The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, has announced its major winter exhibition featuring the work of one of today’s most influential artists, photographer Cindy Sherman that will be on view through April 23, 2011. “Cindy Sherman:Works from Friends of the Bruce Museum” is comprised of approximately 30 works, including large-scale black-and-white and color photographs, drawn from ten local collections in Greenwich and the surrounding communities. The exhibition features the artist’s favored themes and suggests something of the chameleon-like diversity of her art.
Although Sherman is the model for her photographs, she is essentially serving as the material for her work, as an actress in a scene. She is adamant that the photographs are not self-portraits and that they do not represent her or herself role playing. Cindy Sherman serves as her own model, as well as photographer, stylist, make-up person, allowing her to work alone in her studio. She employs herself to explore various personae and addresses topical issues of the contemporary world while examining the roles of women and the artist.
Throughout her long career, Sherman has continually appropriated and confronted numerous visual genres, including the film still, centerfold, historical portrait, and fashion photography. Sherman’s photographs imitate these representational tropes, using them to challenge images in popular culture and the mass media.
The show opens with a selection of photographs from Sherman’s landmark series of Untitled Film Stills (1977-80). Perhaps the most well known and recognizable works of Sherman’s career, these black-and-white photographs seem to depict stills for films that never existed. In each of these photographs, Sherman places herself in the role of various female character types from B-movies and film noir. By turning the camera on herself, Sherman raises challenging and important questions about the role of women in society and the representation of cultural stereotypes.
The exhibition follows Sherman’s subsequent career through several of her major series, including the Centerfolds, Disasters and Fairy Tales, the History Portraits, Clowns, the Women from California series, and her most recent works, the Rich Women series. In each of these series, the artist continues to manipulate and reprogram her appearance to adopt multiple roles. In 1981, Sherman simultaneously imitated and challenged men’s magazine centerfolds in a series of photographs commissioned, but never used, by Artforum. These large-scale photographs adopt the saturated colors, close-cropping and overhead camera angles of the centerfold, while depicting the artist in various female roles, both familiar and unexpected.
Sherman’s later series explore an ever-expanding assortment of archetypal roles and social types. The artist’s Disasters and Fairy Tales (1985-1989) are more fantastical and grotesque than her earlier work. Sherman dons complex disguises and prostheses in these twisted fairy tales, intentionally taking on increasingly frightening and deformed personae. In the late 1980s, Sherman turned to Old Master paintings for inspiration. These History Portraits (1988-1990) depict the artist dressed as figures from famous works by Caravaggio, Raphael, and others. The Rich Women series showcases Sherman’s newest cast of characters who are immediately recognizable as belonging to the upper echelons of society. These photographs of aging speak to issues of class and presentation.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a scholarly catalogue with contributions by Mr. Silver and Bruce Museum Executive Director Peter Sutton, as well as an interview with Linda Nochlin, pioneering feminist art historian and Lila Acheson Wallace Professor at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, who discusses Sherman’s fascinating oeuvre at length.
The Bruce Museum is located at 1 Museum Drive in Greenwich, Connecticut, USA. General admission is $7 for adults, $6 for seniors and students, and free for children under five and Bruce Museum members. Free admission to all on Tuesdays. The Museum is located near Interstate-95, Exit 3, and a short walk from the Greenwich, CT, train station. Museum hours are: Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and closed Mondays and major holidays. Groups of eight or more require advance reservations. Museum exhibition tours are held Fridays at 12:30 p.m. Free, on-site parking is available. The Bruce Museum is accessible to individuals with disabilities. For information, call the Bruce Museum at (203) 869-0376, or visit the Bruce Museum website at http://www.brucemuseum.org.
Photo Credit: Cindy Sherman
Connecticut Travel 