Cindy Sherman - Photographs New York Tuesday, April 4, 2023 | Phillips

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  • “I’m trying to erase myself more than identify myself or reveal myself. That’s a big, confusing thing that people have with my work: they think I’m trying to reveal these secret fantasies or something. It’s really about obliterating myself within these characters.”
    —Cindy Sherman

     

    In 2010, POP magazine commissioned Cindy Sherman to produce a stand-alone booklet for inclusion in an upcoming issue of the British fashion publication. Having produced several successful fashion collaborations in the past, Sherman turned to Chanel, conceiving of a series that would pair their vintage haute couture with landscape photographs taken in Iceland during the volcanic eruption earlier that year. Following the initial project, Sherman altered and expanded upon the images before debuting them at Metro Pictures in 2012.

     

    Untitled #546 is a monumental example from the series with two self-portraits mounted together, side-by-side. While the backdrop was digitally manipulated to enhance the painterly sense of the sublime, the towering scale of Sherman’s figures in the foreground dwarfs the landscape, thus inverting the classical trope. This uneasy juxtaposition paired with the figures’ awkward poses results in an image where fantasy, fiction and the absurd collide.

    • Provenance

      Metro Pictures, New York, 2013

    • Exhibited

      Cindy Sherman, Gagosian Gallery, Paris, 14 September - 10 October 2012

    • Literature

      Moorhouse, Cindy Sherman, pp. 118-119, pl. 98

    • 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

Photographs from an Important Collection

81

Untitled #546

2010
Chromogenic print, printed 2012, flush-mounted.
62 1/2 x 141 1/8 in. (158.8 x 358.5 cm)
Overall 65 x 143 1/2 in. (165.1 x 364.5 cm)

Signed, dated, and numbered 6/6 in ink on a gallery label affixed to the frame backing.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$150,000 - 200,000 

Sold for $355,600

Contact Specialist

Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs
skrueger@phillips.com


Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com

Photographs

New York Auction 4 April 2023