Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is well known for her photographs. She creating a narrative through her pictures with herself posing. Cindy's pictures aren't self portraits though, she rather is a medium for the character she created to come to life. She's very keen on the messages an image can send to it's audience. She takes into account expressions, costume, the way it's printed, the size, pretty much everything. One of things she does to not hinder the audience's interpretation of her pictures is to not name her individual pieces. This is quite consistent  through out her work. The auteur theory suggests that artist creative signature is embedded throughout their art.

Her work has multitude of different themes, some feminist thoughts can be found in her work. She doesn't consider herself a feminist, but I believe some of her ideologies line up and are apparent in her work. She often depicts gender stereotypes in her photos. In the clown picture, what seems to be a female clown dwarfed by 3 other male clowns around her. She created a collection of works that involved clowns. In this world she created the men are ridiculing the female clown while her hands are around her vagina. Perhaps she is masturbating or covering feeling naked around the men. It's a bit ambiguous but either way I feel she is making a comment of the men oppressing women's sexuality.

In her later works she started to step out of being the medium for the characters. She transitioned to manneqins and other inanimate objects. I think part of that choice is because of furthering of letting images do the talking. Inanimate objects can say they are human if done right. In another of her works she was quite vocal about portrayal of women as sexual objects.

"Lichtenstein: And that's what came across. They were totally de-eroticized. They mimicked pornographic poses without producing their effects. They were like specimens.
Sherman: Right! Yes, they allude to pornography or X-rated photos. But it's definitely not like that at all."(Litchenstein) Cindy doesn't put manneqins in those positions for the male gaze. She specifically made it plastic parts to prevent that. She also later on reveals in the interview she wants the images to be uncomfortable and some repulsive to challenge the audience to confront the preconceived notions on sexuality.

Watch Transformation on PBS. See more from ART:21.

In an interview with PBS, she talks about one of the reasons to choose the size of her photos for her recent photos. She recounts how a lot of male artists would create huge pictures and it seemed like this ego thing, and how women artists don't really do that. She then bangs the table and says "Dammit, Imma do that!" and lets a chuckle. Even though some of her feminist themes are intentional and some perhaps not. Her wanting to see those changes in the world carry over some how into her art. I think what Catherine Saalfield says in Arts and Activism holds a lot of truth and this is, "You can't separate your activism from your art any more than you can separate your sexuality from your identity."(Saalfield 70)

Works Cited

Lichtenstein, Therese. "Cindy Sherman". Web.
http://www.jca-online.com/sherman.html

Saalfield, Catherine. "Arts and Activism"

Images from Google.