an unlikely conversation with
CINDY SHERMAN When Cindy Sherman’s career emerged in the 70s, photography was still largely considered inextricably bound to the molecular structures of the physical world, i.e., incapable of anything but mindless chemical repetition. It was, therefore, barred from realms of critical and generative genius out of which real art was born. Sherman fixed her camera on herself and set loose a vast collection of imagined perspectives, a deft unfurling of seemingly infinite subjectivity, an endless series of hypotheticals, that offered incisive social critique of a kind painting had never approached. Sherman’s photographs are amalgamations of scattered pieces and locations— wigs, garments, prosthetics, highways, kitchens, opulent gardens— which are brought together to form singular instances of a subject. These instances imply particular yet evasive histories, desires, and intentions. For all their vivid theatricality there is a pervasive silence cast by the distance, often blankness, of her subjects’ expressions. They suggest rather than expound a narrative. There is always a gap in meaning, which it is incumbent upon the viewer to fill. Sherman works from intuition rather than attempting to churn out illustrations of theory. Her childhood was spent dressing up and it is this instinctive trajectory that she follows to this day, without attempting to cloak her work in dense textual explanations. However, it was inevitable that the images she created would seriously engage cultural theorists, and be of particular interest to feminism. Since the Second Wave bristled through history we have been waiting patiently for the glass ceiling to finally shatter. Myths of intrinsic inequality between the sexes, and of the idealized/vilified feminine had, after all, both been exhaustively revealed as too irrational to be sustained. Sherman’s work made an invaluable contribution to such revelations. The fact that thirty years later we are still waiting makes it pertinent to consider her work in this context. The following ‘conversation’ is, like photography, a fiction created from a particular framing and arrangement of ‘real-life’ fragments. Drawn from a wide variety of sources, these pieces attempt to construct a loosely spun narrative that might offer potential for new perspectives on one of the most significant photographic careers of western history. This found-and-spliced dialogue with Sherman includes excerpts from writings and interviews with Linda Nochlin, Mira Schor, Susan Sontag and Janet Wolff. In a renowned 1971 essay, art historian Linda Nochlin posed the question, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” She has been a leading figure in the development of feminist art history. Mira Schor is a painter and writer who has, in both media, deeply considered the role of painting in contemporary art as well as the position of women in the history of art. During her life Susan Sontag made invaluable contributions to culture, in terms of both analysis and production. Major works include On Photography, Against Interpretation, and Regarding the Pain of Others. Janet Wolff is Professor Emirata at the University of Manchester. She has researched and written extensively on art, gender, culture, modernism and aesthetics.
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3 Musée Magazine 9