AO OnSite – Greenwich, CT: Cindy Sherman ‘Works from Friends of the Bruce Museum’ Retrospective at the Bruce Museum through April 23rd, 2011
February 27th, 2011
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #48 (1979). Via The Bruce Museum
Cindy Sherman: Works from Friends of the Bruce Museum, on view now at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut is an insightful and interpersonal exposition of more than thirty years’ worth of artwork. Amassed in part from Metro Pictures and local Westchester and Fairfield Counties’ private collections, the images will be on view through April 23rd. The exhibition chronicles the evolution of trademark portraits by Cindy Sherman, from early works alluding to film noir onto sexualized female representations and phantasmagoria. While each character is intended to be viewed as an individual, they are grouped by period, and are technically all portrayed by the artist herself. Noteworthy installments include Untitled Film Stills (1977-80), Centerfolds (never-before-seen photographs commissioned by ArtForum in 1981), Disasters and Fairy Tales (1985-1989), The History Portraits (1988-1990), and The Rich Women (2008-present).
More text and images after the jump…
Cindy Sherman is widely recognized for chameleon-like self-recreations, with over-the-top characterizations spanning variously interpretative realms. The artist is physically unrecognizable as she takes on the clothes, makeup, and persona of everyone from a male fantasy in The Centerfolds to a fly-covered nightmare in Disasters and Fairy Tales. Ultimately, the point of interest in Sherman’s work lies in the explorative debate: Are they renouncing self-expression and emotion with the theatrics of artificialized portraiture? What or whom exactly does Cindy Sherman seek to represent?
Cindy Sherman, Untitled (1987). Via Metro Pictures
Cindy Sherman, Untitled (1989). Via The Bruce Museum
In this exhibition, the duality of self-expression and deliberately contrived portraiture is appropriately expressed in the History Portraits, in which Sherman mimics recognizable, predominately Italian Renaissance paintings. The timelessness of classical work lends itself to a contemporary lens on identity, and the idea of “otherness” is imbued with a historically relevant past. The side panels accompanying the works explain that Sherman struggled to remember slides while studying art history. In becoming the art, comprehension physically manifests.
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #209 (1989). Via Phillips de Pury
This evaluation of traditionalism is particularly well-suited to the collection at The Bruce Museum, where works like Ammi Phillips’ Portrait of a Lady in Black with a Thistle in Her Hand have welcomed visitors for years. Not only do the History Portraits inspire interest in themselves, but they reshape adjacent art for deeper reflection of its assumed precedence.
Cindy Sherman, Untitled (2008). Via Metro Pictures
Most recently in the Rich Women series, Sherman showcases a freshly multifaceted, intensely contemporary intuition. The haggard but ostentatious personas are laden with excessive jewels and heavy makeup, looking at once comfortably wealthy and uncomfortably distressed. Sorrowful depictions of affluence inspire reflection on issues of class, thusly questioning the collection as much as the surrounding society.
The Bruce Museum (via Greenwich Blog)
The accompanying catalogue includes an interview with feminist art historian Linda Nochlin and curator Kenneth Silver, in which Nochlin says that, ”people never recognize themselves.” Yet there is an unspoken truth beneath the theatricality. Whether in the fantastical, the art historical, or the wealth-fueled sadness, Sherman’s characters undoubtedly provoke some self-identification.
-A. Bregman
Related Links:
Exhibition Page [Bruce Museum]
Cindy Sherman: Works from Friends of the Bruce Museum [Museum Publicity]
Cindy Sherman Exhibit at Bruce Museum in Greenwich CT [Examiner.com]
