Why is Cindy Sherman so famous?

[Asher Kelman]

Cindy Sherman. Untitled #466. 2008. Chromogenic color
print, 8' 1 1/8 x 63 15/16" (246.7 x 162.4 cm). The Museum
of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of
Robert B. Menschel in honor of Jerry I. Speyer.

© 2011 Cindy Sherman


​

In the February 28th 2012 edition of Artopia John Perreault, an art ciritic, proposes that Cindy Sherman is not a photographer!


"Since one critic has already deemed Cindy Sherman “the successor to Cézanne, Picasso, Pollock and Warhol,” I feel I am free to delve into other things. The headline to his preview panegyric was The Last Star, so one of these days I will have to write a pithy essay explaining why we don’t need any more stars, thank you; and the last great artist is me. The need for heroes or heroines is perennial, even in something as pure and as uplifting as art. Upon the occasion of the must-see retrospective now at MoMA until June 11, another critic announces that Sherman’s career is the first of a woman artist that resembles those of Picasso, Johns and Bruce Nauman. However, I will go all out and say that Sherman’s 2008 “Society Lady Portraits” are as good as, if not better than, her career-making “Untitled Film Stills” (1977-80). She has avoided the male slump, which I define as the usual decline of male “upstarts” who are inspired and then should be retired. But no names here; you can fill in the blanks." Read the entire article here


Read the article (and if you can go visit the retrospective of Cindy Sherman's work at MOMA in New York which is on until June 11th 2012). Even if you cannot vista, you must have seem a lot of her work. It fetches $millions and is prized by collectors. So what makes her work so special to us. Can you share your ideas on how her importance has come about and what its based on.

Asher

 

[Tom Robbins]

Great question Asher. I hope someone can provide a convincing answer. Viewing her "work" makes me feel like the little peasant kid chuckling at the king's lack of clothes. But, maybe living in Crudbucket, Illinois for many decades prevents me from recognizing the real deal. Or maybe not.

 

[Maris Rusis]

It's been some decades since I was a gallery director but I have watched Cindy Sherman's star rise and it is a very familiar trajectory indeed. Photographs and photographers become great but the process is not closely related to what the pictures look like, who made them, or what they are of. It is more mundane and perhaps more cynical than that. The underlying mechanism is Discourse.

The grand but rather abstract principle that rules over historically successful pictures is:

"ART IS VALORISED BY DISCOURSE."

No photograph has much intrinsic value. Even a Platinotype has but a few cents worth of platinum in it. The process whereby something that has no inherent worth comes to have value attached to it is valorisation.

Discourse is any communicated mental activity. A great picture, in the first instance, requires that the picture maker has an internal discourse. They need to care about the picture, or at least give the appearance of caring, enough to imply extensive thought about it. They need to have the technical skills or the money to hire skillful people to manifest those thoughts, in the form of visual metaphors, in the picture itself.

Once the picture is available to an audience the discourse must continue both in the minds of individual viewers, in conversations between viewers, and in the promotional activities of critics, commentators, and traders. Well-heeled collectors who pay big money to display their connoiseurship and refined taste to their millionaire buddies add prestige to what buy. All the highly touted pictures of history, Cindy Sherman's included, have traversed this path.

In synopsis, pictures are acclaimed not for their qualities but rather for the qualities ascribed to them.

 

[Asher Kelman]

It's been some decades since I was a gallery director but I have watched Cindy Sherman's star rise and it is a very familiar trajectory indeed. Photographs and photographers become great but the process is not closely related to what the pictures look like, who made them, or what they are of. It is more mundane and perhaps more cynical than that. The underlying mechanism is Discourse.

The grand but rather abstract principle that rules over historically successful pictures is:

"ART IS VALORISED BY DISCOURSE."

No photograph has much intrinsic value. Even a Platinotype has but a few cents worth of platinum in it. The process whereby something that has no inherent worth comes to have value attached to it is valorisation.

Discourse is any communicated mental activity. A great picture, in the first instance, requires that the picture maker has an internal discourse. They need to care about the picture, or at least give the appearance of caring, enough to imply extensive thought about it. They need to have the technical skills or the money to hire skillful people to manifest those thoughts, in the form of visual metaphors, in the picture itself.

Once the picture is available to an audience the discourse must continue both in the minds of individual viewers, in conversations between viewers, and in the promotional activities of critics, commentators, and traders. Well-heeled collectors who pay big money to display their connoiseurship and refined taste to their millionaire buddies add prestige to what buy. All the highly touted pictures of history, Cindy Sherman's included, have traversed this path.

In synopsis, pictures are acclaimed not for their qualities but rather for the qualities ascribed to them.

Maris,

This is a good insight. Having said that, what special qualities you value in photography do you find in her work. Can you trace, in her progress, what qualities, special to her work, led her to being considered so great?

Asher