Cindy Sherman - Retrospective (Art Photo Ebook)

esire mixed with nostalgia fuels the allure of the Untitled Film Stills—
are for the woman depicted as well as desire to be that woman, during
mie. Considering the sources for the series, this potent mix is
inevitable. In his study of the series, Arthur Danto points out that film
stills
are not isolated frames from movies but rather reenactments
that are used to advertise a film and, as advertisements, they are meant to
stimulate enough interest to sell tickets. "The still must tease with the
promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told."' 2 As with any film
still, performance is at the core of Sherman's images, and Danto
attributes their success as being "simultaneously and inseparably photographs
and performances." 13
As photographic records of self-performances, the Untitled Film Stills are
related to the feminist performance work of the 1970s by artists such as
Eleanor Antin and Adrian Piper, who Sherman has identified as early
influences.' 4
In the early 1970s, Antin used costumes to transform herself
into a series of characters: a king, a ballerina, a nurse, and a black
movie star,
in public pieces, which are also presented as photographs
(figure 7). In a series of public performances begun in 1970 entitled
Catalysis (figure 6), Adrian Piper performed in public in New York by, for
example in Catalysis I, riding the subway and browsing through books
while wearing clothes that had been soaked in foul-smelling fluids. These
early performances by women (and those of men at the time) are known
primarily through photographic documentation. Sherman's Untitled
Film Stills are not only photographic records of performances but,
inversely, performative accounts of filmic images. Sherman ended the series
in
1980, when she realized that she was beginning to duplicate some
of the stereotypes.' 5
figure 6
Adrian Piper
Catalysis III, 1970
Courtesy of the
artist
figure 7
Eleanor Antin
The King ofSolona
figure 7
Beach, 1975
Courtesy Ronald
Feldman Fine Arts,
New York