Cindy Sherman: Retrospective - Softcover

Sherman, Cindy; Cruz, Amada; Smith, Elizabeth A. T.; Museum Of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.); Museum Of Contemporary Art (Chicago, Ill.)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0933856490 ISBN 13: 9780933856493

Publisher: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997

Synopsis

American artist Cindy Sherman creates staged and manipulated photographs that draw on popular culture and art history to explore female identity. Her art embodies two developments in the art world: the impact of postmodern theory on art practice; and the rise of photography and mass-media techniques as modes of artistic expression. This volume, published on the occasion of an international touring exhibition, presents over 200 images from the breadth of Sherman's work, from the "Untitled Film Stills" of the 1970s to series such as "Centerfolds", "Fashion", "Disasters", "Fairy Tales" and "History Portraits". Essayists Cruz, Jones and Smith offer insights into Sherman's art from several vantage points, positioning it within the trajectory of feminist art history and revealing her influence since the 1970s.

About this title

About the Author

Amanda Cruz is the Manilow Curator of Exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Elizabeth A. T. Smith is Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Amelia Jones is an associate professor of contemporary art and theory and the history of photography at the University of California, Riverside.

From Booklist

Cindy Sherman has taken self-portraiture and masquerade to the highest heights and the campiest lows, bringing the shady ambience of B-movies to art photography while exploring the plexus of narcissism, from its silliest manifestations to its most provocative expressions. Sherman explores the implications of role-playing and fantasy, seeing and being seen, and society's perceptions of women, eroticism, and consumerism in her photographs, creating resonant images and supplying art critics with much grist for their mills. In her contribution to this retrospective volume, Amelia Jones begins with the remark that "much ink has been spilled over Cindy Sherman," and, obviously, the flow continues, but Jones, Cruz, and their colleagues provide just the sort of commentary Sherman's work demands, and the photographs themselves are engaging, both viscerally and intellectually. Sherman has been in costume before her own camera for more than 20 years, earning the right to a major traveling exhibition and speculation as to what she'll come up with next. How many selves can a self be? Stay tuned. Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Museum of Contemporary Art
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0933856490
• ISBN 13: 9780933856493
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 219