Cindy Sherman
Untitled
Untitled
$250,000
1982
Chromogenic color print
AP 1/2, Ed. of 10 + 2 AP
91.4 x 91.4 cm / 36 x 36 in
‘Untitled’ (1982) is part of Sherman’s Color Studies series, which is comprised of works that share common characteristics in their use and experimentation with color. The title of the series indicates that Sherman’s interest in color takes precedence over subject, which is reinforced by the fact that many of the figures in this series are relegated to the shadows or saturated in vivid hues, as exemplified in the work presented here.
Around the time she was working on the Color Studies photographs, Sherman commented that she was ‘not thinking about movies and generalizations as much as I used to. I think it’s more psychological now, more emotional than theatrical... I’m not working with environment behind me, I’m concentrating on the face really, so it all comes out through expressing some kind of inner emotion.’ [1]
About the artist
Born in 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Cindy Sherman lives and works in New York NY. Her ground-breaking photographs have interrogated themes around representation and identity in contemporary media for over four decades. Coming to prominence in the late 1970s with the Pictures Generation group alongside artists such as Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince and Louise Lawler, Sherman studied art at Buffalo State College in 1972 where she turned her attention to photography. In 1977, shortly after moving to New York, Sherman began her critically acclaimed Untitled Film Stills. A suite of 69 black and white portraits, Untitled Film Stills sees Sherman impersonate a myriad of stereotypical female characters and caricatures inspired by Hollywood pictures, film noir, and B movies. Using a range of costumes, props and backdrops to manipulate her own appearance and to create photographs resembling promotional film images, the series explores the tension between artifice and identity in consumer culture which has preoccupied the artist’s practice ever since.
Artwork images © Cindy Sherman. Photo: CS Studio
Portrait of Cindy Sherman © Cindy Sherman. Photo: Inez & Vinoodh
Cindy Sherman quoted in ‘A Conversation with Cindy Sherman,’ Succès du Bédac, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Déjà Vu, Dijon/FR: 1982, p. 20.