Cindy Sherman - PHOTOGRAPHS New York Friday, April 16, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Literature

    Cruz and Smith, Cindy Sherman: Retrospective, pl. 112

  • Catalogue Essay

    Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #187, from the Disasters series, is emblematic of her work throughout the late 1980s, pushing boundaries of comfort both for the viewer and the artist. While her earlier works, including her seminal Untitled Film Stills, address female stereotypes in popular culture, her photographs throughout the 1980s show an evolution towards images that literally deconstruct the female form. Here, Sherman is indiscernible, using make-up and costume to morph herself into a hybrid creature that is at once human, doll and clown. The exaggerated breasts, a focus of fixation in contemporary society, are removed from any sexual context and re-appropriated as the focal point of this monstrous creation.

  • 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

76

Untitled #187

1989
Color coupler print.
71 1/2 x 47 1/2 in. (181.6 x 120.7 cm).
Signed, dated and numbered 3/6 in ink on label accompanying work.

Estimate
$50,000 - 70,000 

PHOTOGRAPHS

16 April 2010
New York