Cynthia Morris Sherman, known professionally as Cindy Sherman, was born on January 19, 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. In 1972, Sherman enrolled in the visual arts department at Buffalo State College, where she began painting. During this time, she began to explore the ideas which became a trademark of her work, including dressing herself as different characters from thrift-store clothing. Frustrated with what she saw as the limitations of painting as a medium of art, she abandoned it and took up photography. Sherman has said that she felt that “. . . there was nothing more to say [through painting]. I was meticulously copying other art and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.”
Sherman first came to prominence in the late 1970s within an informal group of artists known as the Pictures Generation. Known for their critical analysis of media culture, the group was comprised of artists such as Richard Prince, Robert Longo, Sherrie Levine, and Barbara Kruger. It was during this period that Sherman began her first and most notable bodies of work, the “Untitled Film Stills” (1977-1980). Comprised of 69 black-and-white photographs, each photograph shows Sherman acting out various stereotypical female roles depicted in film media, with an aura that recalls B movies and film noir.
Since the debut of the “Untitled Film Stills,” Sherman has continued to play the role of both photographer and her camera’s own exclusive subject. The artist has created a groundbreaking body of work that explores the nature of representation and the ways in which the images of film, television, and advertising influence our understanding of our identity and of the world around us. Employing elaborate makeup, costumes, and props to transform herself, Sherman creates “portraits” that mine the stereotypes and genres of art history and mass media while drawing attention to the power structures that have shaped this imagery.
Preferring to work in series, Sherman has transformed herself into a wide-range of figures. Notable of these is her series of “Centerfolds,” begun in 1981 which, like the “Film Stills,” subvert stereotypical tropes of femininity by presenting characters in the horizontal centerfold format who are uncharacteristically fully clothed and lost in deep contemplation. Sherman’s series of “History Portraits” (1988-1990) depict her as pastiches of old master paintings, while her “Society Portraits,” begun in 2008, see her embodying the archetypes of aging wealthy women.
Sherman's work is often credited as a major influence for contemporary portrait photographers. Today, the artist’s work is held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Broad Museum, Los Angeles; the Jewish Museum, New York; the Menil Collection, Houston; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Tate Modern, London. In 2012, the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted a major retrospective of her work.
Cindy Sherman currently lives and works in New York, NY.
Sherman’s work has always been distinctive in the way that it differentiates the New School from the Old School in photography. She produces works in series, and her works are conceptually rooted. Here, the gallery’s attentiveness to custom picture framing has elevated her work in ways that, for the most part, universal acclaim has yet to do. The presentation amplifies the power of each and every work.
The title of this exhibition of three series of photographs, “Once Upon a Time, 1981-2011,” aptly conjures a fairy tale: Sherman’s pictures are rife with gendered archetypes, rich backstories, impending doom, and melancholic longing.
At the Mnuchin gallery, about a five-minute walk from the Met, you can see more than two dozen works by Sherman, spanning 30 years in "Once Upon a Time, 1981-2011." All are pulled from three different series: "Society Portraits" (Sherman as UES women battling age with plastic surgery), the "History Portraits" (Sherman as Renaissance and Rococo figures) and the seminal "Centerfolds" series (Sherman as a modern version of the reclining woman but all lost in private moments as opposed to, you know, tugging at a bikini string). Seeing the progression of her work is riveting and a palpable reminder that Sherman is as New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz once called her, a “warrior artist,” and that “Fashion helps Cindy hide in plain sight; in turn, she plays havoc with fashion.”
In “Cindy Sherman: Once Upon a Time, 1981-2011,” a show organized with the independent curator Philippe Ségalot, three series from Ms. Sherman’s prolific career go head-to-head. They suggest an indomitable drive to reinvent her work while maintaining the variety and general ease of her landmark Untitled (Film Stills) series of 1977-80. Both her 1981 Centerfolds series, with its prone, vulnerable-looking young women, and her 2008 Society Portraits of scrupulously turned-out matrons feel somewhat repetitive here. In contrast, the History Portraits (1990) still disturb, with their cursory reprises of old master portraits of both sexes, replete with undisguised body and facial prosthetics.
Even though Cindy Sherman has made a career out of self-portraiture, when she showed up at Mnuchin Gallery for the opening of her first New York exhibition since 2012, I was nervous I wouldn't recognize her. In Once Upon a Time, a 30-year survey co-curated by Philippe Ségalot and gallery partner Sukanya Rajaratnam, the artist's chameleonic abilities are on full display. Sherman's body of work explores representation and how film, television, and advertising influence our personal identities and understanding of the world. She uses elaborate makeup, costumes, props, and prosthetics to transform herself into portraits mining stereotypes and drawing attention to the power structures that propagate these images.
Cindy Sherman (b.1954), one of the notable names within the Pictures Generation, is an artist who has consistently refused to be the subject of acceptance. Having started out painting as a student, Sherman then rejected the medium, looking for new areas of expansion, and ultimately becoming a pioneer in portraiture, challenging the power structures around photography and undermining the influence of the larger voyeur – through advertising, film and television.
Yesterday I had the great pleasure of spending some time at Mnuchin Gallery’s exhibition of photographs by Cindy Sherman, “Once Upon a Time, 1981–2011,” co-curated by the art adviser Philippe Ségalot. One of the upstairs galleries is devoted to a brilliant hanging of Sherman’s recent series of “society portraits,” featuring herself done up as fictional ladies of means, aging with varying degrees of grace.
Sherman’s work is often executed in series; she transforms herself in elaborately staged self-portraits with a running theme. Working alone, she photographs herself in her studio, assuming the roles of stylist, makeup artist, hairdresser, model, and director. Though she might be thought of as the originator of the selfie, Sherman dismissed social media as “vulgar” in an interview with the New York Times last year, so critics would do well to stay away from the term. Despite her contempt for modern culture in that respect, she’s no stranger to collaborations with the fashion industry. In 2014, she collaborated with Louis Vuitton on a limited edition cross body bag as part of its LV Monogram celebration.
By now, there is no mistaking works by Cindy Sherman — her signature as both photographer and subject, her over-the-top outfits and constantly transforming face. But it is rare to see them gathered in one intimate space, as they now are at the Mnuchin Gallery. Looking back over 30 years, “Cindy Sherman: Once Upon a Time, 1981-2011” bills itself as Ms. Sherman’s first historical exhibition in New York City since the Museum of Modern Art’s 2012 traveling retrospective.
Classic Shermans in a classy townhouse gallery? You can’t get more museum-quality than that. On view are her society dames, ingenues and art-history icons.
In a new photography exhibition on the Upper East Side, the Mnuchin Gallery is revisiting Cindy Sherman’s Society Portraits, one of her most famous works and an exploration of what it means for (rich) women to age. Produced in 2008, the photographs are actually self-portraits: Sherman dressed up as Manhattan socialites, wearing elaborate costumes and thick makeup. She took her camera to venues where New York City society women might be spotted in real life: on the Upper East Side (Untitled #468), the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park (#474), and the Cloisters (#466).
This exhibition, titled “Cindy Sherman: Once Upon a Time, 1981–2011” and curated by Philippe Ségalot and Sukanya Rajaratnam, focuses on Sherman’s use of stories, or lack thereof, in her work. Featuring Sherman’s photographs of herself presented in the manner of clowns and high-society women, the show will include works from a series did for which she inserted herself into traditionally male art-historical images, in a sort of commentary on the conventional role of women in narratives.
Featuring more than two dozen works spanning 30 years, the exhibition will focus on three of Sherman’s most acclaimed series - the ‘Centerfolds,’ the ‘History Portraits’ and the ‘Society Portraits.’ These portraits mine the stereotypes and genres of art history and mass media while drawing attention to the power structures that have shaped this imagery.
Mnuchin Gallery (45 East 78th Street) celebrates Cindy Sherman's take on the female gaze with a show called "Once Upon a Time: 1981 - 2011" opening on April 18, 6 to 8 p.m., and up until June 10. The exhibition, curated by Philippe Ségalot and Sukanya Rajaratnam, focuses on three of her series: The Center Folds, The History Portraits and The Society Portraits.
