Cindy Sherman - Retrospective (Art Photo Ebook)

jges, however, in her portrayals of women. Spoofing the often awkward
depictions of the female anatomy in Old Master paintings, she uses fake
ists of astounding configurations to great effects in Untitled #222 (plate
119) and particularly in Untitled #225 (plate 122), in which the bosom of an
ristocrat squirts a trajectory of fluid. The sheer ridiculousness of these
works suggests that Sherman is mocking the Western canon and its seemingly
endless depictions of extravagantly dressed royalty, clergy, mistresses, and
religious figures. Although this series may at first seem like an anomaly in a
career that has simulated the methods of the mass media, the History
Portraits likewise deal with a representational system that reinforces a particular
ideology, albeit a more dated one.
Sex Pictures, 1992
But what can porn do in a world pornographed in advance? . . . Except bring an added ironic value to
appearances? Except trip a last paradoxical wink—of sex laughing at itself in its most exact and
hence most monstrous form, laughing at its own disappearance beneath its most artificial form?
—jean Baudrillard 42
From the civilized milieu of the History Portraits, Sherman next turned
to the raunch of the pornographic. Using anatomically detailed mannequins
and body parts from medical catalogues, she constructed hybrid dolls. Rather
than having sex, these figures proudly show their sex. Sherman arranges the
dolls in poses that imitate those of pornography in Untitled #258 (plate 128)
and Untitled #264 (plate 131), and she combines parts from various mannequins
in the grotesque Untitled #250 (plate 126), Untitled #263 (plate 130),
and Untitled #264 (plate 131).
Sherman created these works in response to several issues. She had been
considering how to incorporate total nudity into her work for a long time. She
also wanted to respond to the series of photographic works by Jeff Koons that
depict the artist and his then wife, Cicciolina, in sexual poses. The controversy
over the National Endowment for the Arts (nea) and the debates over what
constitutes obscenity in art, which were occuring at the time, were a further
inducement to produce the series. 43
Sherman's rebuttal to the threat of censorship
are images that, though contrived, are genuinely pornographic; they objectify
sex. The complexity of the issue of pornography is
such that, as Ellen
Willis points out, it
unites feminists and extreme conservatives in an unlikely
alliance against the exploitation of women and immoral behavior. 44 During the
nea debates, the radical right aimed their wrath particularly at photography
and the works of Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano. Evidently the
assumed veracity of the photograph is
what gives these images power. Yet
Sherman's Sex Pictures are manifestly artificial. As in all her works after the
Untitled Film Stills, the tricks are apparent, disclosing all
the manipulations of
image-making. Typically, pornography portrays sex as anonymous, and in this
series, Sherman depicts pornography as ridiculous. The clinical aspect
of the mannequins and the shocking violations of their plastic parts result in
ssomely hilarious pictures to which we cannot help but relate because
they appear so familiar.