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Lot Essay
Executed in 1981 as part of her groundbreaking Centerfolds series, Cindy Sherman’s Untitled is a haunting, visceral work. One of the most powerful and evocative images in the series, it provoked considerable debate when it was exhibited at Metro Pictures in New York in November of 1981. Having already created a name for herself with the Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980), it was the Centerfolds that really propelled Sherman’s career, establishing her as one of the most gifted artists of her generation. Looking back, the founder of Metro Pictures, Janelle Reiring, would say, "It was her second show with us—with the Centerfolds series from 1981—that seemed to change everything" (J. Reiring, quoted in S.P. Hanson, "Art Dossier: Cindy Sherman," Art+Auction, February 2012).
The idea for the Centerfolds initially came out of a discussion between Sherman and the editor of Artforum, Ingrid Sischy. Although they were ultimately never published in the magazine, the series of twelve photographs were Sherman’s response to the hackneyed and cliched images of women that were the staple of certain gentlemen’s’ magazines.
By engaging with a taboo subject, Sherman cleverly courted criticism and ultimately subverted the “male gaze” that was inherent of the original image. As producer, director and subject of her own curated vignettes, the artist was in the driver’s seat, controlling her own narrative. The results were, and still are, fascinating, exciting, disturbing and above all, form a critical body of work within the western canon of art history.
The sheer scale of Untitled , measuring two by four feet, makes the image almost life sized, and was Sherman’s largest yet and one of her first forays into full color. In this work, a blond protagonist lies within a bed of dark, crumpled sheets. She wears an old-fashioned lace nightgown that is pulled up over her chest, her blonde hair messy and disheveled. A delicate sheen of sweat covers her face, with what appears to be a single teardrop lingering on her left cheek. A sinister air pervades the scene, but whatever has transpired—or is about to transpire—is deliberately unknown to the viewer.
The scale and intimate vantage point of this particular work compels the viewer to loom over it like a voyeur peering into a private, domestic act. “Sherman has made the viewers complicit in the idea of looking and the idea of photographing” the curator of Sherman’s Museum of Modern Art retrospective, Eva Respini, has said. “They've come upon this very intimate moment where these women are alone. And since they all seem to be in these vulnerable positions, it really makes us, the viewers, aware that we’re being voyeurs” (E. Respini, quoted in “Cindy Sherman, Untitled , 1981; audio recording, online via https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/261/3360 [accessed 9/19/21]).
It is perhaps because of this that Untitled was sometimes misunderstood when it was first exhibited. Writing in Sherman’s 2012 retrospective catalogue, Respini explains, “Untitled #93 was a particular lightning rod for debate, as some interpreted the puffy-faced girl clutching at her bedsheets as a victim of sexual assault” (E. Respini, Cindy Sherman, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012, p. 31). This was not the intention of the artist, however, who has said, “To me, the whole inspiration for the picture was somebody who’d been up all night drinking and partying and had just gone to sleep five minutes before the sun rose and woke her
up. So it bothered me at first when people criticized the picture, seeing the side that I hadn’t intended. I finally decided it was something I had to accept” (C. Sherman, ibid.).
Sherman, along with other artists such as Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, David Salle and Jack Goldstein, became known as the Pictures Generation. She began to challenge the saturation of media imagery that bombarded every aspect of daily life. For these young artists, coming of age in the ‘70s, a sense of disillusionment could be felt, stemming from inequalities of race and gender, and the lingering effects of Vietnam and Watergate. This was perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the streets of New York, where corruption and violence was rampant.
In their appropriation of photographs, film and advertisements, the Pictures Generation began to expose the mechanisms of seduction and desire that were encoded within nearly every form of advertising, film and television. Indeed, they surmised that personal identity was not innate, but rather created from a set of highly-refined social constructions that dictated gender, race and sexuality. The work that emerged was profound, visceral, visually-arresting, and ultimately unlike anything that had gone before.
“...I suppose unconsciously, or semiconsciously at best, I was wrestling with some sort of turmoil of my own about understanding of women...I definitely felt that the characters were questioning something--perhaps being forced into a certain role….There are so many levels of artifice. I liked that whole jumble of ambiguity.”Cindy Sherman
That the Centerfolds continue to resonate with viewers and have become one of Sherman’s most important series is due to their ability to call upon the deep-seated, underlying clichés that cling to any image of the female body. This was an element Sherman had already explored in her iconic Untitled Film Stills (1977-80), questioning and challenging the easily recognizable tropes from TV, film and magazines. In the Centerfolds, she has deepened and heightened her search for those images. Some are so subliminal as to have been embedded at a very early age, in bedtime stories, fairy tales, cartoons, books and TV. She recalls: “I know I was not consciously aware of this thing the ‘male gaze.’ It was the way I was shooting, the mimicry of the style...not my knowledge of feminist theory. … I suppose unconsciously, or semiconsciously at best, I was wrestling with some sort of turmoil of my own about understanding of women...I definitely felt that the characters were questioning something--perhaps being forced into a certain role….There are so many levels of artifice. I liked that whole jumble of ambiguity” (C. Sherman, quoted in op. cit., 2012, p. 30).
The idea for the Centerfolds initially came out of a discussion between Sherman and the editor of Artforum, Ingrid Sischy. Although they were ultimately never published in the magazine, the series of twelve photographs were Sherman’s response to the hackneyed and cliched images of women that were the staple of certain gentlemen’s’ magazines.
By engaging with a taboo subject, Sherman cleverly courted criticism and ultimately subverted the “male gaze” that was inherent of the original image. As producer, director and subject of her own curated vignettes, the artist was in the driver’s seat, controlling her own narrative. The results were, and still are, fascinating, exciting, disturbing and above all, form a critical body of work within the western canon of art history.
The sheer scale of Untitled , measuring two by four feet, makes the image almost life sized, and was Sherman’s largest yet and one of her first forays into full color. In this work, a blond protagonist lies within a bed of dark, crumpled sheets. She wears an old-fashioned lace nightgown that is pulled up over her chest, her blonde hair messy and disheveled. A delicate sheen of sweat covers her face, with what appears to be a single teardrop lingering on her left cheek. A sinister air pervades the scene, but whatever has transpired—or is about to transpire—is deliberately unknown to the viewer.
The scale and intimate vantage point of this particular work compels the viewer to loom over it like a voyeur peering into a private, domestic act. “Sherman has made the viewers complicit in the idea of looking and the idea of photographing” the curator of Sherman’s Museum of Modern Art retrospective, Eva Respini, has said. “They've come upon this very intimate moment where these women are alone. And since they all seem to be in these vulnerable positions, it really makes us, the viewers, aware that we’re being voyeurs” (E. Respini, quoted in “Cindy Sherman, Untitled , 1981; audio recording, online via https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/261/3360 [accessed 9/19/21]).
It is perhaps because of this that Untitled was sometimes misunderstood when it was first exhibited. Writing in Sherman’s 2012 retrospective catalogue, Respini explains, “Untitled #93 was a particular lightning rod for debate, as some interpreted the puffy-faced girl clutching at her bedsheets as a victim of sexual assault” (E. Respini, Cindy Sherman, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012, p. 31). This was not the intention of the artist, however, who has said, “To me, the whole inspiration for the picture was somebody who’d been up all night drinking and partying and had just gone to sleep five minutes before the sun rose and woke her
up. So it bothered me at first when people criticized the picture, seeing the side that I hadn’t intended. I finally decided it was something I had to accept” (C. Sherman, ibid.).
Sherman, along with other artists such as Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, David Salle and Jack Goldstein, became known as the Pictures Generation. She began to challenge the saturation of media imagery that bombarded every aspect of daily life. For these young artists, coming of age in the ‘70s, a sense of disillusionment could be felt, stemming from inequalities of race and gender, and the lingering effects of Vietnam and Watergate. This was perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the streets of New York, where corruption and violence was rampant.
In their appropriation of photographs, film and advertisements, the Pictures Generation began to expose the mechanisms of seduction and desire that were encoded within nearly every form of advertising, film and television. Indeed, they surmised that personal identity was not innate, but rather created from a set of highly-refined social constructions that dictated gender, race and sexuality. The work that emerged was profound, visceral, visually-arresting, and ultimately unlike anything that had gone before.
“...I suppose unconsciously, or semiconsciously at best, I was wrestling with some sort of turmoil of my own about understanding of women...I definitely felt that the characters were questioning something--perhaps being forced into a certain role….There are so many levels of artifice. I liked that whole jumble of ambiguity.”Cindy Sherman
That the Centerfolds continue to resonate with viewers and have become one of Sherman’s most important series is due to their ability to call upon the deep-seated, underlying clichés that cling to any image of the female body. This was an element Sherman had already explored in her iconic Untitled Film Stills (1977-80), questioning and challenging the easily recognizable tropes from TV, film and magazines. In the Centerfolds, she has deepened and heightened her search for those images. Some are so subliminal as to have been embedded at a very early age, in bedtime stories, fairy tales, cartoons, books and TV. She recalls: “I know I was not consciously aware of this thing the ‘male gaze.’ It was the way I was shooting, the mimicry of the style...not my knowledge of feminist theory. … I suppose unconsciously, or semiconsciously at best, I was wrestling with some sort of turmoil of my own about understanding of women...I definitely felt that the characters were questioning something--perhaps being forced into a certain role….There are so many levels of artifice. I liked that whole jumble of ambiguity” (C. Sherman, quoted in op. cit., 2012, p. 30).