Cindy Sherman - NOMEN: American Women Artists from 1945 to Today New York Monday, June 17, 2019 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    Cindy Sherman
    Born 1954, Glen Ridge, New Jersey
    1976 BA State University College at Buffalo, New York

    Selected museum exhibitions:
    Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2018); Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2016); Broad Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Musée du Jeu de Paume, Paris (2006); Museum of Modern Art (1997, 2012); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1997); Basel Kunsthalle, Switzerland (1991); National Art Gallery, New Zealand (1989); Whitney Museum of American Art (1987); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1982)
    Selected honors:
    American Academy of Arts and Sciences Award (2003); National Arts Award (2002); Governor's Arts Award, New York (2001); John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (1995); John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1983)
    Selected public collections: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Art Gallery of Ontario; Australian National Gallery, Canberra; Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; Whitney Museum of American Art

    For forty years, Cindy Sherman has created self-reflexive photographs with herself as performer and subject. This black-and-white photograph is from her groundbreaking Untitled Film Stills, 1977-1980, in which she adopted the guise of actresses from 50s and 60s Hollywood, Film Noir, and European art-house films. Altering her pose, costume, surroundings, and framing, Sherman draws upon their roles and presentation of self, creating images with the uncanny ability to appear both specific and generic. Her photographs interrogate the construction of women’s images in films and the way mass media reflects and perpetuates stereotypes in our culture at large. In Untitled Film Still (#61), Sherman frames herself through a doorway, with a composition that implies a viewer looking at her.

  • Artist Biography

    Cindy Sherman

    American • 1954

    Seminal to the Pictures Generation as well as contemporary photography and performance art, Cindy Sherman is a powerhouse art practitioner.  Wily and beguiling, Sherman's signature mode of art making involves transforming herself into a litany of characters, historical and fictional, that cross the lines of gender and culture. She startled contemporary art when, in 1977, she published a series of untitled film stills.

    Through mise-en-scène​ and movie-like make-up and costume, Sherman treats each photograph as a portrait, though never one of herself. She embodies her characters even if only for the image itself. Presenting subversion through mimicry, against tableaus of mass media and image-based messages of pop culture, Sherman takes on both art history and the art world.

    Though a shape-shifter, Sherman has become an art world celebrity in her own right. The subject of solo retrospectives across the world, including a blockbuster showing at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and a frequent exhibitor at the Venice Biennale among other biennials, Sherman holds an inextricable place in contemporary art history.

    View More Works

33

Untitled Film Still (#61)

1979
signed, dated and numbered 5/10 on the verso
silver gelatin print
9 1/2 x 6 3/8 in. (24.1 x 16.2 cm.)

Estimate On Request

NOMEN: American Women Artists from 1945 to Today

New York Selling Exhibition 19 June - 3 August 2019