Cindy Sherman: the unnatural Woman
October 11, 2007
So far I have come to understand art in general, regardless of its categories to be a self reflecting form, in which at some point a work is referencing either a form or a specific topic. So when I looked at Cindy Sherman’s works I immediatly saw it as a piece of art that uses foot notes. the picture that stood out to me the most was Untitled # 228 c. 1990.
Immediatly the first thing that popped into my head was actually two paintings. I saw the woman in the paitning to be a rendishion of the “Madonna” an epherial mother which has been produced through out art by many painters spanning from the realist to the modernist. But the head in her hand specifically reminded me of a Moreau “The Apparition”c. 1876 which shows the beheading of John the Baptist. Which if true I thought to be a peculiar reference.
The woman in this painting has her arms open as though wantingto give comfort while have this stone cold expression and a person’s head in her hand. The lighting that Sherman uses makes the woman’s stomach look as though she is pregnant; which to me symbolizes two of the many ways that femininity has been depicted through out history. One being a temptress that results in dire consequences (physical death) and then also the mother and nuturer. and what makes it even more peculiar because the painting that I believe it to be refernecing by Moreau about the death of John the Baptist, is about a mother who married a King, who was named a whore by John th Baptist. The mother ordered her daughter to dance for her new husband the King and that the King would then grant the daughter any desire. And the daughter half naked dances and then in return asks for her mother’s enemy to be killed she asks for the head of John the Baptist.
So my question then is what is she saying about femininity. I realized that in many of her pictures, even thought they are her, there seems to be no realness. Everything seems posed and it has lost its notion of natural. Granted none of these notions of “woman” are all together natural but those who painted them made it seem natural; real.
October 16, 2007 at 12:07 am
Hey Aliya,
First off, let me say that your reference to Sherman’s work as art with footnotes is a brilliant. In that one phrase I get exactly what you mean. The paintings you posted were helpful too. As we said in class, Sherman’s photographs harken to another time and place, a reference we recognize but cannot pinpoint. This is her playful use of similacra, referring to some aspect or part of a whole to create and represent the “unreal.”
As for your last question, femininity is not real to Sherman. Gender, race, and any other category or cliche is just a social construct used to order our world. Like women fitting themselves into the role of feminitiy, painters only appear to represent the real because they have been trained to conform to certain techniques while we have been taught to accept these representations as such. If we were told throughout history that potato carving was the best form of representing the real, we’d probably see value in that instead and try to sell it to every Third World country we could.
October 16, 2007 at 12:09 am
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October 16, 2007 at 12:04 pm
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