2010 of Cindy ounce again dressed in ridiculous outfits
in mural type arrangements with fake backgrounds. The reason for my sparked interest in Cindy
Sherman is that I needed to write a paper based around art criticism and
Sherman happens to have an extremely large amount of feminist theory written
about her work as well as psychoanalytical theory. Most of this theory has been written about
her Untitled Film Stills, which I find to be her least interesting body of work
personally. Through reading this theory
and also reading interviews and watching videos of her talking about her work I
have come to the conclusion that while these critical writing were important
for Sherman’s career they really are not important for the viewer to understand
her work. All feminist theory aside, Sherman really created her images because
she wanted to create characters in a narrative that the viewer creates. If you
watch the videos of her talking about her work on PBS 21st artist
series she talks about how and why she made some of her work and nothing that
she says is based in art criticism.
Personally, I really enjoy her latter work from the 2000s as
she plays the part of different women sitting for their portrait. These women are quite hilarious and sometimes
I actually see a person I know within one of these portraits. I know I definitely
see the woman who works at the gas station back home in Untitled #355. One thing is for sure , I’m creating a
narrative in my head, which was Sherman’s primary goal.
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