Cindy Sherman - Retrospective (Art Photo Ebook)

urrogates confounding rhe distinction between real flesh and artificial
d manipulations of it.
Projecting apocalyptic, medieval overflies
and indications of memento mon as well as surreal mixtures of
:ure, nightmare, and vertigo, the dense emotive range of these pieces
problematizes an interpretation grounded in issues of gender, which may
>e,
in part, a consciously counterindicative response by Sherman to
the proliferation of feminist theory that has revolved around her work.
26 Sherman'^ invocation of rhe grotesque approximate^ writer Mary Russo's
discussion of the carnivalesque as defined by "issues of bodily exposure
and containment, disguise and gender masquerade, abjection and marginalitv.
parody and excess."' Russo continues,
It is as if the carnivalesque body politic had ingested the entire corpus of high culture and,
in its bloated and irrepressible state, released it in fits and starts in all manner of
recombination, inversion, mockery, and degradation. The political implications of this
heterogeneity are obvious; it
sets carnival apart from the merely oppositional and reactive;
carnival and the carnivalesque suggest a redeployment or counterproduction of culture,
knowledge, and pleasure/
Such a sensibility, strongly evident throughout Sherman's entire corpus of
work, also characterizes the work of early twentieth-century German artist
Hannah Hoch (1889-1978). Through startlingly recombinant photocollages
drawn from a variety of sources in the mass media, Hoch
produced works that function as mordant political critique and social
satire as well as more ambiguous, surrealist-inspired, and highly personal
images that anticipate some of Sherman's concerns and imagery.
Grafting body parts from disparate sources—often focusing on eyes,
mouth, teeth, and truncated portions of the face—such works by Hoch as
Froeliche Dame (Merry Woman) of 1923. Mutter (figure 9)
\
Mother,
from the Ethnographic Museum series), and Angst (Anxiety), 19-0,
the latter deriving from a photograph of a scientific model of a mannequin
juxtaposed with a human nervous system, Hoch's savage but
humorous manipulations of the body are echoed in Sherman's equally
wide-ranging subversions of established types and images.
Another twentieth-century artist with whom Sherman's work resonates is
Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925—1972.)
(figure 10). whose medium
was also photograph}. The disquieting tenor of many of Meatyard's hallucinatory,
evocative photographs, many of which use grotesque masks,
mannequin body parts, or dolls as props used by human figures
within incongruously mundane settings, offers a degree of funereal surreality
and a conspicuous reliance on the trappings of artifice approaching
those found throughout Sherman's work. While Meatyard's eccentric,
highly personal vision differs from Sherman's sense of flamboyance and of
the burlesque, a darkly gothic presence pervades both artists' imagery.