#W.W. LAURIE MODEL SETS 1 146 SERIES#

#W.W. LAURIE MODEL SETS 1 146 SERIES#

Untitled Film Still #13 issues from Sherman's epic 'Untitled Film Still' series (they did not actually derive from a larger movie) of the late 1970s, by which she first made a widespread reputation for herself as a witty commentator on the female role models of her youth, as well as those of an earlier generation. In this sense, Sherman's unique form of portrait photography functions, in part, as a sign for the subjective nature of all human intelligence and the unstable nature of visual perception.

Long assumed to be a medium that 'mirrors' reality with precision, photography in Sherman's hands simultaneously constructs and critiques its apparent subject.

Sherman's many variations on the methods of self-portraiture share a single, notable feature: in the vast majority of her portraits she directly confronts the viewer's gaze, no less in the case of posed sex dolls, as though to suggest that an underlying penchant for deception is perhaps the only 'value' that truly unites us.Sherman's photographic portraiture is both intensely grounded in the present while it extends long traditions in art that force the audience to reconsider common stereotypes and cultural assumptions, among the latter political satire, caricature, the graphic novel, pulp fiction, stand-up comedy (some of her characters are indeed uncomfortably 'funny'), and other socially critical disciplines.As though they constituted only a first premise, however, these images promptly begin to unravel in various ways that suggest how self-identity is often an unstable compromise between social dictates and personal intention. Recalling a long tradition of self-portraiture and theatrical role-playing in art, Sherman utilizes the camera and the various tools of the everyday cinema, such as makeup, costumes, and stage scenery, to recreate common illusions, or iconic 'snapshots,' that signify various concepts of public celebrity, self-confidence, sexual adventure, entertainment, and other socially sanctioned, existential conditions.Sherman's work is central in the era of intense consumerism and image proliferation at the close of the 20th century. Sexual desire and domination, the fashioning of self-identity as mass deception, these are among the unsettling subjects lying behind Sherman's extensive series of self-portraiture in various guises. Turning the camera on herself in a game of extended role-playing of fantasy Hollywood, fashion, mass advertising, and 'girl-next-door' roles and poses, Sherman ultimately called her audience's attention to the powerful machinery and make-up that lay behind the countless images circulating in an incessantly public, 'plugged in' culture.

Sherman sought to call into question the seductive and often oppressive influence of mass-media over our individual and collective identities. At first painting in a super-realist style in art school during the aftermath of American Feminism, Sherman turned to photography toward the end of the 1970s in order to explore a wide range of common female social roles, or personas. She is a key figure of the ' Pictures Generation,' a loose circle of American artists who came to artistic maturity and critical recognition during the early 1980s, a period notable for the rapid and widespread proliferation of mass media imagery. Cindy Sherman is a contemporary master of socially critical photography.

W.w. laurie model sets 1-146