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Exhibition Review: Cindy Sherman

2017; Penn State University Press; Volume: 2; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/jasiapacipopcult.2.1.0123

2380-7687

Vanessa Gerrie,

Fashion and Cultural Textiles

Cindy Sherman is a name entrenched within art history. Her Film Stills and Centerfolds series of the 1970s and 1980s inspired a generation of artists and critical theorists to take notice of the idea of female performance, later theorized as gender performativity by Judith Butler, or masquerade and the male gaze. She reflected this performance back at the audience using identifiable tropes from popular culture such as film types and magazine models that would jolt the audience to attention. Although Sherman would deny that any of this was her intention or motivation, it is an interpretation of her work that propelled her into the most important conversations surrounding art at the time: those of feminism, gender identity, and the gaze. But we already know this. Cindy Sherman was a comprehensive exhibition that displayed her twenty-first-century photographic explorations, which used technology, embraced fashion, and disarmed the viewer by reflecting absurd archetypes that we recognize from everyday life or popular culture. First shown at Brisbane’s Queensland Art Gallery, the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in mid-2016, it then moved to Wellington’s City Gallery in November 2016.The bricolage, characteristic of the Pictures Generation of artists who arose during the postmodern period, is still evident in Sherman’s contemporary photographs. She draws upon performance, film, design, and collage to construct hyperreal portraits of women that appropriate recognizable signifiers through costume, makeup, and gesture. They have both subverted mainstream codes and also come to embrace them. From the 1980s onward, her characters became increasingly strange and uncanny, even grotesque. They were no longer performing a certain hyperfeminine masquerade or ideal. In the 1990s, she moved away from situating herself in front of the camera entirely and instead created diorama-like photographic constructions that were hypersexualized and transgressive, using mannequins and prostheses to completely subvert previous interpretations of her work. Her photographs after 2000 re-embrace the portrait, but they also embrace the digitization of the photographic medium. They still sit at a nexus of mediums not quite committing entirely to photography, performance, or film.The largest survey of Sherman’s work to be exhibited in the Antipodes was a generous exploration spread over two floors. The first work confronting the visitor was Murals (2010), a panoramic composite that juxtaposes an array of theatrical thespian characters over elaborate digitized backgrounds. This work exemplifies the ways in which Sherman has been able to use technology, particularly Photoshop, to manipulate not only the landscapes her characters are placed within but also her facial features, adding an uncanniness to her characters not seen before in her previous, comparatively tame, improvisations. The mural accompanied two series on the ground floor, Headshots (2000–2) and Clowns (2003–4), which were exhibited in separate spaces. Headshots consists of a frieze of framed portraits that comments on female aging and the absurdity of how societal expectations of the matter are played out. These are women with exaggerated features (Untitled #357), too much fake tan coloring, and too much makeup, although this is what society expects of them to cover up the fact that they are naturally aging; however, we still feel uncomfortable with the fact that they are doing so. This series is particularly poignant. We feel sorry for these characters and at the same time find them funny and disapprove of the way in which they are dressed and made up. They are fragile yet stoic in their absurdity. Clowns taps into a somewhat marginalized subculture. Clowns exist to both entertain and terrify, tapping into the psychological weariness of the uncanny. They are not female or male, and they appear to be not quite human in their unpredictable carnivalesque performance. This series is somewhat of a psychedelic side step for Sherman; however, it still involves the same ideas around identity performance that disarm the viewer and plant a seed of discomfort and discontent.Although Sherman has persistently stated that none of the characters she has created over the last 40 years have in any way been an extension or representation of her, the fashion world has adopted her and turned her into somewhat of a celebrity, much like the fame that someone like Marina Abramovic has succumbed to, and fully embraced, over the past decade with her collaborations with Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy. As Sherman stated to Cathy Horyn in a Harper’s Bazaar interview in 2012, “I do see it as a fad with fashion—that art and artists are like this cool accessory.”1 Nonetheless, from the very beginning Sherman has used fashion or the material garment as an integral tool to construct her characters whether we are aware of her interest in fashion or not. The femme fatale, the ingénue, the socialite, the fashion victim, the trophy wife, and even the clown: We recognize these people with some reluctance due to their increasingly uncanny and grotesque representations.In the “fashion” themed series Balenciaga (2007–8) and Chanel (2010–12), the designers who gifted the clothes had no idea in what way Sherman would use them. For example, in the Chanel series, the latest created by Sherman, was originally commissioned by independent publication POP magazine in 2010. In it, Sherman juxtaposes the characters against landscape photographs that she took on a trip to Iceland. The backdrops, however, are reworked and manipulated to look like grand, sublime oil paintings, ones that perhaps the women in the photos would own if we were to elaborate on their narrative. These women are dressed head to toe in Chanel couture garments and, in comparison to the Headshots series, appear to have a little more compassion toward the aging women represented. They seem more hopeful, perhaps even aspirational, if it were not for the barren, desolate landscapes in which they appear to stand. The Chanel series is the crescendo of the exhibition, the last room to wander through. These portraits are larger than life and portray women in their twilight years, the next stage after those in Society Portraits (2008).Sherman gives the fashion cultural cachet; however, she also makes fun of those wearing the clothes that are seen at all the “fashionable” parties and fashion shows in her Balenciaga series. They are having fun (Untitled #463), but they are most certainly stereotypes that play on the way in which people judge the fashion industry for perpetuating some of the myths, such as the vapid, attention-seeking trope of the “fashionista.” Having said that, these women are not the typical young, naturally beautiful creatures usually portrayed in fashion imagery—these are possibly the women who are actually able to buy the clothes (Untitled #462). By portraying the women in such a manner, Sherman potentially flips these identifying tropes of the fashion world on their head.Her Society Portraits are grand and reference the very images that society’s elite might have on display in their palatial homes. The arch of an eyebrow and the side-eye glares portray the socialites and the society climbers; however, in the mix there are also lonely heirs or stoic widows cradled in their fur and their lavish surroundings. These works create a subconscious narrative around the characters. Each individual who stands in front of the large-scale portraits cannot help but feel immersed in their fictional world, whatever that may be. Narrative is evidently present in Sherman’s works. The amount of signifiers in the images present many subjective connotations on a semiotic level that infuse her work with endless narrative possibility and meaning.The main exhibit is also accompanied by a collection of Sherman’s archive of found photographs, scrapbooks, and albums. This addition is a beautiful insight into Sherman’s creative process. It includes a collection of 200 photos taken at Casa Susanna, a 1960s upstate New York retreat and safe haven for crossdressing men to freely express their true selves within a safe space. The photos were taken by members and shared among the community. Sherman found the collection at an antique fair in the early 2000s, and the photos serve as an interesting side note on Sherman’s construction of feminine identity and what this actually constitutes and includes in her later works.The structure of the exhibition on a whole was compartmentalized. Each series had its own space and was chronological. As you walked through time, the images became bigger in scale and Sherman’s women became larger than life, particularly those who starred in Society Portraits and Chanel. Perhaps what keeps Sherman’s work firmly within the contemporary zeitgeist is the fact that she is tapping into discussions of cross-generational “feminine” identity, whether intentional or not, that still remain and surround advances in communication technology.2 However, she does so with a grotesqueness that completely flips perceived idealizations on their head. The construction of the self has never been so voyeuristic or pictures generated as they are today within the, for lack of a better term, “selfie generation.” The exhibition was spectacular insofar as the images themselves were spectacles.Alongside the exhibition, City Gallery had accompanying events, talks, and panels, all discussing Sherman’s work within the context of feminism, fashion, and identity. Ellie Buttrose, the associate curator at GOMA responsible for bringing the exhibition to the Southern Hemisphere, plainly stated in her essay in the exhibition’s accompanying catalog that “Cindy Sherman is funny.” She draws attention to the absurdity of our everyday and the female stereotypes that Western popular culture perpetuates and the gendered performances that women act out. With so much conversation and interest still surrounding her work, it will be interesting to see in which direction her work will go, especially within the context of gender fluidity and identity that is at the forefront of cultural discussion and particularly within the context of photography and fashion.Vanessa Gerrie is a PhD candidate in fashion studies at the College of Creative Arts, Massey University, Wellington. Her research background is in art history and theory and visual culture with an emphasis on performance art, photography, and gender. Her current research thesis is on fashion installation and performance.