Cindy Sherman - Retrospective (Art Photo Ebook)

. . one
make
Judith Williamson, "Images
that the gaze is
not an issue in
Sherman's images). If she had
voman'—The Photographs
this photograph is in my view
attended to her own participation
of Cindy Sherman," Screen 24,
unconvincing. Krauss leaps
in
recasting Sherman's images
n. 6 (November/December
from an interesting observation
as proposing a desublimated
1983): 102.
to an untenable claim that com-
rather than coherent subject
pletely ignores the history of
and explored why this might be
18 Ibid. At the same time such
soft-core pornography: the way
an interesting thing to do at this
a doubling achieves only regres-
in which the "nimbus" can just
moment, Krauss's insights (and
sive ends in the readings of
as easily suggest the welcoming
they are many) would have been
some viewers. Mira Schor sees
of a gaze as it can a "voyeuristic
more convincing overall.
52
Sherman's work as only reinforcing
the stereotypes it
remove." Further, the use of a
light flare (like Sherman's use of
20 This is my expanded, phe-
engages: "a substantial number
graininess in
Untitled Film Still
nomenological definition based
of the women enacted by
#2, which Krauss discusses in
on Duchamp's notes; see "The
Sherman are either squatting,
similar terms) could also be
Green Box" (1934). The Writings
crouching or prone, crazed or
viewed in
feminist terms as
of Marcel Duchamp, ed. Michel
dead. .
has only to see
making the (male) gaze aware of
Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson
certain Sherman photographs
itself,
just as exaggerating the
(New York: Da Capo, 1973). 65.
on a collector's wall to under-
texture of the photograph could
On "Flesh" as an indication of
stand the rather traditional
be viewed as a way of splitting
the embodiment of the self in
nature of their appeal: a wet T-
the conventionally sutured duo
relation to the world see
shirt clinging to breasts is the
of "image" and "feminine."
Merleau-Ponty, "The
same old thing, whether you call
There is
no point in dwelling on
Intertwining—The Chiasm,"
it
draperie mouillee ... or tits
Krauss's antifeminism, but I
do
130-155.
and ass." Schor, "Backlash and
want to note, as it is relevant to
Appropriation," in
The Power of
my own argument, that she per-
2i I
this argument vis-a-
Feminist Art: The American
forms precisely the sin she
vis body art in
my book Body
Movement of the 1970s, History
accuses feminists (in
particular
Art/Performing the Subject.
and Impact, ed. Norma Broude
Laura Mulvey) of committing
and Mary D. Garrard (New York:
vis-a-vis Sherman's work: fixat-
22 Judith Butler, "Sexual
Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 255.
ing on an a priori
model of
Ideology and Phenomenological
While I
appreciate Schor's pas-
explanation (in
Mulvey's case
Description," 89. On intersub-
sion, I think
such a reading is
that of the model of the gaze)
jectivity in the work of Jean-Paul
far too simplistic (as any examination
of the broad reception
her work has engendered would
such that, in the terms Krauss
applies to Mulvey, the interpreter
fails to "look under the
Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, see
also Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes:
The Denigration of Vision in
suggest).
hood" (that is,
one assumes, to
Twentieth-Century Thought
19 Mulvey, "A
Phantasmagoria," 138. Krauss
reads this image specifically
against Mulvey's model, arguing
that the notion of the gaze is
countered by the "voyeuristic
see the "true" meaning of
Sherman's work—as specified
by Krauss). Krauss's apparently
consuming need to devalue
feminism (to dismiss the last
thirty years of feminist theorizing,
while at the same time
(Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press,
1993). 3ii-
23 Initially commissioned by
Artforum, the images were not
ultimately published there.
remove" established by the
appropriating much of its
lan-
"nimbus that washes around
the frame of the image, repeating
in the register of light the
sense of barrier that the door
frame constructs in the world of
guage) compels her to overlook
her own participation in rereading
Sherman's work according
to a formalist paradigm. In the
oldest trick in the art historical
24 On feminist Brechtian
strategies, which Sherman's
works particularly avoid, see
Griselda Pollock, "Screening the
seventies: sexuality and repre-
physical objects," in
Cindy
book, Krauss uses the stick of
sentation in feminist practice
Sherman: 1975-7993, 56. While
Krauss's attention to the wash
of light flaring in at the bottom
of the photograph is compelling
(the nimbus does mark the photograph
as "image" and makes
evident circuits of identification
or projection), her attempt to
objectivity to pose her readings
as correct (according to Krauss,
Mulvey imposes her model and
consumes Sherman's images as
myth, while Krauss, by attending
to the formal structure, lighting
effects, etc. of the photographs,
simply shows us the truth of
a Brechtian perspective," in
Vision and Difference: Femininity,
Feminism and the Histories of Art
(New York and London:
Routledge, 1988), 155-199.
use this observation as "proof"
what is
"under the hood" of