Cindy Sherman

Untitled no. 91, from the series Centerfolds, 1981

Contemporary art has often developed a work methodology based on repetition. The concept of "series" has formalised the most abstract or radical ideas, turning them into a recognisable brand that generates familiarity among the public and strengthens its association with the art market. The idea, insofar as repetitive fraction, is not exhibited as a copy but as complexity: the need to tell the same story from many points of view and with varying nuances. Whereas novels are structured in chapters, poetry reiterates rhetoric figures and theatre requires annotations, contemporary art is underpinned by the production of series that simultaneously concentrate and expand the notion of works of art.

Cindy Sherman (Glen Ridge, NJ, USA, 1954) has been involved in photography since the late 1960s, using her body to interpret diverse roles. In her legendary series Untitled Film Still (1977–1980), the artist photographed herself in places and situations associated with classic cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, in which the feminine figure was the centre of masculine, heterosexual and patriarchal attention. With the simple gesture of decontextualisation, these images questioned an entire part of cinema history; a universal history of behaviour. In her next series, titled Rear Screen Projections (1980–1981) and her first in colour, she once again interpreted diverse roles; in this case, with the constructed background of a rear projection. The relationship with a cinematic language is established on the very basis of the generation of reality through the use of a verifiable fiction. The background scenes help to create a context for the first term: Sherman’s posture and role. However, above all, they allow precise limits to be set between representation and construction of reality.

With the series Centerfolds (1981), Cindy Sherman invented the 1990s on her own, anticipating what would come to be common currency. The 12 "centrefolds" of this series were created for the magazine Artforum in response to the invitation of the editor at that time Ingrid Sischy to show each one on two opposing pages. The publication’s square format generated a scale of 2:1 in the double-page layout, achieving the approximate appearance of a cinema screen. Ultimately, the series was not published in Artforum, but it proved to be a turning point in Sherman’s work while providing sure clues to how the stylistic turn would be decisive within contemporary art. First of all, these images were enlarged to a size that was unusual in 1981, even for colour photographs. The proportion of 2 x 4 feet (approximately 60 x 120 cm) put the artist’s fragmented body at nearly natural size, generating close complicity with the public and, we may suppose, an equally immediate reaction. The artist never looks into the camera, unlike most models in advertising or erotic publications. Her interpretation of a role, going beyond the gaze of the viewer, connects these images with cinema, where looking into the camera is a matter of error or contained experimentation.

The photograph Untitled no. 91 shows the artist lying on the floor with her mouth open and wearing a dark brown wig, her distant gaze fixed on what seems to be a window in the room. Her right arm rests on and next to her head, and her left hand lies on her chest and seems to be playing with her hair or the collar of her filthy blouse, the sleeves of which are partially rolled up. At the upper right, between the woman’s body and the old wood floor splattered with paint, there is a pink towel or perhaps a bathrobe, and. at the upper left, a towel covers her feet. A short skirt partially reveals her thighs and legs. Perfect construction of the plane also characterises Sherman’s works, seen throughout these series or in many others that followed, in which aspects such as sexuality, fragmentation, the self and the despicable comprise one of the most outstanding artistic works of the last half century.

References

Cindy Sherman, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1996.

Cindy Sherman: Retrospective, Thames and Hudson, New York / London, 1997.

Cindy Sherman: Centerfolds, powerHouse Books, New York, 2002.

Á. de los Ángeles, 50 Obras maestras 1950-2000, IVAM, València, 2020, p.96.