Product Description

This comprehensive book traces the career of Cindy Sherman, examining her achievements as one of the leading American artists of our time. Provocative and engaging, the vivid physicality of Sherman's photographs is the key to their dramatic power. By exploring the myriad constructions of female identity and the body in our culture, Sherman imitates and confronts assorted representational stereotypes, becoming for many an icon of the contemporary concerns of feminism and postmodernism. Essayists Amanda Cruz, Elizabeth A. T. Smith, and Amelia Jones offer keen insight and observations from several distinct vantage points, demonstrating that Sherman's work is a lens through which to view contemporary art and its ongoing concern with the profound issues of the structures of the self. More than 200 images show the breadth of Sherman's body of work, from the Untitled Film Stills of the 1970s to series such as Centerfolds, Fashion, Disasters, Fairy Tales, and History Portraits, as well as photographs influenced by surrealist artists. Also included are intriguing excerpts from Sherman's notebooks, selections from her contact sheets, and numerous Polaroid studies, all of which shed light on the artist's process. Cindy Sherman: Retrospective was first published to accompany an exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. 279 photographs, 145 in color.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #248594 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 220 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780500279878
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Booklist
Cindy Sherman has taken self-portraiture and masquerade to the highest heights and the campiest lows, bringing the shady ambience of B-movies to art photography while exploring the plexus of narcissism, from its silliest manifestations to its most provocative expressions. Sherman explores the implications of role-playing and fantasy, seeing and being seen, and society's perceptions of women, eroticism, and consumerism in her photographs, creating resonant images and supplying art critics with much grist for their mills. In her contribution to this retrospective volume, Amelia Jones begins with the remark that "much ink has been spilled over Cindy Sherman," and, obviously, the flow continues, but Jones, Cruz, and their colleagues provide just the sort of commentary Sherman's work demands, and the photographs themselves are engaging, both viscerally and intellectually. Sherman has been in costume before her own camera for more than 20 years, earning the right to a major traveling exhibition and speculation as to what she'll come up with next. How many selves can a self be? Stay tuned. Donna Seaman

Review
Sherman has been called the 'logical heir to Warhol' . . . the postmodern generation's answer to Ansel Adams. -- American Photo

Sherman integrates female identity, representation, contamination, and taboo. By presenting images that ask what's OK and what's not...she opens wide the Pandora's box. -- ArtForum

About the Author
Amanda Cruz is the Manilow Curator of Exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Elizabeth A. T. Smith is Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Amelia Jones is an associate professor of contemporary art and theory and the history of photography at the University of California, Riverside.

Customer Reviews

loved it
A great overview of Cindy Sherman's art with very few gaps. A quick response to an above statement: The disgust you feel is a great part of how one should look at her work. One of the most fascinating aspects in all her photos is the ability she has to construct blantant lies that we react to almost as passionately as what we feel to be genuine. As for her dolls, it's more along the lines of her very merrily reconstructing versions of the human body that are obviously false yet we still search for their anatomical processes. The aspects of them that one finds disgusting are more like the silly goo of a cheap horror movie or the ridiculous body part shots of the sleaziest silicone laden porno. Despite our knowing it's inherent phoniness, we still are frightened, disgusted, and aroused. As I said before, that's a key to her work. Frankly, if you are that disturbed by plastic excrement and genitalia, but not phased at all by the phycological twisting and tension so prevelant in her earlier work, then maybe modern art overall just isn't your cup of tea.

At last a superb compilation of a great artist's works.
I can't believe it's taken this long for a compilation of Cindy Sherman's body of work to appear. But maybe that's the real measure of a major artist in this place at this time. Sherman is one of the strongest,most meticulous and most original artists to appear since the early 1930s. I'm not going to analyze the photographs, they've been analyzed to death and are far beyond analysis in any case. Suffice to say the quality and layout are excellent. A thrilling book! I do have one reservation which has nothing to do with CS. The accompanying essays are highly ideological (which CS ain't) and serve Sherman far less than their own agendas plus at least one of them is almost unreadable mumbo jumbo.

I saw the Retrospective Show, and I bought the book.
I saw the Retrospective show at the Art Gallery of Ontario back in 1999 and bought the book right after at the gallery bookstore. I later went back and saw the show two more times and also read the book from cover to cover. IT IS FABULOUS. It is no wonder Cindy Sherman is considered to be one of the top ten most influential artists of the 20th century. I especially love the notes in the book, showing how she arranges her ideas, how she deliberately uses feminism and ideas that are disgusting in order to make her social statements. Her artwork is deliberately controversial and its not for all people. (Jerry Falwell once said that Sherman was "spawn of the devil", but who actually listens to him?) But if you like controversy and if you like artwork that makes you think, buy this book. - A Fellow Artist.