cindy

sherman
 cindy
sherman
FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Bernard Arnault, president First and foremost, we would like to extend As well as all those who, in various ways, have
Jean-Paul Claverie, advisor to the president, our warmest thanks to Cindy Sherman for her contributed to this project:
administrator invaluable assistance. Indira Abiskaroon; Marcia Acita ; Rahel Blättler;
Suzanne Pagé, artistic director Leila Bou Nasr ; Clemande Burgevin Blachman;
Sophie Durrleman, executive director We would like to express our deepest gratitude to Glenn de Castro; Nance Cohen; Kate Davies; Troy
all the lenders, directors of museums, public and Dawn; Gallery Sprüth Magers; Bruce Grenville;
private institutions and galleries, and collectors Griffin Editions: Junko Sakuno, Joanna Raynes,
Exhibition and catalogue who have made this exhibition possible through Cody Ranaldo; Samantha Halstead Santez;
their generous support: Margaret Lee ; Karsten Löckemann; Ned
General curator Architect Aishti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon McConnell; Graham McNamara; Metro Pictures
Suzanne Pagé Marco Palmieri Allison and Neil Rubler – notably Tom Heman, John Michael Morein,
Curators in collaboration with Andrea Doppio Barbara and Richard S. Lane Margaret Zwilling; Maria Gabriela Mizes; Hannah
Marie-Laure Bernadac Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein Murray; National Portrait Gallery, London
Olivier Michelon Production Collection MJS – notably Nicholas Cullinan, Paul Moorhouse,
Associate curator Élodie Berthelot, Cynthia and Abe Steinberger Ted McDonald-Toone, Melanie Pilbrow, Eloise
Ludovic Delalande director of cultural production David Roberts Collection Stewart, Sarah Tinsley, Rosie Wilson; Carol
assisted by and the agency Arter: Renaud Sabari, Didier and Dominique Guyot Nesemann; JJ Pakola; Debbie Rizzo; Larissa
Marie-Monique Couvègnes Lisa Delmas Dorothy and Peter Waldt Rolfe; Lauren Shaw; Sarah Sonderkamp; Kim
and Roger Herrera Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland Svendsen; Catherine Ugols.
Emily Wei Rales, director
Authors Julie & Barry Smooke
Marie-Laure Bernadac Laura and Barry Townley Finally, we extend our sincerest thanks to all
Marie Darrieussecq Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s collaborators
Ludovic Delalande Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and their respective partners who were directly
Olivier Michelon Annandale-on-Hudson, New York involved in this project:
Suzanne Pagé Tom Eccles, director Anne-Louise Amanieu, Andréa Azéma, Benjamin
Gérard Wacjman Metro Pictures Baudet, Charlotte Benoit, Claudia Buizza,
Michael Schwartz Sébastien Bizet, Patricia Brunerie, Caroline
Catalogue published by the Fondation This exhibition and this publication have been Mitchell and Nina Davidson Cadinot, Isabella Capece Galeota, Scarlett
Louis Vuitton and Éditions Hazan made possible thanks to the collaboration of the Neda Young Chaumien, Candice Chenu, Benoît Dagron,
National Portrait Gallery in London. Olbricht Collection Delphine Davenier, Clélia Dehon, Pauline
Marie-Laure Bernadac and Olivier Michelon, Director, Nicholas Cullinan Pamela and Arthur Sanders Dujardin, Laurent Escaffre, Yuliya Garreau,
catalogue editors Patricia Marshall Coralie Goyard, Marie Grenier, Pascale Hérivaux,
Raphaël Chamak, head of publishing Rachel and Jean-Pierre Lehmann Collection Olivia Jacquinot, Claire Jousselme, Julie Lartigue,
Gaëlle Perroteau, picture researcher Raf Simons Emmanuel Lemercier, Bérengère Lévêque,
Ringier Collection Émilie Lormée, Marianne Mazet, Laura Menghini,
Éditions Hazan Sammlung Goetz Joachim Monégier du Sorbier, Roya Nasser,
Jérôme Gille, editorial director Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Nathalie Ogé, Gaëlle Perroteau, Annie Pérez,
Béatrice Petit, managing editor Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Aimée Randriaratoanina, Charlotte Ripaux,
Charles Penwarden, translator Richard Armstrong, director Angeline Scherf, Claire Staebler, Yan Stive,
Bernard Wooding, copy-editor Tate Modern, London Camille Trautmann, Franck Valladeau, Vincent
Marie Donzelli, graphic designer Frances Morris, director Villepellet, Thierry Wiesen
Claire Hostalier, production manager Vancouver Art Gallery
Daina Augaitis, director
Young Family, New York

And all those who wish to remain anonymous.

 –9–
FOREWORD
Bernard Arnault

– 11 –
PREFACE
Suzanne Pagé

– 15 –
WOMANLINESS
AS A MASQUERADE
Marie-Laure Bernadac

– 27 –
THAT’S ME
Marie Darrieussecq

– 33 –
THE GREAT ESCAPE
Olivier Michelon

– 39 –
WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?
Gérard Wajcman

– 45 –
BEHIND (CINDY SHERMAN’S) BLUE EYES
Ludovic Delalande

– 52 –
CATALOGUE
Since her Untitled Film Stills, Cindy Sherman has never
given titles to any of her images. They are referred
to as Untitled, followed by a number corresponding
– 232 –
to the order in which they were produced. The names SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
of series of works used by the authors in this book
are names that have commonly been used by the artist – 234 –
and by commentators over the years, but they are not titles. LIST OF EXHIBITED WORKS
FOREWORD
Bernard Arnault
In five years, the Fondation Louis Vuitton has
become a seminal artistic and cultural venue
emblematic of France. Already lauded as a mile-
stone in 21st-century architecture, the building
created in Paris by Frank Gehry symbolises an
institution recognised for the quality and origi-
nality of its artistic choices, for the discernment
of its collections and, significantly, for an abili-
ty to engage with a very broad spectrum of the
public and artists.
Artists are naturally the source of the passion
that inspired the realisation of a project as ambi-
tious as the Fondation Louis Vuitton. While
Cindy Sherman, to whom the Foundation is
dedicating a retrospective exhibition this spring,
has a significant number of works in our collec-
tion, I trust she will pardon us for the time it has
taken to accord her the prominence she merits as
one of the most important and influential artists
of our times.
The enthusiasm so many of us share regarding
Cindy Sherman’s work spurs us to seek a trace or
an echo in her personal life, some reflection of
her own private story, given that she has always
staged herself. And yet she herself cautions against
this. When someone terms her work ‘self-por-
traits’ she replies: ‘Technically, maybe they are,
but I don’t see these characters as myself.’ This
confidence explains the fascination she exerts,
because paradoxically, it is precisely by disap-
pearing behind masks, make-up and disguises
that Cindy Sherman has become an ‘icon’, one
of too few artists recognised beyond the world of
art, notably in fashion.
Since her so famous Film Stills series in 1977,
in which she created her own imagined movie
characters, Cindy Sherman has depicted herself
in myriad personas – Botticelli’s Venus, a star in
the golden age of Hollywood, a bourgeoise in a
portrait by Ingres, a love-struck woman waiting
by the phone, a fashionista backstage at a runway
show, a witch, an ogre and, more recently, a
modern-day dandy. In her latest series she even
becomes a couple, appearing as both genders,
masculine and feminine.
Since her childhood, when she first began
adopting various guises as a favourite means of
expression, she has become a hugely influential
artist who intimately understands the implica-
tions of appearance and self-portraiture, includ-
ing the role played by vanity in such exercises,
along with the extraordinary creativity required.
Indeed, she has taken on many roles that each
of us would perhaps like to play, but have never
dared to attempt.
The ‘Cindy Sherman at the Fondation Louis
Vuitton’ exhibition this spring is the largest ever
retrospective dedicated to the artist in Europe. The
exhibition also includes a presentation of works
from the Foundation’s Collection, noticed by the
artist and displayed in dialogue with her work. Our
intent is to make this event as important for her as
it is for us. Right from initial discussions between
Cindy and the exhibition curators, it was evident
that the exhibition, while returning to the founda-
tions of her body of work, should also feature her
newest pieces, since Cindy Sherman’s creative élan
during the past decade expresses tremendous force
as she continues to challenge herself. She demon-
strates an uncanny ability to anticipate her times in
order to better recount what is happening, to show
that – despite the controversy provoked by certain
of her photographs – Baudelaire’s formulation
prompts us to reconsider beauty: ‘Beauty always
has an eternal, unchanging element whose quan-
tity is excessively difficult to determine, as well as
a relative, circumstantial element which will be, if
one chooses, either separately or all at once, the
age, fashions, morals and passions.’
I want to personally, and on behalf of all art
lovers – from Paris, France and the entire world
– eager to share this moving and thrilling expe-
rience, express deep gratitude to Cindy Sherman
for her confidence and enthusiasm in enabling
the Fondation Louis Vuitton to organise such a
compelling celebration of life.
9

Untitled #602 (detail), 2019
(ill. p. 217)
Untitled #466 (detail), 2008
(ill. p. 186)
PREFACE
Suzanne Pagé
Why put on ‘Cindy Sherman at the Fondation’  The retrospective itself brings together some
today, in an exhibition that occupies the whole
building? Firstly, of course, because of the extreme
topicality of this work, which reaches beyond
the art world to a very wide audience. But also
because our Collection includes an important
corpus of this artist’s works that we have not yet
had the opportunity to show.
Cindy Sherman’s last Parisian exhibition was
in 2006 at the Jeu de Paume. It ended with the
clowns series (2003–04). Since then, her body of
work has grown considerably, not only adding new
formal developments but also gaining in concep-
tual complexity. That is why the most recent
series, some of them never exhibited before, are
particularly prominent here, with society portraits
(2007–08), murals (2010), landscapes (2010–12),
collages (2015), Harper’s Bazaar (2016–18) flappers
(2016–18) and men (2019–20).
‘Cindy Sherman at the Fondation’  occupies all
the galleries and is structured in two distinct
sequences:
– on the one hand, a retrospective in the strict
sense (Galleries 1, 2, 4) spanning the artist’s whole
career, with series dating from 1975 to 2020;
– on the other, ‘Crossing Views’ (Galleries 5 to
11) presents a selection made with the artist. It
results from ‘crossing views’ on the Collection
united around the unifying theme of the portrait.
It features works by a score of artists1 representing
a wide range of media, generations, backgrounds
and genres which, on two occasions, are shown
near works by Cindy Sherman herself or items
related to her artistic career
Thus, in Gallery 5, her personal archives are
exhibited as a kind of image bank, not far from
those of Christian Boltanski, while seven recent
tapestries made by Sherman using her own
Instagram images appear in Gallery 9 in conjunc-
tion with The Evil Eye (2018) by Clément Cogitore.
The idea of these ‘crossing views’ came to me during
a working meeting in the artist’s Parisian apartment,
where she has a large number of works by young
artists, many of them little known. This was a sign of
her attentive, active presence on the art scene and
the acute, militant curiosity of her gaze.
one hundred and seventy photographs articu-
lated in eighteen series. Most of them feature
Sherman, alone. And yet it is never really her. That
is the paradox: she is the sole object of her works,
but she is never the subject and refuses to allow
them the status of self-portraits (even when we
may perhaps detect some tiny biographical hints).
That is why some have even gone so far as to
question the artist’s very existence. But Sherman
definitely does exist, and with a rare, constantly
alert sense of vigilance. Her reactivity was very
much in evidence in the uncommon determina-
tion and imperious acuity that she brought to the
preparation of this exhibition, guiding its entire
strategy to remarkable effect. This approach is a
constant with her, making it a remarkable, if not
astonishing fact that, contrary to so many artists
today, she does everything, herself, alone. As well
as producing each of her images, she also plays
all of the roles: make-up artist, costumier, props
master, director, photographer and even photo-
graphic technician, while of course taking on the
role of model, after the primary one of actor (see
the interview in Les Inrocks, August 2012).
It is troubling to realise, therefore, that while
seemingly shut away in her own world, in her
studio, she remains resolutely and fully aware and
engaged with regard to the outside world, whose
artistic and societal issues never cease to inform
her work.
In this respect, her art is driven by a number
of questions that have become recurrent to
the point of obsession in today’s world: that of
identity, the uncertainty of identity and ‘gender
fluidity’ within a general dissolution, extending
to the most recent developments (men) and the
new tapestries made using her own manipulated
images from Instagram. In this new phase she
dares, sometimes at her own expense, to oppose
the generalised tyranny of an ideal image.
Central to her work, and one of its priorities,
is the inventory of the archetypes of femininity
that have been adopted by women in roles acted
and overacted for the male gaze. Marie-Laure
Bernadac and Marie Darrieussecq describe these
forced incarnations of femininity in this cata-
11
logue. The former explores this masquerade to
which Marie Darrieussecq refers in an apposite,
succinct formula: ‘Sherman knows that every
woman is, first of all, disguised as a woman. . . . she
plays at being these women who play the game . . .
in this game the player is always losing.’
Another singular form taken by her engage-
ment can also be read in the violence and ‘trashy’
feel of series like the sex pictures (1992). These
monstrous, macabre and pornographic images
of disarticulated dolls and dismembered manne-
quins in distressing surroundings are insepa-
rable from the years when AIDS made sex the
unavoidable vector of morbidity. Their violence
reflects the scandal that is the death of young
bodies in the very expression of their juvenility.
The stereotypes inculcated from infancy are
evident in the artist’s earliest works, in which she
affirms the simple desire to exist (the That’s me!
in A Cindy Book). Sherman the actor is already
here, and with her an enduring childlike streak. ‘I
shall be the baker and you will be the customer’;
or, rather, ‘I will be Milady and you will be
D’Artagnan’ say children with the seriousness
of play. For all the denials, the viewer feels the
emotion, which will also infuse the later portraits
that take on board the artist’s own ageing (society
portraits, flappers). Just as powerful, however, and
no doubt heightening the feeling, is the frontality
and even ferocity of the gaze. This is another way,
despite the apparent cruelty, of attesting a true
proximity.
The artist’s modus operandi contributes to this
complexity. Her distant lucidity, combined with
total mastery, results in emotionally effective
images in which everything is ‘DIY’ and the effects
always give themselves away (excessive make-up,
visible prostheses, wigs, etc.). And yet, here again,
in this practice of role playing, the false speaks
the truth. Cindy Sherman never cheats.
It is the same with her ambivalent rela-
tion to fashion, through which the actor likes
to renew her identity, sparing neither herself
nor the designers – going to grotesque, even
monstrous lengths in her refusal to beautify or
charm. This same ambivalence is found in her
historical portraits, in which pictorial references
and costumes come together, but only the artist
seems always real.
It is by playing on and exaggerating the false
that she attains the quintessence of the true.
Elsewhere, the actress likes to slip in a knowing
12
nod to the viewer, using an incongruous, troubling
detail to undermine the character’s plausibility
– pink plastic mules destroying the distinction
of the very Bostonian woman in Untitled #466,
another woman’s wig, or a posture ridiculing this
woman’s designer clothes. The tragic-comic qual-
ity of some of her works – not only detectable
in the clowns – verges on caricature. Yet there is
always a strong sense of melancholy.
Her ‘games with identity’ have often been
placed in a tradition that goes from the
Comtesse de Castiglione to Claude Cahun and
Ana Mendieta, among others. In fact, though,
her first works were grounded primarily in the
art scene of the day. Warhol, of course, was part
of this, but also, more specifically, were women
proponents of conceptual and body art, such as
Eleanor Antin and Adrian Piper. . . In the same
vein, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, the artist
of ‘apparitions’, remarks very appositely on the
conjunction of these attitudes with ‘women’s
practice of new mediums, notably performance
and photography, with the desire to place the
body, the face, presence and transformation, at
the centre of the work’ (conversation with the
artist, January 2020).
This is, indeed, no coincidence. For so long,
women were excluded from the ‘noble’ territory
of painting, which was already taken over, and the
few who did venture there seem like survivors.
Forced to work on the margins, they developed a
particular appetite for appropriating new media.
That is why Cindy Sherman, when she gave up
painting, soon turned exclusively to photography
in what has been an ongoing process, moving
from analogue to digital and taking on board its
transition from visual proof to a falsified version
of reality. In doing so, she has constantly rein-
vented her medium, being quick to combine the
edgiest tools (Photoshop, Instagram) with tradi-
tional supports like tapestry in a way that ignores
rules or prohibitions.
In his catalogue essay, Olivier Michelon shows
decisively how important a parameter cinema has
been since the beginning of Sherman’s career,
shaping her gaze through a multiplicity of refer-
ences so that, without there being any actual
quotations, we can all recognise the heroines of
Antonioni or Hitchcock, say, or, more recently,
the atmosphere of the films by the German
Fassbinder. Through these allusions, she opens
up the field of interpretations, strategically leav-
ing questions of action and narrative in limbo: ‘I
like . . . to leave the story to the viewer.’
1. The artists featured in
Crossing Views are, in Gallery
5: Christian Boltanski, Gilbert
& George, Annette Messager,
Zanele Muholi, Albert Oehlen,
Cindy Sherman, Wolfang
Tillmans, Andy Warhol, Ming
Wong; in Gallery 6: Adel
Abdessemed, Rineke Dijkstra,
Samuel Fosso, Torbjørn
Rødland, Wilhelm Sasnal,
Rosemarie Trockel; in the
Observatory: Ziad Antar; in
Gallery 7: Louise Bourgeois;
in Gallery 8: Damien Hirst; in
Gallery 9: Clément Cogitore,
Cindy Sherman; in Gallery 11:
Marina Abramović; entrance
level 2: Dara Birnbaum,
Rob Pruitt; and Gallery 10:
Pierre Huyghe.
By staying on top of such influences, Sherman
has managed to create her own medium, unlike
anything else being done today, in which she
imposes her total singularity, giving herself up
entirely while merely lending herself to the game.
The strange, paradoxical fascination exerted by
her works, despite her insistently distant posture
and her dogged refusal to charm, is due above all
to this invention of a specific language.
Other components may be detected: although
she is supposed not to be there, to be hiding, she
says a great deal about us with a frontal lucid-
ity that touches us all. She never blinks, either
at the world or at herself. In her images, where
everything is manipulated, her eyes are not
hidden. Her blue eyes are always there, true (see
Ludovic Delalande’s essay).
The exhibition design, conceived with architect
Marco Palmieri, puts this gaze to work. Mirrors
punctuate the hanging, enclosing viewers
within the hallucination effect characteristic of
Sherman’s art. Here they come face to face with
their own image, with other people’s images, and
with those of the characters in the other works,
in a troubling play of reflection and avoidance,
underlining the labile nature of identity, which is
at the heart of this whole exhibition.
Uniting the two sequences of ‘Cindy Sherman
at the Fondation’ is a theatrical visual device
whereby in the circulation areas between the
different levels of the building we come across
landscapes taken from the murals exhibited in the
very last room of the retrospective itself.
In a globally chronological sequence, the rooms
take us from the small black-and-white photo-
graphs of the early days to colour and the
increasing scale, up to the monumentality of the
recent works and their domination of the walls,
whereby they are integrated into the exhibi-
tion space. At each of these stages, in iterative
mode, Sherman continues to invent her project,
remaining true to the boldness of this ongoing
adventure, with which she combines the renewal
of her language: happily, the artist claims the
right to not always know, or want to know, where
she is going, which is the hallmark of all genuine
artistic creation.
And while for some the reference here may
be Diderot’s idea of the actor and the distance
he imposes, one might also play on the ambigu-
ities inspired by Pessoa, whose name invokes at
once persona, nobody, anyone or mask – making
anything possible.
This project was realised with the comprehensive
cooperation of Cindy Sherman with regard to the
conception of the exhibition, its catalogue, and its
mediation. I would like to offer my warmest grati-
tude and thanks, and that of the entire team, for her
remarkable and attentive presence at every stage.
This event needed and was given special commit-
ment from the president of the Fondation, Bernard
Arnault, and from his adviser, Jean-Paul Claverie.
It owes much to the quality of the curatorial team –
to Marie-Laure Bernadac, Olivier Michelon, Ludovic
Delalande, as well as to everyone at the Fondation,
including deputy director Sophie Durrleman, director
of production Élodie Berthelot, and the head of publi-
cations, Raphaël Chamak, with the collaboration of
Annie Pérez, as well as their various collaborators.
I extend my sincerest amicable thanks to Marie-
Laure Bernadac, who edited this catalogue, and to
the authors for their enlightening insights and analy-
ses, which revitalise our reading of Cindy Sherman’s
work.
I also wish to warmly acknowledge the contribu-
tion by architect Marco Palmieri, whose participation
was integral to this project.
Also committed to maximising the impact of this
exhibition has been the director of visitor programmes,
Joachim Monegier du Sorbier and, for communica-
tions, Isabella Capece and Sébastien Bizet, working
with Caroline Cadinot and Patricia Buffa. Press rela-
tions have been handled by Roya Nasser and Andrea
Azéma.
Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait
Gallery in London, together with Paul Moorhouse
with Eloise Stewart, played a key role in the early
stages of this exhibition in drawing up a list of loans.
We are particularly grateful to them and to Tom
Heman of Metro Pictures in New York for his tireless,
multifaceted and very precious assistance.
Above all, of course, we are all aware that noth-
ing could have been done without the great generosity
of our various lenders, both private and institutional,
who are listed at the front of this book. We are deeply
grateful to them.
Suzanne Pagé
13

1. Joan Riviere (1883–1962) was
an English psychoanalyst close
to Melanie Klein and translator
of Sigmund Freud.
2. Joan Riviere, ‘Womanliness
as a masquerade’ (1929), in The
Inner World and Joan Riviere,
London and New York: Karnak
Books, 1991, p. 91.
3. Ibid., p. 94.
4. Jacques Lacan, The Four
Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis, transl. Alan
Sheridan, Abingdon and
London: Routledge, 2018, p. 100.
5. Jean-Michel Vives, ‘La
vocation du féminin’, Cliniques
méditerranéennes, no. 68, 2003,
pp. 193–205.
6. Mary Ann Doane, ‘Film and
the Masquerade: Theorizing the
Female Spectator’, in Femmes
Fatales, Feminism, Film, Theory,
Psychoanalysis, New York and
London: Routledge, 1991.
7. Ibid., p. 194.
8. Jean-Pierre Criqui, ‘The Lady
Vanishes’, in Cindy Sherman,
exh. cat., Paris, Galerie
Nationale du Jeu de Paume,
Flammarion, 2006, pp. 270–83.
9. La Femme aux mille visages,
film by Sara Sugarman, with
Donatella Versace, 2013.
10. Marie Darrieussecq in
Beaux-Arts, no. 333, March
2012.
11. Paul Verlaine, Mon rêve
familier.
12. Daniel Arasse, ‘Les
miroirs de Cindy Sherman’,
in Anachroniques, Paris:
Gallimard, 2006.
1. Untitled (Lucy), 1975
Gelatin silver print, 26 × 21 cm
14
WOMANLINESS
AS A MASQUERADE
Marie-Laure Bernadac
To take this title from the psychoanalyst Joan
Riviere1 is not to interpret Cindy Sherman’s
multiple masquerades as a way to hide her
masculine side and to ‘avert anxiety and
retribution feared from men’.2 The idea, rather,
is to associate the two terms of womanliness (or
femininity) and masquerade: ‘The reader may
now ask how I define womanliness or where I
draw the line between genuine womanliness
and the “masquerade”. My suggestion is not,
however, that there is any such difference;
whether radical or superficial, they are the
same thing.’3 Indeed, it was this articulation
that attracted the attention of Jacques Lacan.4
Quoting Joan Riviere, he argued that the
masquerade was a system of defence that
sought to make up for a lack, an absence.
‘The woman creates an appearance which
stands in for having in order to mask a lack.’5
According to Mary Ann Doane,6 by flaunting
womanliness, masquerade is a way of holding
it at a distance. This mask that we can wear or
remove can be viewed as a position of resistance
with regard to patriarchal domination, with
the exaggerated play of ultra-feminine codes
and signs constituting a challenge to the male
gaze. Masquerade, finally, is the unconscious
organisation of a trompe l’oeil. And that is
what interests us here, for to say trompe l’oeil
is to say painting, illusion, artifice, and this
term therefore makes it possible to ‘pin down
femininity in terms of the image and, from there,
of the imaginary’.7 Make-up, with its brushes
and its colours, is a kind of painting, applied
to a sculpture of flesh. Appearance abetting
disappearance. All these are threads to guide
us through the labyrinth of Cindy Sherman’s
multiple identities.
Characters in search of an author
It has been common practice to use titles
alluding to cinema (The Lady Vanishes,8 La
Femme aux mille visages,9 Docteur Cindy & Mister
Sherman10) or theatre as a way of defining this
‘unknown woman who each time is neither
quite the same nor quite another’.11 Identical
and different. Present and absent. Who is
hiding behind her multiple masks? The
arguments are often contradictory. For many
years, critics maintained that all these portraits
of women were not self-portraits, that they told
us nothing about the real Cindy, as a person.
The artist herself has often stated that she
does not recognise herself in these characters
that she fabricates, based on photographs,
films, people seen in the street, or clothes. She
may be the model but she is not the subject
because what we have is always a fiction of
the self. Regarding the theme of the artist’s
disappearance, Daniel Arasse12 suggests
another interpretation: rather than being a
denunciation of the female archetypes depicted
by the media, the artist’s practice would be
better understood as a ‘play on our century’s
broken Narcissus’.13 He stresses the point that
these photographs afford a vision of something
intimate, or even emotional; something
intractable to theorisation. Cindy, he says, is an
intuitive artist who mistrusts theory: ‘Theories,
theories, theories . . . It doesn’t seem to work
for me,’ she observes in a notebook entry for
18 October 1994.14 Elsewhere, she states:
‘I like flirting with [an] idea of myself, but I
know because my identity is so tied up with
my work that I’d also like to be a little more
anonymous.’15 As the subject is constantly
made to disappear, so it rises to the surface
and the ‘real’ Cindy shows herself in various
15
magazines,16 talks about her life,17 agrees to
numerous interviews and gives us a glimpse,
here and there, through this kaleidoscopic
mirror, of parts of her personality. It is as if the
inner, subjective ‘I’ was still there, in spite of it
all, in this obsessive play of disguises. An ‘I’ that
always wants to be another.
Cindy Sherman has become an icon and yet
she remains a mystery. How did a procedure
that is so simple, banal, and shared by many
women artists of the 1970s – making up,
dressing in disguise, photographing oneself
– become, thanks to her perseverance, one of
the paradigms of contemporary art? The set-up
hardly ever varies: Cindy Sherman works
alone, she is at once the actor, the director, the
costumier, the make-up artist, the hair artist
and the photographer. And yet the images are
always different. They reflect their period, a
given fashion, the mood of the moment and, at
the same time, they tell us something about the
artist’s multiplicity: ‘I divide myself into many
different parts. My self in the country . . . is one
part. . . . My professional self is another, and my
work self in the studio is another.’18
Most importantly, beyond the themes of
identity, disguise, cinema, the fantastic, the
grotesque, the abject, fashion and ageing,
Sherman has found a way to redefine the
concept of photographic art while making the
most of the medium’s resources, deliberately
orienting it towards fiction and pictorial
composition. From the first silver gelatin prints
in the 1970s to her recent digital experiments,
she has constantly used photography as a vehicle
for exploring popular culture, the media and
archetypes, refreshing again and again over these
four decades her portrait gallery of women, all
the way to the recent images of boys that echo
current questions about the fluidity of gender.
Childhood
Should we look to her childhood for the sources
of her art? And see her art as an extended
childhood? In any case, there seems nothing
out of the ordinary about her early life. Cindy
(‘Cynthia’ is her given name) Sherman was born
in 1954 in Glen Ridge (New Jersey); she grew
up in Huntington Beach on Long Island, and
was the fifth and last child of an engineer father
and a teacher mother. After studying art at State
College in Buffalo, where she realised that she
was not especially gifted at painting, she turned
to photography. Her artistic career really took off
when she met Robert Longo. They lived together
16
and were original organizers of Hallwalls
Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo. Located
in an old warehouse, it organises avant-garde
exhibitions and performances. There she was
exposed to practitioners of body and conceptual
art such as Lynda Benglis, Chris Burden, Hannah
Wilke, Vito Acconci and Dan Graham. In 1977,
Sherman went down to New York and worked as
receptionist at Artists Space.
Dressing up
Like any little girl born to ageing parents who
is a bit of a loner, she lived in her imagination,
drew and dressed up. Not as a princess or
ballerina, but as a monster or old lady: ‘I’d try to
look like another person. . . . like old ladies . . .
I would make myself up like a monster, things
like that, which seemed much more fun than
just looking like Barbie.’19 What could be more
exciting than taking on another appearance,
escaping the confinement of one’s self and
pretending to be someone else? This kind of
escape is common in childhood. Could these
projections of the self into model images be
seen as echoing the child’s playful narcissism in
front of the mirror?
Sherman’s youthful works are the matrix of
everything she has produced since. In A Cindy
Book, an album that she started making as a
young girl and continued up to her teenage
years, pasting in family photographs featuring
her at different ages, she notes on each picture
‘That’s me’, as if concerned to be recognised
and to affirm her centrality in the family and in
social life.
Later, when she was working at Artists
Space, she used to dress up as a secretary and
sometimes wore disguise to parties, as she had
already done in Buffalo. That was when Robert
Longo told her ‘you really should do something
with this.’20
Her first works date from 1975. Untitled A-E
comprises five headshots of four women and
a man, some wearing a man’s hat or crocheted
toque, smilingly chumpishly or grimacing
like a clown. Untitled #479 consists of twenty-
three images that look like ID photos in which
Sherman’s face is gradually transformed, going
from a rather plain, dour young woman in
glasses to a glossy-lipped femme fatale. The
final images are not so far from the Self-Portrait
in Drag Polaroids by Andy Warhol, whom she
admires. The metamorphosis begun here is
confirmed in the fine portrait of Untitled (Lucy)
[1975].
2.Cindy Sherman and Janet
Zink as old ladies, c. 1966
3. Untitled (Secretary),
1978/1993
Gelatin silver print,
31.8 × 23.5 cm
4. Doll Clothes, 1975
Photogram taken from 16 mm
film (see ill. pp. 62–63)
13. On the subject of narcissism,
see Gérard Wajcman’s essay
‘Where are the women?’, p. 39.
14. Cindy Sherman, in
Cindy Sherman, exh. cat.,
Bordeaux, CAPC Musée d’Art
Contemporain, 1999, p. 185.
15. Eva Respini, ‘Will the Real
Cindy Sherman Please Stand
Up’, Cindy Sherman, exh. cat.,
New York, The Museum of
Modern Art, 2012.
16. The Gentlewoman, no. 19,
spring–summer 2019.
17. See Calvin Tomkins, ‘The
Secret identities of C. S.’, The
New Yorker, 15 May 2000. This
article reveals some of the
major events in her private life –
her brother Frank’s suicide, her
wedding and her complicated
divorce from Michel Auder, the
role of her parents, etc.
18. Cindy Sherman, in Cindy
Sherman, exh. cat., Shiga,
Japan, Asahi Shimbun, 1996,
p. 162. Quoted by Amada
2 3
Cruz in ‘Movies, Monstrosities,
and Masks: Twenty Years
of Cindy Sherman’, in Cindy
Sherman: Retrospective, exh.
cat., Los Angeles, Museum of
Contemporary Art and Museum
of Contemporary Art Chicago,
London: Thames & Hudson,
1997.
19. Cindy Sherman, ‘Interview
with Noriko Fuku’, in Cindy
Sherman, exh. cat. Shiga, op.
cit., p. 161.
20. ‘Conversation between
Cindy Sherman and John
Waters’, in Cindy Sherman, exh.
cat., New York, The Museum of
Modern Art, 2012, p. 69.
21. See the exhibition
‘Feminismos’ at the CCCB
in Barcelona, 19 July 2019–5
January 2020.
22. ‘I had Barbies, but I also
had a whole family of troll dolls.’
‘Conversation between Cindy
Sherman and John Waters’, loc.
cit., p. 78.
4
Having interrogated her own physiognomy,
Sherman now turned to a series of different
characters, from people riding a bus (Bus
Riders, 1976) to the killer and victim in a Murder
Mystery (1976) or theatrical characters, in a
multiplication of figures cut out and glued on
the wall (A Play of Selves, 1976). She played
with all these characters, making up stories for
them and showing them in different postures.
Then she addressed fashion, obliquely, by
inserting her own face into the women on the
covers of the magazines Cosmopolitan, Vogue,
Mademoiselle College, Family Circle and Red Book,
in a gallery going from the smiling young lady to
the sportswoman, the glamorous starlet or the
young bride decked in flowers.
The disguises in these early works are highly
varied, ranging from a more sociological register
– people in the street – to the realms of movies
or fashion. In these series with multiple figures
she goes from female to male figures and plays
all the roles.
The theme of cross-dressing was not new in
art. The pioneers, we may recall, have included
the Comtesse de Castiglione, Marcel Duchamp,
Claude Cahun and Pierre Molinier. Above all, we
should think of the practices of feminist artists
at this time, people like Eleanor Antin, Adrian
Piper and Martha Wilson, who performed with
their bodies and disguised themselves in order
to explore other identities. Sherman admits to
having been influenced in her early work by
these various models.
There is no shortage of examples during
this period. In France, Annette Messager made
her albums-collections and took on several roles:
collector, peddler, practical woman, trickster,
but also married woman, pregnant woman
and woman-man. In the album-collection
A.M. truqueuse (1975), she drew in felt pen on
her naked body lines indicating the organs,
the way the cable wound around Sherman’s
body outlined her clothes (Air Shutter Release
Fashions, 1975). Many women artists in Europe
and Brazil adopted similar practices, playing
on the multiplicity of identity and female
archetypes, the better to denounce them, for
example Martha Wilson (A Portfolio of Models,
1974), Marcella Campagnano (L’invenzione del
femminile, ruoli, 1974–80), Regina Vater (Tina
America, 1975) and Elaine Shemilt (Constraint,
1976).21
Playing with dolls
Dolls are not only in wax, china or plastic. They
can also be in cardboard. Like those naked
figures you cut out in the old days then covered
with a choice of paper clothes. Although not
especially keen on playing with dolls, Sherman
does admit to having had Barbies,22 and to
remembering those old models when she
made a short film, Doll Clothes (1975), in which
Sherman herself is a paper doll that comes
alive, chooses an outfit and walks around until
a human hand catches her and puts her back in
the book. The multiplication of her image seen
in this work is found in other collages from the
time (Scale Relationship Series, 1976). This short
animation film reveals her interest in clothing,
and the porous relation that she institutes
between the flesh-and-blood person and the
doll.
17
 5. Martha Wilson,
A Portfolio of Models, 1974
6 gelatin silver prints with seven
text pieces, 50.8 × 35.6 cm
(each)

6. Annette Messager,
‘La Femme et la mort’ [‘The
woman and death’], pages from
the album-collection La Femme
et . . . : A.M. truqueuse, 1975
5 Notebook with drawings and
photographs

7. Elaine Shemilt,
Constraint, 1976
4 gelatin silver prints,
25.3 × 18.7 cm (each) 9
The Verbund Collection, Vienna

6 7
This use of dolls parts recurred in much
more violent fashion in the 1990s with the sex
pictures (1992) and the broken dolls (1999).
It has been said that the sex pictures were
a kind of reaction to the success of the history
portraits (1990).23 It is as if Sherman wanted
to take horror to its ultimate extreme in order
to shatter its image. Instead of her own body,
she now used bits of plastic mannequins and
medical prostheses – torsos, legs, genital organs
– assembling them as in a kind of still life
and repainting them to make their skin more
lifelike. The use of inanimate objects gave her
greater freedom in constructing her monstrous
couplings, with no poses barred, mixing male
and female, mannequin’s bodies and maybe
herself, hidden behind a mask (Untitled #264).
The treatment of sexuality here is mechanical
and dehumanised. This series has been linked
to the wave of censorship and puritanism24 that
had arisen in America at the time, in reaction
to the works of Andres Serrano and Robert
Mapplethorpe and the sexual performances
of Jeff Koons and Cicciolina, which it seems
to parody. The mannequins are dismembered
and often decapitated, with the exception
of Untitled #264 and of the naked old witch
(Untitled #250), recalling the series of fairy tales
and sex and surrealist pictures. The ambiguity
of true and false is particularly striking in
the child mask (Untitled #316) and in the kiss
(Untitled #305). The slashed mask of the chubby
face is superimposed over another mask, as if
there were several layers of skin. The texture of
one of the masks in the kiss photo looks just
like living skin, which is what makes this kiss,
halfway between living and organic, so troubling.
Cindy Sherman again used dolls parts in her
broken dolls (1999), with which she went back to
black-and-white, using a smaller photographic
format to show dolls in erotic postures. Even
more terrible than those of Hans Bellmer, which
she knew, they evoke the perversity and the
cruelty of the child who unthinkingly cuts up
and abuses her dolls, using these transitional
objects as sexual toys. These accessories, which
seem to have their own life, embody ‘the urges of
the people manipulating them by appropriating
a part of their being, and by looking ahead,
perhaps, to their imminent annihilation’, writes
Régis Durand.25 ‘When I leave the photos,’ she
said, ‘it almost becomes a still life.’26
I do my cinema
Sherman very soon moved beyond the feminist
practices that asserted the value of minor art
forms, such as the photography album, images
of the self, performance and disguise, in order
to embody the movie heroines of the 1950s and
enter directly into imaginary films, in the famous
Untitled Film Stills, some seventy small-format
black-and-white photographs (69+1) imitating
studio photographs, made between 1977 and
1980. Just about everything has been written
8. Eleanor Antin,
Portrait of the King, 1972
Gelatin silver print mounted
on cardboard,
34.9 × 24.8 cm
9. Untitled #489, 1976
Cut-out gelatin silver prints
mounted on board,
34.6 × 122.4 × 3.7 cm
10. Untitled #264, 1992
Chromogenic print,
127 × 190.5 cm
8
23. ‘The reaction to the history
portraits . . . really scared me,
even though I knew they’d
be popular. I think that’s why
right after that I did the sex
pictures.’ ‘Cindy Sherman and
John Waters: A Conversation’, in
Cindy Sherman, edited by Eva
Respini, exh. cat., New York, The
Museum of Modern Art, 2012,
p. 70.
24. See the controversy over
the National Endowment or the
Arts (NEA) in the 1990s.
25. Régis Durand, ‘Broken
Dolls’, Cindy Sherman, exh. cat.,
Galerie Nationale du Jeu de
Paume, op. cit., p. 264.
26. Interview with Isabelle
Huppert, Les Inrockuptibles,
25 October 2012.
27. Rosalind Krauss, Cindy
Sherman, 1975–1993, New York:
Rizzoli, 1993, p. 17.
about this famous series in which we see Cindy
as ingénue, vamp, hunted woman, homemaker
or intellectual, using all the attributes and codes
of femininity. Every time she looks like a cinema
heroine, an actress who might come straight out
of a film by Hitchcock or Antonioni, or maybe
a B movie or TV show, except that everything
is false; everything is pure invention. Each one,
writes Rosalind Krauss, is a ‘copy without an
original’.27 In some we feel we can recognise
a scene because it is almost indistinguishable
from a film we have already seen, but this is
not the case. Each scene, meticulously planned
down to the smallest detail, is a frozen moment
from a narrative, suggesting a fiction that the
viewer can imagine.
The artist made these photographs on her
own. She would take her clothes with her in a
suitcase and sometimes ask her friends or father
to press the shutter release, as for the famous
picture of the woman with a suitcase on an
Arizona road (Untitled Film Still #48).
After the severe black-and-white of the studio
photographs, and the 1950s retro feel of the
series, Sherman started using colour in images
of modern young women, often shown in close-
up, positioned in front of a projection (rear
screen projections, 1981–82). Here, the cinema
screen is simply suggested by these backgrounds
showing scenery, buildings or roads. The system
is simple and the result is a fairly blurred
ground. The young women are all giving us
a sideways look, with a knowing air, as if they
knew they were being watched. One of them is
glugging from a bottle and winking.
In 2016–18, Sherman returned to the movies.
This time her models were actresses of the
silent screen in 1920s and 1930s Hollywood. She
copied their hairdos, their distinctive make-up
and their clothes. From the starlets of the early
10
stills she came now to the stars, often elderly,
complete with cigarette holder and glamorous
dress. All kinds of actors are represented here,
from the 1920s vamp with her jewellery, crimped
hair or silvery turban to the romantic young
lead in a white dress and trios or quartets of
bluestockings with plaits and spectacles. The
make-up is done with particular care, with
the eyebrows much plucked and the fine red
mouths neatly drawn. These stars stand out
against cloudy grounds, romantic colourful skies,
trees or drapes. In this new series of flappers
(using the term for liberated young women who
flouted social conventions after the First World
War), we seem to be looking at actors from
Hollywood comedies. The subject is well centred
within the frame, with the exception of one
image in which the face is repeated (heralding
the four identical bespectacled sisters) and of
the four elaborately coiffed women enveloped
in gauzy dresses with a lake in the background
(Untitled #584). Here, Sherman used Photoshop
to duplicate, triple or even quadruple her
persona, playing on a plural or ghostly presence,
in a multiplication of identical figures that began
with the film Doll Clothes (1975).

18 19
I am a model
The series that followed, centerfolds (1981),
was the result of a commission by the magazine
Artforum. Here, as the title implies, Sherman
imitated the horizontal format of double-page
nudes in soft porn magazines. In this instance,
however, there is not a hint of sexual allure;
the young women reclining or kneeling before
us sometimes even look frightened, and the
downwards perspective makes them seem
crushed, as if stricken. The editors of Artforum
refused to publish these images because, in
their view, they projected a negative vision of
woman as beaten or raped. This was a complete
misreading. For Sherman, if the tousled young
blond woman lying in her black sheets looks
stunned it is because the sunlight has woken
her too early after a night of partying. This kind
of misprision on the part of feminist critics has
been a common occurrence. Sherman’s visions
of women are often ambiguous and she has been
accused of creating images that reinforce sexist
stereotypes.
And yet it is hard not to see in these
photographs an image of the amorous, dreamy
young women, waiting desperately for the
beloved to phone, or holding a crumpled scrap
of paper from the personal ads in the paper. This
series is no doubt the most sentimental and
psychological in Sherman’s corpus, for these
portraits of young women all express powerful
emotions and confront us with the model’s
fragility.
Continuing along these lines, Sherman then
photographed a series showing young women
modestly hiding their body behind a pink
bathrobe (pink robe, 1981–82). At the time, she
spoke of a nude model dressing after the posing
session. Here was a way of alluding to the nude
models in painting or erotic photography while
masking their nudity. In this series, as in others
from this period, we have the sense that we are
seeing the ‘real’ Cindy because the figure is a
young blonde with short hair and no make-up,
a sullen, boyish figure who nevertheless looks
us straight in the eye. There is no obvious visual
artifice or disguise, just the naked truth. Here
is the natural Cindy, but that naturalness is still
a fabrication. The framing is tight, truncating
the figure, which merges into the background
in the strongly contrasting light. ‘The subject is
indirectly communicating more and more about
herself, as she becomes less and less visible.’28
‘Ordinary people’, is how she described
the photographs from a precedent series. In
20
the young girl in white, or the tomboy with the
cigarette, we cannot help recognising part of her
twofold, male and female personality. This series
is also titled color studies, because Sherman has
said that at the time she was more interested in
formal problems of composition and colour than
in the invention of a character.
Playing at being scared
As we know, the horrible, cruel narratives
of fairy tales have an initiatory function for
children. Sherman has always been fascinated
by monsters, witches and tales.29 The dramatic
situations and fantastical figures they offer
provide a vehicle in which her morbid imaginary
can be given free rein. She plays at being scared
in order to feel more alive; her fascination with
the macabre is a way of readying herself for the
worst: ‘In horror stories, or in fairy tales, the
fascination with the morbid is also . . . a way to
prepare for the unthinkable . . . That’s why it’s
very important for me to show the artificiality of
it all, because the real horrors of the world are
unmatchable, and they’re too profound.’30
Among these strange, surreal and sometimes
frankly trashy images we see a naked body
buttocks up, half-covered with undergrowth
(Untitled #155) – the result of a rape, perhaps?
Another woman, animal-like, crouches on wet,
pebbly ground (Untitled #156), while others are
transformed into a pig (Untitled #140), or have
their face soiled and are cast onto the ground
(Untitled #143). A very singular photograph
shows a kind of giant or ogress standing out
against a background of Lilliputian figures
(Untitled #150).
For this artist ugliness is more important
than beauty, which she is constantly attacking
in her affirmation of ‘ugly beauty’. Hence these
images of human-animal hybrids. For the first
time here, Sherman uses visible prostheses and
mannequins, as in Untitled #155. With this series
she places herself in the tradition of English
authors such as Mary Shelley and Christina
Rossetti, who wrote some very violent and dark
tales, including that of Frankenstein’s monster, a
living creature made out of human fragments.
Continuing in this same dark vein, Sherman
made disasters (1986–89), a series that goes even
further in abjection and formlessness. The
body almost completely disappears, leaving
only organic matter such as vomit and waste,
a magma of rotting detritus in which we may
spot a mirror or spectacles reflecting a figure.
These scenes are baroque and the set-up is
11
11. Madame de Pompadour
(née Poisson), 1990
Porcelain, glaze (silkscreened,
hand-painted),
26 × 37.2 × 23.5 cm (soup
tureen); 6.4 × 56.2 × 43.5 cm
(platter)
28. Régis Durand, ‘Pink Robes’,
Cindy Sherman, Galerie
Nationale du Jeu de Paume,
op. cit., p. 250.
29. Cindy Sherman illustrated a
tale from the Brothers Grimm,
Fitcher’s Bird, for a children’s
book in 1992.
30. Quoted by Amada Cruz,
in Cindy Sherman, exh. cat.,
Bordeaux, op. cit., p. 8.
31. A first version of the Clowns
appeared in 2003 in the
magazine (Vogue), and another
version was exhibited at the
Serpentine Gallery (London),
in 2003 (curator: Rochelle
Steiner).
theatrical, with truncated framing preventing us
from seeing the whole image, as in Untitled #173,
in which the prone body is at the very back
of the image. This disappearance of the body,
previously her main tool, into the depths clearly
expresses the collapse of an ideal self, which
underlies her approach. The acme of disgust
is reached with the sex and surrealist pictures.
Images show a swollen belly corroded by
bubonic plague, a Tampax or a sausage coming
out of a vagina, a granular, limp penis, blood,
sperm, etc.
I am a painting
In the late 1980s, Cindy Sherman stayed in
Rome and for a while abandoned contemporary
visual culture in favour of Old Master
paintings and their pictorial language. She
now drew freely on the different styles, from
the Renaissance to the 19th century, mixing
the Flemish, Italian and French schools and
drawing more or less directly on masterpieces
of painting. Every kind of theme is on show:
self-portrait, Madonna and Child, Judith,
English aristocrats, Flemish burghers, etc.
To make this gallery of historical portraits,
showing men and women both young and old,
Sherman used prostheses, with false breasts
and noses, beards and wigs, along with old
drapery and clothes found at the flea markets
in Rome. Her taste for comedy, theatre and faux
accessories is on display here to devastatingly
humorous effect.
This series originated with a commission from
Artes Magnus for a work in porcelain, which
she made in the manufactory in Limoges: a pink
soup dish – but also blue, green and yellow and
later a whole set of plates and dishes – in the
Rococo style decorated with an image of Cindy
as Madame de Pompadour. Then, in 1989, came
the bicentenary of the French Revolution and an
exhibition at the Chantal Crousel gallery in Paris.
All these occasions encouraged her to look to the
past for her models.
It is as if, with this makeshift assembly of
elements, she was trying to desacralize great
painting, which is also all artifices, a cook-up of
various ingredients, of make-up and postiches.
Sherman maintains the spirit of a style, the hair,
pose and clothing, but invents her own pictures.
Very few works were directly inspired by famous
paintings – Madame Moitessier by Ingres for
Untitled #204, Jean Fouquet’s Virgin and Child
(Melun Diptych) for Untitled #216 and Young Sick
Bacchus by Caravaggio for Untitled #209. In the
latter she removed the two peaches seen in the
original, an allusion to the male sexual organs.
Most of the ‘old masters’ and their patrons
were men. In many of these tableaux vivants
Sherman is disguised as a man, hiding herself
behind all these figures of painting, which
thereby become living beings. The variety of
these disguises is also a journey in time, a way
of metamorphosing and embodying historical
figures in all genres and from all periods.
There is a flagrant interplay between painting
and photography here. Which is more true,
more real? And, above all, what constitutes the
art? The painting, the photograph of a painting,
or the tableau vivant?
I play the clown
The height of this dressing up is no doubt to
be found in the clown, a disturbing, tragicomic
figure, the supreme embodiment of the buffoon
that is the artist performer. It was therefore
inevitable that Sherman would come to this
exercise, which she tried in 2003–05. This was
an opportunity to experiment with Photoshop
for the background and play with the countless
possibilities of the digital image. It began as a
collaboration with British Vogue,31 although the
artist had previously made a series with masks,
gilded, bronze grey or melted like chocolate
(Untitled #321, Untitled #323, Untitled #324,
Untitled #327) covering faces seen in close-up, as
well as grotesque figures in which the parts of
the face are mixed and deformed in monstrous,
carnivalesque grimaces (Untitled #314 A). In
fact, the vein of parody, burlesque and exorcism
21

through excess can be found under the surface
in all her work. Sherman has even invented a
kind of female grotesque. Already, in 1976, the
cut-out work The Mask showed a young woman
in a blue dress with a painted face covered by
a white clown mask with a wide red mouth,
posing with a sheet behind her. As in Air
Shutter Release and Untitled Film Still #52,32 we
see her hand resting on a shutter release. Look
at me, she says, I am a girl, I am a clown, I am
wearing a mask, I am a ghost.
On the clown theme, Sherman is in famous
artistic company: her friend Paul McCarthy,
Bruce Nauman (Clown Torture, 1987), Ugo
Rondinone, among the men, and Roni Horn
(Clouds and Clowns, 2001) among the women. Of
her series, she has noted, ‘Clowns are loaded
with layers of interpretation and emotions. It
was one of the more difficult series I’ve worked
on.’33   by three disturbing, grimacing faces. She has a
Rather than imitate the clichéd version
of the clown, Sherman found her own path
between the tragic anguish of Bruce Nauman’s
Clown, the joyous entertainment of Rondinone
and the evanescent dissolution of Roni Horn’s
clown faces. Cruel, deranged and lubricious,
22
12
her clowns frighten children; she wanted them,
she said, to be ‘intense, with a nasty side or an
ugly side, but also with a real pathos about the
characters’.34
Most of these clown photographs concentrate
on the face. They are outrageously made up,
with red noses, big expressive mouths and wigs,
and dressed in bright, loud colours, which she
can set off with gaudy fluorescent backgrounds.
Some are jolly, others sad, like the one in
Untitled #413, who is wearing a jacket blazoned
with the name ‘Cindy’ – an obvious invitation
to identify the artist – and has the look of an
old clown. There are male clowns and female
clowns and others that are androgynous. Digital
technology, which she was using here for the
first time, enabled Sherman to multiply her
images and to create, for example, the vision of a
little clown woman in a striped suit surrounded
twofold role: both frightening and frightened.
I am a fashion victim
In fact, with Cindy Sherman, it is more fashion
that is the victim. From 1983 to the 2000s, she
worked regularly with fashion houses and
12. Mask, 1976
4 photograms taken from
16 mm film
32. See Olivier Michelon, ‘The
great escape’, p. 33.
33. ‘A Conversation with
Cindy Sherman, by Karsten
Löckemann’, in Cindy Sherman,
Munich: Sammlung Goetz,
2015, p. 92.
34. Betsy Berne, ‘Studio: Cindy
Sherman’, Tate Art and Culture,
5, May–June 2003, p. 38.
35. Quoted by Eva Respini, ‘Will
the Real Cindy Sherman Please
Stand Up’, art. cit., p. 32.
36. ‘Interview with Fabrice
Bousteau’, Beaux-Arts, no. 263,
May 2006.
37. ‘Cindy Sherman and John
Waters: A Conversation’, loc. cit.,
p. 76.
38. In Cindy Sherman, exh.
cat., London, National Portrait
Gallery, 2019, p. 203.
39. Cindy Sherman, interview
with Isabelle Graw, ‘No make
up’, in Cindy Sherman, Clowns,
exh. cat., Hannover, Kestner
Gesellschaft, Munich: Schirmer/
Mosel, 2004, p. 16.
magazines. She did not think of herself as a
fashion photographer here, even if her pictures
were published. For her, these were personal
pieces – yes, using the clothes she was given
to work with, but she insisted on complete
freedom of both choice and result. The first
commission, in 1983, was from the Dianne
Benson boutique in New York, which wanted
her to promote clothes by Jean-Paul Gaultier,
Comme des Garçons and J.-C. de Castelbajac.
Sherman produced a parody of fashion, because
her models are puny and sickly, depressed, with
unkempt hair. ‘I’m disgusted with how people
get themselves to look beautiful; I’m much more
fascinated with the other side . . . I was trying
to make fun of fashion.’35 Fashion is factitious,
it is merely clothing, which is nothing without
the person who puts it on. And yet it carries
meanings that we cannot ignore and that closely
reflect the spirit of the age.
Her images destroy the idea of beauty.
‘Many artworks are all about the striving for
beauty. And that bores me, because nature
itself does quite a good job where beauty is
concerned.’36 In 1984, Dorothée Bis asked her
to produce photographs for Vogue Paris, and in
this instance not only are the models sad and
ugly but their clothes are too big, ill-fitting and
unsightly, or even ridiculous. In Untitled #131,
made for Dianne Benson, she wears a flesh-
coloured corset dress by Gaultier, but seems ill
at ease and is clutching awkwardly at her sex,
as Madonna would later do in this same sexy
outfit. These photographs were not published.
Sherman later worked with clothes by Issey
Miyake, Balenciaga, Prada, Marc Jacobs and
Gucci.
In 2016, she accepted a new commission from
Harper’s Bazaar, with branded clothes, loud
and unflattering, dressing mature women who
are trying to look distinguished. Her models,
imitating the stereotyped gestures of fashion
shows, are street-style fashionistas. In the works
made for this commission, they are shown on
the sidewalk, outdoors, against Photoshopped
architectural backgrounds. In 2010–12, she used
rich, extravagant clothes from Chanel to put
forward solitary, romantic figures in sweeping,
wild, desert landscapes. These images, which
evoke the solitude of these women with lost
gazes, inaugurated a new, horizontal format,
recalling some of the wallpaper pieces that she
started making in 2012. They integrate singular,
unusual figures against the background of trees
and gardens in black-and-white.
I am ageing
‘Weirdly, what happens more frequently, now
that I’m getting older, is doing characters that
suddenly look like a character I was doing
twenty or thirty years ago, when I was trying to
look older. Only now there’s less makeup and it
happens a lot more easily.’37 Cindy Sherman’s
later works, be it the headshots (2000–2) or
society portraits (2008), all show older, wrinkled
women who are trying to keep looking young:
‘It’s especially scary when I see myself in these
older women,’ she has remarked.38
Here she is partaking of a general movement
concerned to give greater visibility to older
women, whether in advertising or art, and this
despite her flaccid skin, the wrinkles and the
bags under the eyes. She both accepts and
apprehends this ageing that enables her to
address other subjects. Even as a young girl
she wanted to be old, and a photograph posted
recently on Instagram shows her going back to
the appearance of a twelve-year-old.
On one side, the large-format, full-length
portraits of richly dressed women living in
palatial old buildings and posing in the manner
of aristocratic portraits; on the other, bust-
length portraits of women defaced by their
make-up, their false lashes and false breasts;
women who have not succeeded and are still
trying to sell their image. This is a rather cruel
and pathetic vision of woman: ‘My idea for the
characters was would-be or has-been actors (in
reality, secretaries, housewives or gardeners)
posing for headshots to get an acting job. These
people are trying to sell themselves with all their
might,’ notes Sherman.39 They bring to mind,
on the one hand, East Coast women (from the
Hamptons, the fashionable area on Long Island),
who tend to be refined and intellectual, and on
the other, West Coast women, who are more
vulgar and extravagant.
When critics chide her for being hard
on these women, Sherman replies that she
nevertheless feels sympathy towards them.
And yet what we see is a scathing parody of
rich American collectors, often full of silicone
implants. These headshots reflect a genuine
horror of women in the way they stigmatise their
adulterated charms and pathetic poses.
I am a boy
‘I did some asexual types early on [Untitled #112,
1982], and in the history pictures I did men. . . .
I want to do a whole series of men someday,’
Sherman told John Waters in 2012.40 In 2019,
23

13
she did exactly that with her men, the first
of which to be shown was the dandy of
Untitled #602 who, under his fawn jacket, is
wearing a T-shirt with a print of one of the
famous rear screen projections. That makes
this picture a double portrait, closing the
circle connecting the Cindy of the 1980s, a
glamour actress becoming a fashion print, and
the masculine Cindy who, after many other
identities, has chosen to become a boy. And yet,
‘Boys in clothes, Ugly girls’ was what she wrote
in her journal in January 1983.
Before this series, though, she had already
dressed up as boy: in the murder mystery series,
in ABCDE or in A Play of Selves. She had
been a doctor (Untitled, 1980) and a soldier
(Untitled #109). In several other photographs
the character is fairly androgynous, but this
is more the effect of fashion, a tomboy look
with cropped hair and shorts (Untitled #112).
In contrast, this very recent series shows
her totally disguised as elegant young men
(Untitled #603). These young men are slim and
– in order to blur the gender divide – often
effeminate. They are like male models wearing
clothes by Stella McCartney. Since fashion
went unisex, fashion and beauty products have
been just as important for men as they are for
women.
Although Sherman calls herself a feminist,
she does not subscribe to gender theories and
24
neo-feminist ideas. Her series of young men is a
conscious nod to the fluidity of gender and the
attempt to erase sexual differences, but this is an
approach she had already taken in the past, and
one also practised in the 1990s by artists like
Alix Lambert (Male Pattern Baldness, 1993–94)
and Catherine Opie (Being and Having series,
1991), who thereby asserted their masculine
side. And before them, of course, there were
certain self-portraits by Claude Cahun (1920).
Most of all, then, this is really an umpteenth
avatar of the artist, now donning man’s clothing
just as before she tried the garb of starlet,
clown or woman of the world. This identity
goes beyond gender, to the boundaries of the
human.
Having worked through all the resources of
womanhood (young, old, beautiful, ugly, rich,
poor, natural, artificial), she is now turning
towards a figure she knows less well, a terra
incognita that offers her new possibilities for
metamorphosis: man, from every angle – alone
against romantic backgrounds, dressed in an
embroidered coat, wearing camouflage, as
bespectacled intellectual or dandy in brocade.
But these men may also appear in couples,
whether as faux farmers, as fashion plates or as
ultra-hip bobos. As Cindy says, it was enough to
change the make-up, the hair and the clothes for
another lookalike, almost a twin, female version
to appear. A sister or a wife.
13. Untitled, 1980-1987
2 gelatin silver prints,
19.1 × 14 cm (each)
14. Untitled #109, 1982
Chromogenic print,
88.9 × 88.9 cm
40. ‘Cindy Sherman and John
Waters: A Conversation’, op. cit.,
p. 71.
41. With thanks to Olivier
Michelon.
42. Geneviève Fraisse, La Suite
de l’histoire, actrices, créatrices,
Paris: Seuil, 2019, p. 58.
43. Ibid., p. 58.
44. See also Jean-Pierre Criqui,
‘The Lady Vanishes’, loc. cit.,
p. 281.
14
I count myself41
All the photographs made by Cindy Sherman
(more than 600 of them) from 1975 to 2020 are
designated as Untitled, and are therefore without
an identity, but all of them (with the exception
of the first works) also bear a number. We can
therefore reckon them up and draw up a precise
inventory of all the different states of femininity.
These arithmetical titles clearly indicate the
multiplicity, the endless number. ‘No titles, no
identities or identifications, “avatars” of the
subject,’ says the critic Régis Durand. Or ‘history
of the subject via its transformations’, writes
Geneviève Fraisse.42 ‘Cindy Sherman’, she also
says, ‘produces multiplicity, multiplies women
bodies and women figures, while producing a
meaning for this construction, by telling a story
“not of the multiple self” but of the multitude of
other people’s identities.’ ‘It is through avatars
that we can both speak ourselves and forget our
self.’ This is a way for woman artists to dispel
the subject-object tension, to displace it towards
the free space of multiplicity appropriated by
women.43
Drawing on what Claude Cahun called the
carnival, Fraisse rightly interprets Sherman’s
masquerade as carnivalesque: ‘a carnival of
female bodies’. Carnival being what makes it
possible to see what must not be seen every
day and turns the world on its head.44 By
overturning the order of man’s dominant
projective gaze on women, Sherman creates
disorder, demystifies the female ideal, going so
far as to drag it through the mud, cut it into
pieces, make it disappear. Her artistic practice
and her vision of the contemporary world bring
her close to the worlds of Mike Kelly and Paul
McCarthy, whose work tirelessly, incisively and
with a sense of grotesque humour exposes the
vices of American society.
The great investigation that she lays before
us starts out with female archetypes of the
seducer, and then the sensitive young woman,
to finally evacuate the body, which later
comes back via painting and is subsequently
embodied by plain-looking women, ending
with the abandonment of a certain femininity
in favour of masculinity. The figure of the
clown, a symbol of the artist and mask
par excellence, of uncertain gender, is a
culmination, at the centre of this path. And that
is why we can see Sherman’s work not only
as a cracked, critical mirror of all the states
of femininity, an echo of our representations,
an immersion in the psychic unconscious of a
tragicomic artist, but also a sweeping fresco of
the human comedy, revisited with a fearsome
perspicacity and a good dose of black humour.
25

1. Interview with Betsy Berne,
Tate Magazine, no. 5, June 2003.
1. Untitled Film Still #13 (detail),
1978
Gelatin silver print
(ill. p. 83)
26
THAT’S ME
Marie Darrieussecq
The state of a society is the state of its women.
Looking at the work of Cindy Sherman, there
are quite a few questions we might ask. How
are they treated, women? How are they seen?
As objects? As icons? As slaves? As corpses?
Sherman is careful not to answer with words.
‘The work is what it is and hopefully it’s seen as
feminist work, or feminist-advised work, but I’m
not going to go around espousing theoretical
bullshit about feminist stuff.’1 So what is it, this
work? At first glance, Cindy Sherman takes
photographs of herself. Disguised. Made up.
Sherman is the heir to a long artistic
tradition: not only the self-portrait, but also
the self-portrait as character. Painters have
always done autofiction. Rembrandt stuck a
hat on his head, a gorget around his neck and
picked an attitude, an expression, a grimace:
he did not paint himself (his ‘psychology’, his
life); he painted what was already a painting, a
warrior, a buffoon, a fallen king. Things are more
complicated with Sherman, for two reasons:
this is a post-cinema world, and Sherman is a
woman. The representation of the feminine is a
circus that goes well beyond the representation
of the masculine. Not to mention fashion
photography, and photography tout court, which
gives the illusion, more than painting, that what
we see IS. Now, like Claude Cahun, her less
well-known predecessor, Sherman knows that
every woman is, first of all, disguised as a woman.
Cinema and fashion have only aggravated or
‘embellished’ things: they have glamorised the
catastrophe of the identity inflicted on women.
And so Sherman makes portraits of women
who play the game, she plays at being these
women who play the game. The game and the
selves are imposed and in this game the player
is always losing. The space between identity
and appearance, where women are concerned,
has been structured by the male gaze since . . .
well, since time began – you only need to read
the work of Françoise Héritier or walk around
the Louvre. It is a space of domination, of the
cosmetic, of masks and lace, of chains and
wedding rings and of money and of violence.
And Sherman deploys all her work in this space.
It is always her and it is never her: That’s me,
she kept repeating in the captions of her Cindy
Book, a family photograph album in which she is
a child and then an adolescent. Her appearance
among family and friends is circled in green
felt pen. She is a baby or prom queen at high
school. This that’s me sounds like the affirmation
of an identity that is ceaselessly adjourned.
That’s me, that’s me. And in fact, Sherman’s
biographical mutability is striking, for it is
difficult to recognise her from one image to
another, in a context that is nevertheless private.
As if metamorphosis was her very being. Each
social posture (child on a swing, slightly hippie
schoolgirl, young intellectual from the provinces,
etc.) already appears in this family album as
constructed. Her childhood photographs seem
like so many sketches and passages that are
de rigueur when one is born somewhere in a
certain society. Cynthia Morris Sherman, born
19 January 1954 in New Jersey, and this, already,
is the result: several girls brought together in the
album of someone who writes that’s me.
Do you want my portrait? I’ll give you my
portrait. That is what Cindy Sherman seems
to be saying to the identity controllers. These
are not photographs of her, but fictions of her:
she lends her body to figures. Her features,
transformed, relate possible lives. With this
game she discreetly thwarts the permanent
identity checking imposed by our times. As for
that little, strict, standardised rectangle that is
the ID photo, here, by way of an example, are
27
the official recommendations to be found on the
French government website:
The photograph must be 35 millimetres wide
by 45 millimetres high. The size of the face
must be 32 to 36 millimetres (70 to 80% of the
photograph), from the bottom of the chin to
the top of the skull (not including hair).
The photograph must be neither over- nor
underexposed. It must have correct contrast,
without cast shadow on the face or in the
background. A colour photograph is strongly
recommended.
The background must be uniform, in a light
colour (light blue, light grey). A white ground
is forbidden.
The head must be naked, without a hat,
scarf, headband or other decorative object.
The head must be set straight and the face
directed towards the lens.
The subject must look at the lens. The
expression must be neutral and the mouth
must be closed.
The face must be clear. The eyes must be
perfectly visible and open.
If you wear glasses, you are not obliged to
have them on in the photographs. However,
if you do wear them, the frame must not be
thick and not hide the eyes, and the lenses
must not be tinted or coloured or reflective.2
Compare with any portrait by Cindy
Sherman. Must. Forbidden. The State against
artifice. An almost desperate tension in the
attempt to restore the photograph to its
supposed objectivity. Order of neutralisation.
Ultimately, this logic would mean us being
photographed naked, as if by X-ray detectors in
airports or, worse, for a concentration camp shot.
X-ray us to the bones, objectify us as corpses.
Except that even when naked we cannot be
reduced to an identity: we remain opaque. Our
appearance is not what we are. In Untitled (1975),
one of her very first works as an artist, Sherman,
a student at Buffalo State College, made a series
of ‘identity’ photographs. In twenty-three small
rectangles against a curtain backdrop she goes
from a boyish girl with glasses to a femme fatale
slathered in make-up. What Sherman tirelessly
reminds us is that identity is a masquerade. Not
only are social identity, and beauty, and gender,
constructions, but the self, our psychological
skin, is a slip of a thing that her photographs
tear apart. After all these assignations, who is
this jovial secretary who seems, behind her
28
glasses, to be having such fun at the office? Who 2. Untitled #198, 1989
Chromogenic print,
is this insomniac sleeping beauty waiting by the 98.7 × 70.8 cm
phone, if not the creature formatted by centuries
of tales about what a woman must be? Who is
this young girl with empty, ringed eyes, lying in
front of a big telephone – if not me as a teenager,
and all of us? The homme fatal has yet to call
and the work of deconstruction continues, the
putting to death of all our poor dreams fed by
cinema, glossy paper and all the clichés with
which they fill girls’ heads.
Let us make no mistake: these horizontal
large-format works dating from the early 1980s
are a series of effigies. For these dreams are
killers. To manufacture the feminine is not only
to feed the schmaltz machine of heartbreak, it
is also to drive to suicide and psychosis; and
to their obverse, which is sexual crime, rape
and what we now call femicide. Sherman acts
the madwoman, witch and cadaver, exactly as
she has acted the weeper, the dreamer or the
secretary. From Hollywood artifice she goes
to still life, dead as a dodo. She does not stage
sundry crimes but the direct effects of male
domination. Sherman kills the Cindy of the
Untitled Film Stills. Wet dress, bluish face, like
Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks. The body has been
dismembered, the woman has gone back to the
state of meat or waste. And I see, in Untitled #140
(1985), the earthy snout of my pig-woman in Pig
Tales, ten years before I wrote that first novel.
When I was a student in Bordeaux in the late
1980s, I pinned a postcard of Cindy Sherman
above my bed. Which tells you how popular she
already was: very few contemporary artists found
their way into our bedrooms. This was Untitled
Film Still #13 (1978): a girl with a Brigitte Bardot
hairdo grabs a book and casts a determined but
anxious backward glance. Her hand half hides
the title; we see only the word Dialogue: as if this
blond doll straight out of Contempt wanted, at
last, to learn to talk.
It now occurs to me – an idea I’d not had
before because this image had grown so familiar
– to examine the other titles in the bookcase
behind the figure: The Movies and Crimes of
Horror are the most visible. There can be no
doubt that Sherman knows what she is doing
having herself photographed surrounded by
these particular words: she is, precisely, in the
process of exploring the imagery of classic
cinema, and ‘Crimes of Horror’ announces the
work to come. It is also fairly easy to read a third
title: American Art since 1900. That is where she
comes from. And the one other name visible in 2. Service-public.fr.
2
29
the slight blur of the bookcase is the intriguing
Westmore.
I realise that the Westmores are a family of
‘make-up artists’ in Hollywood: George, the
grandfather, founded the first make-up studio
there in 1917. One of his sons did the make-up
on the shoot of Gone with the Wind, his other son
designed the costume and the mask for Creature
from the Black Lagoon. But the best-known heir
was the grandson, Michael Westmore, who, from
1961 onwards, conceived the make-up and the
masks for Star Trek, and who won the Academy
Award in 1985 for the film Mask, and who wrote
the definitive book on the subject, The Art of
Theatrical Makeup for Stage and Screen (1973).
I take a magnifying glass and decipher the
complete name of the title on the postcard: The
Westmore Beauty Book. Starting in 1947, and until
the mid-1950s, this guide, which was reprinted
several times, provided ‘all of the information
needed to create the glamorous movie-star
look of the 1950s’.3 Without a doubt, in this
iconic Untitled Film Still #13, Sherman is paying
homage to her own library.
In the mid-1980s, Sherman paused, conscious of
the risk of repetition. She recorded her doubts
in a notebook after accepting a commission
from the fashion industry: ‘I can’t seem to make
my “own” work with these clothes at this time.
I don’t know what I want to do now. . . . I’d be
repeating my old formulas at this point. . . . I
can’t escape the fashionability of these clothes.
Perhaps I shouldn’t try to incorporate these
clothes w/ my own work/style. Maybe that’s the
mistake or problem.’4 Her well-dressed women
all seem to be in disarray – anxious, half-dead.
It may be fashion that kills them, and this had
to be shown in the context of advertising. Then
Sherman revisited the Old Master portrait,
working with prostheses, make-up, and always
on stereotypes, but in the extremely well-
mapped territory of classical painting. She plays
with our memory as if with a set of flashcards:
here a Caravaggio, there a Pompadour, a
Holbein, a Fornarina, a Madonna with a rubbery
breast . . . We are not far from caricature or
chocolate box art, but the chocolates surely
taste funny. And the mannequins, now, Sherman
really puts them through the wringer. She
starts dismembering these bodies with their
standardised measurements, which are imposed
on women’s living bodies. She avenges us. She
blazons these plastic creatures by emphasising
the organs associated with our drives: hand,
30
eye, orifices. She grafts sex toys on inflatable in the nostalgic contemplation of their ageing these photographs predicted. Reality does not
dolls. She cobbles together Frankenstein’s identity. Cindy Sherman shatters this peaceful always go faster than the cortège of its masks,
monsters whose gaping holes are offered up to world of forests, gardens and wallpaper in her its morbid clowns, its incredible sex pictures,
our gaze. We take part. We penetrate. We refuse. murals and society portraits. Cindy Sherman’s and its wretched creatures of the Hamptons
We accept. She laughs and horrifies. Tabula biological destiny matters little to us here: she in their booze-fuelled pursuit of youth and
rasa, dissecting table. A double ‘origin of the has, once and for all, thrown the self into the money, and also – yes, in spite of it all – love,
world’ in which the sexes are mouth to mouth, pond of non-being, into the organic mush of and whatever unnamed, unnameable something
beribboned with ink, tightened with a cock decomposition. And when it comes to ageing, there is in all this. Tomorrow, the super-rich
ring, decorated with a cordon of Tampaxes. A she photographs old wives. The old bags of the will have the organs of their clones grafted
question written in that same notebook: ‘What American world. Aping society photography, in the surgery of the future announced by
could I possibly do when I want to stop using as the portraitist of these ladies, she collects Sherman. Cindy Sherman has photographed
myself and don’t want “other people” in the members of the tribe, pens the herd of botoxed the swamp in which the torn-off limbs of the
photos?’ Well, that, that’s me too. ladies of leisure. She observes the fate of all the American dream are rotting. We have the
For years I wondered if Sherman really Melanias in a Trumpian world whose advent picture. Come see.
existed; I wasn’t curious about biographical
details. Yes, in fact, I would have liked her
not to have her own identity. For her to be an
ectoplasm confined in her laboratory with her
wigs and her mannequins and fiddling around
with all those prostheses – for that, just that, to
be her life. Busy with her own skin that needs
thickening, multiplying, peeling, mixing. A
skilled little butcher’s shop of epidermis cells.
A cosmic and comic cosmetics, carried out
by an invisible woman. The female version of
H.G. Wells: ‘My limbs became glassy, the bones
and arteries faded, vanished, and the little
white nerves went last. . . . I struggled up. At
first I was as incapable as a swathed infant –
stepping with limbs I could not see. I was weak
and very hungry. I went and stared at nothing
in my shaving-glass, at nothing save where an
attenuated pigment still remained behind the
retina of my eyes, fainter than mist. I had to
hang on to the table and press my forehead
against the glass.’5
But no. It seems that Cindy Sherman really
does exist. She’s flesh and blood, and perfectly
visible. She must surely have a passport, like
all those who have the mixed blessing of being
documented. In fact, she has an Instagram
account which offers the rather astonishing sight
of her banal travel photographs, barely better
than my own, blithely mixed with prodigious
selfies – for who is better qualified to use that
format? Yes, Cindy Sherman really exists. When
she reached sixty she even took a sabbatical for 3. Description of the book on an
‘coming to terms with health issues and getting online sales site.
4. 1 June 1983. Facsimile of
older’.6 Cindy Sherman is getting older. In fact,
the notebook reproduced in
you can see as much in her portraits. She plays Retrospective, London: Thames
on her wrinkles. She is not the same – no – as & Hudson, 1998.
at the start of her series. Not the same as herself. 5. H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man,
1897, reprint, Oxford: Oxford
But this is the exact opposite of the irenic work University Press, 2017, p. 89.
of someone like Nicholas Nixon, photographing 6. New York Times, 24 April
the Brown sisters over a period of forty years 2016.
 THE GREAT
ESCAPE
Olivier Michelon

Notorious breakouts
In the first half of the 20th century, the
phenomenon was rare, but several accounts
concur: there were times when movie characters
got carried away, falling from the screen and
exiting the film. Vladimir Mayakovsky spoke of
the episode in which love drove a young girl to
burst out of the screen in a romantic comedy
made in 1918 by Nikandr Turkin. Woody Allen
for his part recalls that in 1935, in a New Jersey
suffering from the Great Depression, it was
during a screening of The Purple Rose of Cairo
that the adventurer Tom Baxter went beyond
his assigned spatial boundaries. Deaf to the
warnings of his fictional fellows (‘You’ve got
the wrong space!’), the explorer burst out of
the screen, ran into the theatre and grabbed an
admirer, Cecilia, by the arm.
This action can be risky. Even if she has
the features of Lili Brik, the poet’s muse,
Mayakovsky’s heroine is like a fish out of its
tank. Her lover’s arm is not enough for her; she
perishes in her new milieu where the depth of
field is infinite. Her companion is obliged to
hold up a white sheet, a makeshift screen, so 2

that the beloved can revive in the foreground

1. Air Shutter Release Fashions
(detail), 1975
1 black and white photograph
(ill. p. 59)
2. Vladimir Mayakovsky,
poster for Nikandr Turkin’s film,
Shackled by Film, 1918
on a surface. Tom Baxter, for his part, has never
stood still. His off-handedness imperils the
whole movie industry; more poignantly, he can
never know Cecilia’s love. His betrothed does
not want a world that bends to her desires: ‘I’m
a real person. Now matter how tempted I am, I
have to choose the real world.’
All that remains of Nikandr Turkin’s movie,
Shackled by Film, is a few short excerpts and
a poster in the Art Nouveau style showing a
character handcuffed by a strip of film stock.
Manacled by the ribbon, the figure recalls that
of Cindy Sherman in one of her earliest works,
Air Shutter Release Fashions (1975). Here the artist
tied herself up with a camera remote control
release cord for a series of photographs evoking
a fitting session. Like a drawn line, the cord
marks out panties, a bra, socks, a T-shirt and a
blouse on her body. Wrapped only in the wire
that connects her to the photographic mirror,
she wears images the way others wear outfits. In
this conceptual staging she is putting in place a
project of escape that will take two more years to
emerge.
In 1977, after several attempts, Sherman used
still images to pull off a feat contrary to the ones

32 33

3 4
described above: in the Untitled Film Stills series
she enters ‘the film’. Not any specific feature
film, but a corpus without end, a territory that
does not need to be scenarized, filmed, edited
and produced to exist. Cindy Sherman produces
a film simply by being photogenic. The Untitled
Film Stills telescope together all stories and
several cinephile preferences (thriller, western,
Italian neorealism, etc.), but Cindy Sherman
is the only film. Her body awaits a camera that
she must ignore. Her gaze hangs by an action
that appears in no script. Made up, dressed and
photographed by herself or by a close friend, her
presence suffuses and turns everything around
her into a set: the bookshelves, the books,
the blouse, the bed, the suitcase, the tree, the
winding road. Despite her outward assurance, a
detail betrays her dizziness on the other side of
the screen: the wire of the shutter release, which
she is still holding in her hand.
An established actress in barely seventy still
images – which, at the rate of twenty-four images
per second, makes just under three seconds
of film – Sherman emerged from film a few
years later, surrounded by a visual fragrance:
there was a whiff, still, of drama, passion and
movement around her. The black-and-white
timelessness of the Untitled Film Stills now gave
way to colour, that of the figure she embodied
in the foreground, and the more faded hues of
the background. For the series of rear screen
projections, she appropriated a special effect
that began to be used in cinema in the 1930s: a
screen on which a moving image is projected in
order to create a backdrop, or rear screen.1 The
trickery is conspicuous and Sherman appears
now to have got away, to have exited from the
film, having pushed it back and confined it to
the image of a transparency in the background.
But because it is impossible to obtain sufficient
depth of field with the lens at her disposal, the
34
3 and 4. Untitled Film Still #11 same each time: the artist used the clothes
(whole and detail), 1978
Gelatin silver print, entrusted to her and the patron was free to do
40.64 × 50.8 cm something with the images, or not. Sherman
(ill. p. 74) made them her own and exhibited them,
5. Photogram taken from sometimes in slightly modified form.
Nikandr Turkin’s film, Shackled Fashion is a matter of artifices, archetypes
by Film, 1918
and commerce. It is easy to compare Sherman’s
6. Untitled #66, 1980 attraction to this world to the fascination with
Chromogenic print, cinema so obviously characteristic of a corpus
38.9 × 59.5 cm
(ill. p. 85)
of works going from 1977 to 1982, from the
Untitled Film Stills to the centerfolds. But in 1983
7. Untitled #122, 1983 the fashion series inaugurated the gallery of
Chromogenic print,
187.3 × 122.6 cm fantastic figures, fairy-tale characters, monsters
(ill. p. 109) and hybrid creatures that would now populate
Sherman’s stagings. Paradoxically, it was by tying
8. Untitled #276, 1993
Chromogenic print, herself even more closely to this other industry
203.2 × 152.4 cm of the image that the artist escaped the roles
(ill. p. 114)
of which she had hitherto been the voluntary
7 8
prisoner.
Unlike Cover Girl (1976), one of her very first
works, and contrary to the codes of cinema
artist is involuntarily blurred, misted over.2 that she appropriated and manipulated, the
Her complexion, covered over by theatrical fashion pictures made in the 1980s and 1990s
make-up, is as neutral and hospitable as the show almost no concern to imitate a genre; no
sheet stretched out behind her. She is still only heavy looks, no glamorous poses, no voguing.
halfway, as if film has caught up with her. For The alienation portrayed in the roles of nurse,
each of her new appearances she must still be spurned mistress, ‘mamma’, femme fatale and
accompanied by a screen, thereby instinctively girl next door is no longer in evidence. Using
replaying the set-up imagined by Mayakovsky the clothes she is asked to wear, Sherman
in order to ensure the survival of his creature of orchestrates her escape from an imaginary that
light. had previously been framed by pre-existing
images. Her games are no longer limited to the
Fantasy figures appropriation or dissident quotation of tried and
In Untitled #122, Sherman has peroxide trusted formulas.
blond hair, its locks tumbling down over her In 1993, at the invitation of Harper’s Bazaar,
black dress. She stands out against a white Sherman made a new series for a portfolio.
background; her skin is livid, her (one visible) This time she dressed up, wrapped herself and
eye is red, her pupil struggling against the made herself up in clothes by Dolce & Gabbana,
strong light that casts her shadow. But she is Vivienne Westwood, Dior and Gaultier:
5
not closing her eyes; she is still in front of the
1. The classic example of this
is the car scene with Tippie screen, but will not go back into it. Then they sent me dresses, trousers,
Hedren and Sean Connery in Sometimes identified as a homage to Frances underwear, tops and props and accessories
Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie. Farmer, an American actress of the 1930s and of all kinds. The whole studio was full of
2. ‘I set up a really cheap way 1940s who was ground down by the Hollywood shoes and big shopping bags filled with hats,
to do a rear projection, but the
problem was that my studio system and committed to psychiatric hospital, wigs, umbrellas, gloves, dozens of ribbons
situation was so cheap and I the work belongs to the fashion series. This was and boots, etc. The funny thing was that
was so inexperienced, the only shown at Metro Pictures in 1983, after Dianne everything was typical model size, that is, it
way to light myself and have
the projection come through Benson had commissioned them for a clothes was intended for extremely tall, extremely
was to have the focal length in store in New York. For this series, Sherman thin girls. Most of the clothes were so tight I
between. So, I am mostly out used clothes by Jean-Paul Gaultier, Comme couldn’t even button them. And the stockings
of the focus or very close up
for the focus. I only did about des Garçons, Issey Miyake and Jean-Charles and the trousers were much too long. But
6 fifteen of them.’ Conversation de Castelbajac. In the same year, French Vogue that suited me just fine. It gave the thing a
with Sofia Coppola, ‘Whole asked her to produce photographs for Dorothée non-functional quality; they were already
Theater’, Imitation of Life, Los
Angeles: Prestel/Broad, 2016, Bis, and in 1990 Cosmopolitan asked her for a rather theatrical and looked like costumes
p. 150. cover. The terms of the collaboration were the that have an object-like life of their own.3
35
 The freedom affirmed in inventing these
figures with their unstable, hazy identities, and
also their uncertain iconographic programme,
revisits a pictorial tradition from the 17th
and 18th centuries, that of the Caravaggesque
Bacchuses, the Dutch tronies of Hals and
Rembrandt, the Venetian teste di fantasia of
Tiepolo, the British fancy pictures of Reynolds.
Art historian Melissa Percival notes an essential
quality of these ‘fantasy figures’, these paintings
that are ‘engaging or seductive’, ‘disdainful or
wary’: ‘They don’t tell us very much: there is
not a lot happening here. And yet, the attraction
and charm of fantasy figures reside in their
capacity for expressing buried desires and secret
aspirations.’4
The insomniac image
In 1983, when Lisbet Nilson asked her if she
considered her ‘pictures to be self-portraits’,
Sherman replied: ‘No. They may be technically,
but I don’t see these characters as myself.
They’re like characters from some movie,
existing only on film or on the print.’5 Nearly
forty years later, the first part of her answer
still stands as a dogma.6 The last words in
the dialogue are more mysterious; they evoke
characters that alight before us, spectres
prowling in the ether and needing a support – a
screen, a photograph – for their incarnation.
Previously limited to numbered prints shown
in galleries and museums, sometimes in
magazines, the six hundred-odd characters
created by Cindy Sherman now seem to have
espoused Mayakovsky’s fable. Cindy’s images
overflow. They come alive, not in the illusion of
a movement but by posing on different supports,
going all the way to merging with the subject.
At the start of 2019, Justin Timberlake noisily
announced to his followers on Instagram that
he was going back to touring after a few months
of rest. Wearing a T-shirt blazoned with the
name Cindy Sherman and a reproduction of
Untitled #122, he was seen by the artist on the
news. She took a screenshot and in turn posted
it on her Instagram thread. The T-shirt was by
Jun Takahashi,7 a Japanese designer known for
his Undercover label, and carefully mimicked
the visual codes of rock group T-shirts.
A year before, the artist’s likeness was printed
on a garment by Belgian designer Raf Simons
– not one of her works, but Sherman herself
posing in 1983 for Robert Mapplethorpe, the
photographer to whom Simons had dedicated
his collection.
36
9
In spring 2019, Sherman was on the cover
of The Gentlewoman. Here, the magazine
announced inside, was ‘The great American
artist as she is never seen – making the faces for
which she’s known.’ Photographs of the artist
posing as a drag queen, or dressed up as a man,
art-directed by Dutch fashion photographers
Inez & Vinoodh, superbly illustrate a well
documented article that ranges extensively
through the artist’s life (childhood, loves, career,
her relation to aging).
In unison with these pages, Sherman’s latest
series is characterised by a change of gender.
Most of all, though, the game is changed by the
inaugural image, a visual manifesto in which
she wears her own image, a T-shirt by Jun
Takahashi sporting one of her most archetypal
portraits, the very Hitchcockian heroine of
Untitled 74 (1980) dressed in a canary yellow
coat. This Cindy is young, with no rough edges.
She smiles brightly and her gaze disappears
behind the lapel of a camelhair coat worn by the
9. Screen grab from Cindy
Sherman’s Instagram account:
Justin Timberlake wearing
a T-shirt decorated with a
reproduction of Untitled #122
3. ‘Cindy Sherman im Gespräch
mit Wilfried Dickhoff’, Kunst
heute, no. 14, edited by Gisela
Neven DuMont and Wilfried
Dickhoff, Cologne, 1995: pp.
41–42; quoted and translated
in ‘De/constructing Fashion/
Fashions of Deconstruction:
Cindy Sherman’s Fashion
Photographs’, in Fashion
Theory, volume 6, issue 3,
pp. 255–76.
4. Melissa Percival, ‘Les figures
de fantaisie, un phénomène
européen’, in Figures de
fantaisie, du XVI au XVIII siècle,
edited by Axel Hémery, Musée
des Augustins/Somogy, 2015,
p. 35.
5. ‘Cindy Sherman an essay and
an interview by Lisbet Nilson’,
American Photographer, 1983.
6. Daniel Arasse summed it
up as follows: ‘This textual
production helped to
historically locate and frame
Cindy Sherman’s bizarre
inventions, as specialists
10 and 11. Cover and double
page from the magazine The
Gentlewoman, spring 2019
12. Raf Simons fashion show,
2018: model wearing a top with
a portrait of Cindy Sherman by
Robert Mapplethorpe (1983)
13. Untitled #602, 2019
Dye sublimation metal print,
193.7 × 222.3 cm
(ill. p. 217)
agree: these images in
which, for years, she has kept
photographing herself, are
not self-portraits; she makes
no attempt to understand
or present her “self”; on the
contrary, she shows that all
that exist are fictions of “me”.’
Daniel Arasse, ‘Les miroirs
de Cindy Sherman’, Art
Press, April 1999, reprinted
in Anachroniques, Paris:
Gallimard, 2016, p. 95.
7. With Sherman’s agreement.
In 2020, Undercover made
extensive use of the Film Stills
for its new collection.
Issue n°19, Spring and Summer 2019
Look Three
Cindy is wearing a vintage khaki
cotton shirt from Search & Destroy.
Cindy Sherman
The vintage studded leather vest is
by Schott, from Southpaw Vintage.
10 11
12 13
main character, a second Cindy whose head is
positioned just above. This one is a dandy whose
features and hair recall the Brian Ferry of the
1980s, his ‘Boys and Girls’ period. The eyelids
are swollen, the features tired, the complexion
showing signs of age. The gaze is slightly aloof,
tinged with arrogance. Around the figure is a
strident set, an artificial garden of parasol pines
whose symmetry and saturated colours bluntly
indicate the artificiality and the fantasy volutes
of the digital. In a world of data, images are
projected at the speed of light; they cannot close
their eyes or they will disappear back into the
screen.
37

1. Interview given to the New
York Times in January 1990: ‘A
Portraitist’s Romp Through Art
History’.
1. Untitled #577 (detail), 2016
Dye sublimation metal print
(ill. p. 208)
38
WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?
Gérard Wajcman
Why is it so obviously the case that no man
could ever make or even conceive the kind of
work that Cindy Sherman makes? The thought
never occurs. Or for it to do so, that man would
need to be like Cindy Sherman, that is to say, a
woman. Which is pretty much the same thing,
or thereabouts. Or again, quite simply, that
man would need to be Cindy Sherman herself.
Dressed as a man. Which, it so happens, is what
Cindy Sherman has been, more and more, of
late. And this opens up new debates that are
crucial to our times.
An art of the portrait?
Cindy Sherman could be seen, in photography,
as the Rembrandt of Modern Times, if one
thinks of the hundred or so self-portraits –
paintings, engravings, drawings – that the Dutch
painter made throughout his forty years of
activity, from his early days in 1629 to his death
in 1669. Using hats, accessories and clothes of
all kinds, from all periods, representing himself
as a soldier, pauper, burgher or apostle, he too
practised a consummate art of dressing up –
but never as a woman. At the same time it has
been said, rightly I think, that the huge gallery
of characters in that uninterrupted masked ball
could be viewed as a private diary; that, behind
the disguises, it was the portrait of his own life
that he was painting here, from the rebellious
passion of his youth to the afflictions of old age,
via the painful marks of life’s tragedies, and all
the way to the supposedly more serene wisdom
and plenitude of old age. In other words, in
each of these works, Rembrandt performed
the great art of portraiture in tying an image,
which by definition is different every time, to
the permanence of his being and his name. But
more exactly, rather than portraiture, this was
the art of the self-portrait, in that Rembrandt
took himself as his own model.
And that, precisely, is why he was not the
Cindy Sherman of the 17th century, because,
from the bimbo to the blooming young woman
and grand Californian matron, Sherman does
not take herself as her model. Under the most
diverse accoutrements and in the most varied
settings, it is the life of others and the history of
our times that her works recount, not her own.
This is to say that, although it involves and
puts into play – if not on stage – her own body,
Sherman’s art is not an art of the portrait.
Indeed, each image is nameless, usually
labelled Untitled, and her women each bear
just a number, #92, say, or #501. Most of all,
what we need to understand is that this is not,
but really not at all, an art of self-portraiture.
It doesn’t take much brain-racking to reach
that conclusion. Sherman states the case very
clearly herself: ‘I feel I am anonymous in my
work. When I look at the pictures, I never see
myself; they aren’t self-portraits. Sometimes I
disappear.’1 So that is it. The first action that
Sherman performs in each of her photographs is
to disconnect from her own body.
Anonymous? Yes, absolutely. I also feel sure
that nobody can look at these images, all these
faces of Cindy Sherman, without wondering for
at least a moment what the artist must look like
in real life. And, at the same time, if you chance
to see her one day, for example in the pages of
a magazine, photographed beside her works, it
39
is not her, it is hard to believe that it is her, in
herself. Every image by Cindy Sherman is other,
including her own.
If the artist’s action consists in shucking
off her own body, her own image, the point of
doing so is to take on another body, the body of
women, of all other women.
Cindy Sherman is a woman with a thousand
faces
It is certainly in this sense, as I see it, that the
title given by Marie-Laure Bernadac to her
essay here, ‘Womanliness as a Masquerade’, is
so resonant. As she points out, this refers to
an article with the same title published by an
English psychoanalyst, Joan Riviere, in 1929.
Once we have sent packing the idea that this
is no more than a crude macho cliché, we can
begin to attend to what Riviere was trying to
show, namely, a certain tendency that girls have
to cloud the issue, both for themselves and for
despairs, so much so that the tears well up and
run down his cheeks, blurring his sight and
erasing his image from the surface of the water.
Such is the Narcissus who, according to Alberti,
was the inventor of painting: a Narcissus devoid
of narcissism.
Cindy Sherman does indeed have much
of this Narcissus about her, one much less
self-inebriated and jubilant than mutedly
melancholy, a Narcissus without an image
who, far from raising up a monument to
herself, disappears behind her work, not in the
tragic way of Yayoi Kusama performing self-
obliteration in her proliferating dots, rather like
the legend of Wu Daozi, that eighth-century
painter of the Thirteenth, or Tang Dynasty,
who is said to have entered into one of his
landscapes and disappeared in the depths of
the painting. Painting yourself to lose yourself.
Sherman is that Narcissus whose image is
drowned in the spring. The artist who paints 2

others, by hiding behind the mask of femininity
(in clinical terms, appearing before the mother
in such a way as to keep secret the relation to
the father, so as not to be rejected). The logic of
masquerade can be articulated as follows: I show
you what you want me to be, but I am what I do
not show you. If, in Sherman’s case, masquerade
has no audible psychoanalytic resonance, it
does definitely touch on the fact that femininity
is deployed in her work as a mask that hides,
and that hides her, to the extent that, as she
says, she disappears. What then bursts forth is
the astonishing paradox that courses through
this body of work: the image of Cindy Sherman
disappears behind Cindy Sherman’s images.
This leads us to the first kind of destruction
wrought by this work in our times – on our
times. It has two victims. Narcissus is the first.
I say Narcissus for the sake of simplicity, but in
truth we are talking about narcissism, the kind
of uninhibited ‘selfie-seeking’ narcissism that
leads straight to our day’s mass exhibitionism.
This fashionable narcissism has nothing
to do, I insist, with Narcissus, the Narcissus of
ancient history. In fact, the young Narcissus,
the handsome adolescent from Boeotia, was
himself spared that appalling incontinence
with self-images that is so common today;
this is true, in any case, of Ovid’s Narcissus,
whose story is told in the Metamorphoses, since,
leaning over the spring, Narcissus does not
actually recognise himself in the reflection
it shows him and, when he eventually does,
far from going into raptures at the sight, he
and loses herself does not contemplate herself
in her works.
This brings us within sight of a second
victim: Brunelleschi, the architect, painter and
sculptor whom his student and friend Alberti
raised to the rank of a great precursor of the
Renaissance. We know that at the end of the
Quattrocento, a few years before Vasari, there
was an accepted principle which held that Ogni
dipintore dipinge se: every painter paints himself.
It so happens that this seminal formula was
attributed to none other than Brunelleschi. In
its various forms, this precept had quite a career
in aesthetic thought over the coming centuries,
all the way to the 19th-century psychology of art,
and beyond Sainte-Beuve’s critical vision, which
suggested that we consider an artist’s work as
the reflection of his life.
It is Freud who, in applying it to our
innermost selves, can be seen as giving this
thesis its full weight. But now, along comes
Cindy Sherman. And, with her, this whole
art-theoretical structure starts to crack. Not
simply because she belies Brunelleschi’s
founding precept or counters Freud and the
followers of Sainte-Beuve, but because she
plainly and simply wrests her art from that
personal fixation and produces images that are
like no one, or perhaps like everyone, but quite
certainly not like their maker.
Hence this surprise. Never before has any
artist done what she has done and taken
herself as the sole object of her work or, as
she has done, so obliterated herself from her
2. Pictures from Sherman’s work, banished herself from each image. She
Instagram account
is unfailingly present in all her photographs,
but these say nothing about the person who
made them. Cindy Sherman makes all her
photographs with her body, but she does not
paint herself.
Furthermore, in 2017 she subverted the genre
known in French as the ‘égoportrait’ by flooding
Instagram with a series of 150 selfies in which
not only did she photograph herself more than
100 times as 100 others, but in which, by means
of filters and apps, displayed herself 100 times
ranging from ugly to deformed to monstrous.
Let’s have a thought for Kim Kardashian.
The project behind the work comes through
in its extraordinary power, which is to say that
by eclipsing her own body Sherman brings forth
the body of all other women – well, nearly all of
them.
It is not herself, therefore, that Sherman put
on stage: it is, in fact, much more the Other, all
others – well, nearly.
Rather than a grand term like the Other,
I could have written – albeit, I confess, with
another kind of poetic grandiloquence
– ‘Woman’. But when you consider the
phenomenal number of photographs that she
has produced, representing an extraordinary
number of changing female figures, there can be
no doubt that Sherman hastens us towards this
first certainty: The Woman does not exist.
Not Woman, only women
Plural women, women plural by essence because
none carries within herself what would be an
essence of femininity. What all these woman
miss is Woman. That is why, in Lacan’s sense,
the feminine is the not-all (the pas-tout). And
that is why Sherman, a Lacanian sans Lacan,
endlessly multiplies images of women, as if in
pursuit of this Woman that does not exist, and
why she so carefully tallies these women – #412,
#413, #414 – because, as in the catalogue of Don
Giovanni’s conquests in the Mozart opera, which
tots up country women, city women, countesses,
baronesses, servants, marchionesses, princesses,
women from here and from there, of all ranks, of
all kinds and all ages – there are in all mille e tre,
a number that tends towards infinity. In other
words, not only are they extremely numerous,
but they cannot be enumerated.
Sherman’s work is driven by an impossibility:
to identify Woman. All her art aims at this
impossibility, and aims at it because it is
impossible. In which regard, from the shy,
boyish young girl from Buffalo to the old West
Coast Barbie, through the catalogue-defeating
ranks of all the other female figures, for her the
multiplication of women figures is actually a
process of dis-identification.
One might suggest in passing that it is
because women are plural that Sherman uses
photography, that medium with a mass vocation

40 41
which Walter Benjamin saw as the prototype
and paradigm of reproducibility, a technology
which created works that are multiples, not
unique, that is to say, at the same time, of which
each one, one by one, every time counts one –
one plus one plus one . . .
This is how, one after one, Sherman
photographs, makes a series of all her shots.
Just unlike a woman
To say that Woman does not exist means, simply,
that the only existing women are singular
women. Every woman is one and every woman is
other. It must be admitted that this is a feature,
a quality and, let us say, a privilege that men
cannot claim. Every woman is singular. She has
only differences. So the attempt to say what the
feminine is will always fail. Hence, we might
argue that what is most feminine about a woman
is what is most inimitable in her.
And it is in this light that we can see the full
logic, the truly boundless scope of Sherman’s
project: to represent them all in their infinite
singularity – that is to say, necessarily infinitely
not-all. And one by one. Alone. In this regard,
we cannot fail to be struck by Sherman’s images,
in that the women are usually on their own. As
if solitude was these women’s intimate partner.
Being at one with solitude. That is Sherman’s
companion, up until recent times, when the
figures have not always been alone in the images
but have doubles (Chanel Couture), or are split
into three or four diverse images of women.
In spite of it all, they are essentially endless
portraits of dark solitudes in which each
solitude bears its own specific mystery. Because
even if we say there are women rather than
Woman, and even if we think that women exist
one by one, in the end the question ‘What is a
woman?’ hangs in the air – intriguing, opaque,
granite-like, leaving the person asking it more
than perplexed: at a loss. What can be known
about woman?
We can’t really say what a woman is.
Nowadays you’ll find only social media
influencers ready to pronounce urbi et orbi
the good word of marketing-friendly feminism
and spread the belief in a woman capable
of embodying Woman, invoking all the
semblances of a feminism reduced to artifices
supposedly liable to arouse desire, all this in
order to enable all their followers, those poor,
lost souls ignorant in matters of femininity, to
finally know ‘how to be a real woman’. And
down the Youtubes you go.
42
This is where Sherman’s work has its place, touching on pornography, she reveals nothing of observing humanity like a galaxy in a state of
its full place. It is here that her work is not bodies, whether her own or those of others; all continuous expansion such that is it difficult not
just the sum of her photographs – all of them she unveils are gazes, gazes directed at women. only to trace its limits, but also to imagine that
surprising, each one fascinating – but is a bold And it is not always very pretty. Ultimately, her it may even have them. This new galaxy can be
immersion in the great mystery of femininity. work could be given a rather French New Wave called LGBTTQQIAAP (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Femininity would, basically, be what takes the title: ‘Women Seen By’. Transgender, Transsexual, Queer, Questioning,
place of the answer that does not exist to the Because, if the essence of woman is nowhere Intersex, Asexual, Allies, Pansexuals) – to which
question ‘What is a woman?’ Sherman’s work to be found, the forms of femininity are at once O is sometimes added, for Others. This is also
is a process of research, a careful, in-depth overabundant and fleeting, ephemeral, almost because, in the end, each human is an Other, a
investigation whose subject is in truth the obsolescent. gender of their own.
absence of the essence of woman. Of course, However, there is something further to add. One could say that with Sherman the mystery
women are universal, but there is no universal Which is that the huge gallery that Sherman has of ‘femininity’ has extended to all figures that are
Woman. And that is what obliges the artist to been composing since the 1970s does not just Other, with no limits.
keep multiplying portraits of woman who are accumulate images of women who are always A great visual artist, a great photographer,
always different, always seen one by one, with other, infinitely diverse and, always, unique. For a great costumier, a great set decorator, a great
each image of a woman exhibiting a figure of among the most recent works there are series make-up artist and, in sum, a great artist,
femininity that is always different, and that is of images of men (such as the men), showing Sherman is the maker of a body of work that is
much less an essence in that most of the time purported men. I would say that Sherman here a cosa mentale, one that examines our being and
it is assigned to each woman by the gaze of is showing the image of a humanity that is no our times, methodically constructing with its
others, as it is by discourse, whether of the family longer divided into two species, women and images an atlas in the manner of Aby Warburg’s
order or those of society, in all their forms, be men, but scattered into a horde of genders. The Mnemosyne Atlas: a GAF, or Great Atlas of
it social norms, class conventions, ideological artist’s gaze becomes that of an astronomer Femininities.
stereotypes, the general style of a period, fashion,
cinema or the canons of art history. That is why
Sherman delves into the archives, all kinds of
archives of images, near or far, that are basically
the archives of ways of looking at femininity in
which femininity has its source, and in which
it is constantly being refreshed because of the
temporality and extreme variability of these
images. Sherman’s work consists in plunging her
gaze in the gazes that form the ever-changing
ocean of gazes on women.
This is what is known in logic as the function
of the series, be it the one on 1950s B movies
(Untitled Film Stills, 1977–80) or on fashion
(1983–1984, 1993–94, 2007–08, 2016–18), which,
from Vogue to Harper’s Bazaar, appropriates the
conventions of the images in these specialist
magazines, or again the history portraits (1988–
90), which delineate the fantasies conveyed by
Old Master portraits, or again the sex pictures
(1992), staging the porn tropes of the sexual
representations of women’s bodies, reduced
on such occasions to a mere hole. While
maintaining a critical distance that it would be
justified and legitimate to describe as feminist,
over the years Sherman has built up what could
be seen as the immense album of defining
images of femininity.
There is, strictly speaking, no unveiling in
Sherman’s work. In all the bodies that she
shows with her body, all these bodies that she
exhibits, sometimes seriously undressed, and
sometimes even with a provocative indecency

1. ‘Cindy Sherman: Why am
I in these photos?’, interview
with Tim Adams, The Guardian,
3 July 2016.
1. Cindy Sherman in her studio,
New York, 2009
BEHIND (CINDY SHERMAN’S)
BLUE EYES
Ludovic Delalande
Photography happened to be one of the
compulsory courses during Cindy Sherman’s
studies at university. Soon, it was her medium
of choice. Apart from the very occasional films,
sometimes based on photographs, and one
feature-length film (Office Killer, 1997), the
artist has limited her practice to still images
whose creation – from conception to printing
– follows a kind of implicit method that has been
developed in the process of making the works.
In fact, she has never formulated its principles
explicitly, which means that, should the need
arise, it is easy for her to change and transgress
them. The method, then, is hazy, and its limits
are undefined, making it permanently open to
exploring different avenues and experimenting
with new forms and procedures. This is a body
of work that avoids dogmatism and cultivates
exceptions.
Behind each photograph there is a plurality of
gestures, of actions and operations carried out by
the artist, who works alone, out of sight, without
the help of assistants or a technical team. This
way of doing things, which a few vain attempts
to change only ended up consolidating, soon
emerged as an essential requirement, ensuring
her total freedom and mastery of the different
phases of production – from character to set,
from lighting to framing, from the photograph
to the composition and on to the printing. Cindy
Sherman plays every role, by turns model, make-
up artist, costumier, set designer, hairdresser,
lighting designer, director, photographer and
retoucher. Only the printing is delegated, either
to another person or to a photography laboratory,
after the earlier stages have all been carried out
in the studio that the artist has installed in her
apartment. Rather than the mega-studios of her
contemporaries, she prefers the intimacy of a
domestic and, when it comes down to it, fairly
modest space. Laid out to meet different needs,
as a place of reflection, conception, realisation
and storage, the studio plays a central role in
her artistic practice. That is where everything is
decided, everything is created.
Each new project is grounded in a context
whose origins are outside any pre-established
system. Just what it is that triggers the idea
leading to the creation of the first character
and then the next is never the same. The artist
might, for example, draw on a precise subject,
be inspired by a garment or an accessory that is
already present, or not, in her studio, or react to
earlier works, or again, respond to an invitation
from a fashion designer or a magazine. Once
she has the guiding thread, she teases out its
potential, portrait after portrait, like the possible
variations on a given theme whose accumulation
will form a series. This approach quickly became
a structuring factor in all her work. From one
series to another, the number of photographs,
which is never set in advance, will vary, from just a
handful, as in the pink robes and disasters series, to
seventy in the case of the Untitled Film Stills, her
biggest so far. Sherman says that a series requires,
on average, six months of work, but she does not
have set hours or times in the studio: ‘I’m not a
nine-to-five kind of artist,’ she says.1 Likewise, the
time between series can vary in length.
Ever since her very first youthful works,
Sherman has been her one model, systematically
embodying all her protagonists, the only
45
exception being when she made figures out
of children’s dolls or mannequins that she
bought from a medical supplies catalogue. This
temporarily removed her from the frame and
made her disappear from the image. And, as she
admits, she did once try to get other people to
pose: ‘In the 1980s with my former husband,
my daughters-in-law, a few friends, even with
an assistant. I may have made eight photos in
all. But I wasn’t at ease. I didn’t want to impose
anything on them. I spent my time asking them if
they didn’t need anything, apologising for making
them wait. I don’t like giving orders, directing
people.’2 As she has explained, ‘It’s just difficult
for me to tell people what they have to do when I
can’t articulate it, because I have to see it first. I’m
not necessarily a control freak, but I intuitively
know what I want.’3 And again: ‘I like to work
completely alone, so instead of using models I
use myself.’4 In fact, the artist treats herself as a
blank page on which faces and bodies come to
life: ‘My everyday life is like a blank canvas. But,
through my work, things emerge and come to life.
It’s a mistake to think that I make self-portraits. I
proceed exactly like an actor.’5
Make-up is a fundamental parameter in the
invention of a character, and has been from the
start. It marks the initial phase of the process
of transformation. Facing the mirror, the artist
makes herself up alone, carefully drawing her
character’s features with foundation, powders,
mascara, lipsticks and other artifices. She may
supplement these with prostheses for the face
(nose, lips, forehead, etc.) and body (breasts,
buttocks, etc.), plus masks and sets of teeth,
before topping the ensemble with a wig. These
items, which she amasses, are found in thrift
stores and second-hand clothes shops or in
special Halloween stores, although for the
needs of her flappers series, which was the first
time, and more recently for the men, she rented
wigs made for theatre and television. This is
how Sherman gradually disappears behind
a borrowed face, leaving only the natural
colour of her eyes, a blue that appears in all
her photographs and affirms her sovereign
presence behind each of the gazes. The make-
up is applied manually and there has been
no digital retouching until recently. The only
time Sherman used exclusively digital make-
up was in the murals and landscapes, in which
she applied it a posteriori using Photoshop – a
well-known computer retouching, processing
and drawing software – on a photograph made
beforehand au naturel.
46
2
Another decisive element in the elaboration
of the subject, which comes immediately
afterwards, is the choice of outfits. Sherman
chooses and sometimes makes these without
the help of a dresser or costumier. When
not plundering her personal wardrobe or
borrowing items from designers, she draws on a
variety of styles of clothing, local or exotic, often
vintage, sometimes modern and sometimes
retro, finding her provisions in second-hand
shops, at the Salvation Army shop or at flea
markets, but also on online sales sites. With
only rare exceptions, she does not get her
supplies from fancy dress stores or costume
hire; she prefers the patina of clothing that
has really lived and will readily change its use
or rework the stitching for the needs of her
character. The clowns series, for example, began
with some striped pyjamas that had already
been transformed into a clown outfit, and
she proceeded to create different figures by
remixing square dance items. Or again, for the
history portraits, apart from one or two period
costumes lent by a relation of the Borghese
family who owned the Roman photography
studio in which she took a few pictures, she
made her outfits herself: ‘So much of it was
junky stuff. I would rip up a pair of pants and
use the legs as sleeves for some other kind
of garment that looked like brocade from the
seventeenth century.’6 As each new series has its
own particular wardrobe, the artist rarely uses
the same garment twice, or at least, not without
reworking it. In this way she adds to her
wardrobe in keeping with a particular project
or, precisely, when looking for an idea.
2. Cindy Sherman in her studio,
October 1987
3. Cindy Sherman’s studio in
New York, 2019
3
2. Three-way interview with
Isabelle Huppert by Jean-Max
Colard, Les Inrocks, 25 October
2012.
3. Interview with Isabelle Graw,
‘No make up’, in Cindy Sherman,
Clowns, exh. cat., Hannover,
Kestner Gesellschaft, Munich:
Schirmer/Mosel, 2004.
4. Interview with Blake Gopnik,
‘Cindy Sherman Takes On
Aging (Her Own)’, New York
Times, 21 April 2016.
5. Three-way interview with
Isabelle Huppert, loc. cit.
6. Conversation between Cindy
Sherman and John Waters,
Cindy Sherman, exh. cat., New
York, The Museum of Modern
Art, 2012, p. 75.
7. Interview with Isabelle Graw,
Cindy Sherman, Clowns, op. cit.,
2004.
8. Interview with Karen Wilkin,
‘Why Cindy Sherman thinks
selfies are a cry for help’,
Wall Street Journal Magazine,
4 December 2019.
Finally, she completes her character with
various accessories – spectacles, bags, hats,
scarves, jewellery, etc. – which she gets from
the same kinds of sources as the clothes. Over
the years she has built up a growing, unique
and eclectic collection of clothes, accessories,
objects and other prostheses, used or waiting to
be used, which she methodically stores by type
in the allotted drawers and wardrobes in her
studio.
Because Sherman refuses to conceive the
appearance of her figures beforehand, she never
knows in advance what the result will be. There
are no preparatory sketches. The characters
emerge one after another in the course of
successive transformations. Of course, to get
into the spirit she may back up her ideas by
doing picture research. This is evident in the
countless portraits of women – essentially – from
the worlds of fashion, cinema and advertising
that cover the walls of her studio. ‘I never
have anything in mind before I develop the
film and look at the results. Then I think, for
example, hmmm, what I originally wanted to do
apparently didn’t work. But here’s something
that interests me, maybe I should try going on
in this direction. Then I break out in a new
direction, experiment a bit and something else,
unforeseen, excites my interest.’7 Then comes
the pay-off: ‘It feels magical. I don’t know what
it is I’m looking for until I put the make-up on,
and then somehow it’s revealed.’8 Premeditate
nothing, do not abandon yourself to chance, but
follow your intuition to the surprise at the end:
that is how the principle might be formulated.
Each portrait, then, is constructed live, in
the course of the photography session. Here
too, the artist is alone at the helm, taking the
photograph herself (the exception being some
photographs of the Untitled Film Stills taken
with the help of friends, for example, the ones
taken outdoors). She has set up a photography
studio in her workshop and it is in this classic
portrait set-up that Sherman, or rather her
character, poses. Looking into a full-length
mirror – a second, smaller one, is used for any
alterations to make-up – she studies her pose,
works out her expression and gaze, tries out
47

4
different accessories, adjusts the lighting and
framing, and repositions any set elements, while
pressing on the shutter release when she faces
the lens, trying different images and making
succinct observations on the results in her
notebooks. All this goes on behind closed doors
in the privacy of a spontaneous, silent dialogue
between the artist and the character who looms
up in the mirror. ‘I reject it out if it looks too
much like me,’9 she says. And again, ‘Generally I
feel somehow removed from the characters, but
sometimes they do sort of hit too close to home,
where it just seems like me on a bad day.’10 In
order to get her image, she makes, unmakes
and starts again, if necessary, in a process that
can be more or less long. In the early days she
had set up her own photography laboratory
so she could develop her prints quickly, which
meant that she could ‘stay in character and in
half an hour could see the results. . . . I was
doing Polaroid contact prints that were the
size of 35mm film – tiny, so would only get a
general sense. I couldn’t be sure how the focus
was, and the color was completely different.
But then in the mid-nineties I started to take
the film to a lab. So then I had to get out of
48
4. Cindy Sherman in her studio,
New York, 2003
5. Cindy Sherman’s studio in
New York, 2019
character, go to the lab, wait two or three hours,
come back and . . . realize I had to do it all over
again.’11 Today, thanks to digital technology,
she can see the result immediately on the
computer nearby, going smoothly from posing
for the lens to looking at the screen. Moreover,
photos can be taken earlier in the creative
process, making it easier for her to do tests,
maybe just with a particular garment or wig.
‘When digital photography came in I was very
much against it, because I thought it meant the
end of constraints. You can do what you want
with Photoshop. I borrowed a digital camera
and, gradually, I realised that this technique
completely liberated me. I could go on working
until midnight, seeing it all on the computer as
I went along . . . Now I am totally in favour of
digital. I could never use film stock again.’12
This transition from analogue to digital began
with the clowns series in the early 2000s and
was confirmed with the next one, Balenciaga.
It has had a decisive effect on the construction
of Sherman’s images, and especially the
composition of her grounds. In the analogue
regime, Sherman had to finalise her sets, which
she made herself, at the same time as her
5
9. Conversation between Cindy
Sherman and John Waters, op.
cit., p. 73.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., p. 72.
12. Three-way interview with
Isabelle Huppert, loc. cit.
13. Conversation between Cindy
Sherman and John Waters,
op. cit., p. 75.
14. Interview with Isabelle Graw,
op. cit.
character. They had to be camera-ready. These
could range from simple to highly elaborate and
were designed to work with the lighting and
the pose of the character, who dominated the
framing. For the Untitled Film Stills she adapted
the décor of her own apartment or positioned
herself in existing outdoor locations. For the rear
screen projections her characters were positioned
in front of images on a screen. For the history
portraits she concocted her own sets – ‘I could
just hang up some fabric in the background and
make it look like a curtain, put an old candle on
an old table.’13 After that, her stagings became
increasingly sophisticated, as in the fairy tales,
sex pictures and disasters. Since she started using
digital, the artist has always photographed
herself in front of a green screen, leaving the
background to be worked out later. Photoshop,
too, has brought new possibilities, allowing
Sherman to make her settings more and
more specific, or even completely virtual. She
particularly likes to use outdoor settings, urban
and rural scenes recomposed from photographs
she has taken herself. The composite images
that result from these digital manipulations
merge different places and times, while the
increasing importance of the setting in the
images has been accompanied by a progressive
growth in the format. In the same way, whereas
the framing was previously determined when
the photograph was taken, she can now place
the character in the setting on her computer
and can, if need be, change the orientation
from vertical to horizontal. By keeping carefully
abreast with technological developments in
her medium, yet refusing to see the camera as
anything but a tool that allows her to formulate
her ideas, the artist has explored new paths that
change her language while generating images
of increasing complexity. In the more recent
series, from the clowns to the men and including
the flappers and Harper’s Bazaar series, she
multiplies her figures in portraits of couples
and groups, or again, freely duplicates a figure’s
shadow.
Apart from whatever clues are provided in the
image itself and help make it comprehensible,
Sherman never provides any information about
the existence of her characters, nor, with the
possible exception of the Untitled Film Stills, does
she try to construct anything beyond the actual
pose: ‘I don’t step into a figure and imagine how
their life has been or where they live or what
kind of family they have. I don’t go that deep.
For me, what I see in the mirror is much more
decisive . . .’14 We are given nothing to help us
understand who these figures are, where they
come from and what they are doing. Anonymous
and without a history, stuck in a suspended
present, with no past or future, they exist only
as images. Sherman conceives portraits and
not narratives. Indeed, she doesn’t give her
photographs titles, any more than she does her
series – the names generally used to designate
these are all unofficial, coined by critics. With
the Untitled Film Stills, which is the only title of
her devising, she instituted a basic numbering
system whereby each photograph is given a
number, preceded by ‘Untitled#’. This conscious
refusal of all narrative intent and descriptive
labelling has proved to be an essential aspect
of this body of work which, from one series
to another, plays with clichés, not in order to
define their limits so much as to scramble and
transcend them. In the same spirit, the artist
49
prefers not to share her observations so as not
to limit our approach to her photographs to any
kind of presupposition: ‘I want all the clues to
what’s going on in the pictures to be visual. I
thought if I titled them, people would start to see
what I was seeing in the picture. I like the idea
that different people can see different things in
the same image, even if that’s not what I would
want them to see.’15 With no imposed script or
pre-established discourse, and even if this means
allowing ambiguity and misunderstandings,
the situation is conducive to multiple readings,
allowing us to appropriate the characters and
elaborate hypothetical scenarios. However, the
absence of words does not make Sherman’s
images mute; on the contrary, it probably only
adds to their evocative power, turning her
photographs into universal spaces for personal
projection, in keeping with the artist’s desire
to make work that is accessible to all. However,
while her characters may sometimes seem
strangely familiar, they are all invented and do
not refer to anyone in particular. In spite of
possible resemblances or correspondences, each
figure is unique and has unique characteristics.
And, similarly, it appears only once – with the
exception, again, of the Untitled Film Stills, in
which there are several, as in multiple angles
of the same character, and of pink robes, where
the repeated use of the titular garment and the
complete absence of make-up could lead to the
conclusion that it is the same woman.
The choice of format comes right at the
end of the process, once the final image has
6 7
been chosen. Sherman sums up the process
as follows: ‘In the past I would project the
slides (the majority of my work was shot in
transparencies until I switched over to digital)
to get the size that felt right. Now I sort of
guess, usually going for something a little larger in a new series she is currently working on 6. Cindy Sherman’s studio, 2019 ‘I consider the IG images sort of like sketches
than life-size, although sometimes I decide using images conceived on Instagram, her new for the work.’17 Although it is still Sherman
7. Cindy Sherman’s studio, 2012
against that and go either much larger or experimental terrain. This will mean a radical in front of the camera, the modalities have
smaller.’16 Here too, technological innovations change of regime for these images which, when changed. Having photographed herself
have freed her from size limits and she has transposed from screen to textile, from pixel to unadorned with her cellphone, à la selfie,
gradually upped the dimensions of her figures, warp and weft, will switch suddenly from virtual tightly framing her face, she then begins the
to actual size and beyond, a point she reached to material. In combining the tradition of an process of metamorphosis (hair, eyes, faces, lips,
with the society portraits. The prints themselves age-old technique with today’s technological etc.) using the same electronic apparatus. But
have reached monumental proportions, as in innovations, Sherman is bestowing a longevity while beauty apps like Facetune, Perfect 365
the murals series. While the number of copies that is new for images such as these, which and YouCam Makeup are supposed to perfect
is variable, each photograph can have only one usually disappear almost as soon as they have 15. Interview with Noriko Fuku, the face by getting rid of all its flaws, Sherman
format. After exploring different kinds of paper appeared. ‘A Woman of Parts’, Art in uses its possibilities to create fantasy figures,
America, 85, no. 6, June 1997,
in keeping with the developments of printing On the Instagram account that she opened p. 125.
caricatures and grotesques, even monsters,
techniques (gelatin silver, chromogenic colour, in 2016 and made public the year after, images 16. Conversation with the whose deformed outlines verge on the fantastic
dye sublimation metal print, etc.), the artist of the artist’s private life cohabit with portraits author, January 2020. and the supernatural, to the point that they even
has started to extend her support to textile whose future status remains to be determined: 17. Ibid. obscure the iconic colour of her eyes.

50 51
EARLY WORKS
1975–1977

Cindy Sherman’s youthful pieces constitute the seedbed of the

work to come, both in the diversity of their mediums (film, photogra-
phy, collage) and in the kinds of themes they address: identity, disguise,
fiction, fashion. As a young girl, Sherman loved to dress up, and what was
originally a game became an artistic practice. Under each of the images
in a childhood photo album, A Cindy Book, she wrote, ‘That’s me’. This
narcissistic affirmation continued with a quest for identity in the twen-
ty-three small photos from 1975, in which she goes from a serious young
woman in glasses to a star with red lips. Untitled A-E (1975) is a play on
her physiognomy and her grimaces, transforming her into several char-
acters, from a little girl with barrettes to a boy in a cap. After the face, it is
her whole body that appears in Air Shutter Release, a series in which the
artist photographs herself bound by a cord that delineates her clothes
and at the same time is used to trigger the photograph.
The film Doll Clothes (1975) shows her as an unclothed doll that
can change its clothes and style. Sherman later developed fictions with
a multiplicity of theatre characters and their Play of Selves (1976). Finally,
she focused on fashion images by inserting her own face into magazine
visuals in an imitation of Cover Girls (1976). Marie-Laure Bernadac
54 A Cindy Book, c. 1964–1975 55
56 Untitled #479, 1975 57
58 Air Shutter Release Fashions, 1975 59
60 Untitled A, B, C, D, E, 1975 61
62 Doll Clothes, 1975 63
64 I Hate You, 1975 Unhappy Hooker, 1976 65
66 A Play of Selves, 1975 67
 Cover Girl (Vogue), 1975–2011
Cover Girl (Mademoiselle), 1975–2011
Cover Girl (Family Circle), 1975–2011
Cover Girl (Redbook), 1975–2011
68 Cover Girl (Cosmopolitan), 1975–2011 69
70 Untitled #499–510, 1977–2011 71
UNTITLED FILM STILLS
1977–1980

A ‘film still’ is an image produced for promotional purposes during

the making of a film. Often the work of a set photographer, it is the job of
these images to convey the nature of a film – actors, characters, narrative, the
director’s angle – without movement. In the seventy Untitled Film Stills she
made between 1977 and 1980, Cindy Sherman does not translate or quote
any particular film, but navigates within images that evoke a dream cinema
whose titles are embodied in a single image. In deserted outdoor settings,
or rudimentary sets put together in her own apartment, the artist plays the
heroines of non-existent films while producing an impression of immediate
recognition in the viewer.
Black-and-white is the rule for capturing these timeless visions criss-
crossed with the memories of roles we imagine were played by Anna Magnani,
Jeanne Moreau, Kim Novak or Brigitte Bardot. Most of these photographs
were taken by the artist, some by her friends and relatives. When she took
them herself, Sherman used a set-up that she has maintained to the present
day: alone facing the camera, she is at once the director, actor, costumier, tech-
nician, set designer – and artist. Olivier Michelon

Untitled Film Still #7, 1978

 Untitled Film Still #11, 1978
74 Untitled Film Still #43, 1979 Untitled Film Still #27, 1979 75
76 Untitled Film Still #22, 1978 Untitled Film Still #32, 1979 77
78 Untitled Film Still #48, 1979 Untitled Film Still #35, 1979 79
 Untitled Film Still #84, 1978
80 Untitled Film Still #14, 1978 Untitled Film Still #53, 1980 81
82 Untitled Film Still #38, 1979 Untitled Film Still #13, 1978 83
REAR SCREEN PROJECTIONS
1980

The ‘rear screen’ is a special effect that became part of filmmaking in

the 1930s. In order to dispense with a set, or create the illusion of travel or
moving surroundings (a winding road, for example), actors performed in front
of a screen on the back of which a scene was projected. Hitchcock was notably
fond of this technique. In this immediate extension of the Untitled Film Stills,
Sherman used it in order to continue her dialogue with cinema. Paradoxically,
the deliberate exhibition of a trick – created statically, using a simple slide and
approximate focus – produces an intensely cinematic effect, and this impres-
sion is heightened by the ambiguity of the artist’s performance, which is still
reserved when compared to her later poses and disguises. At the start of the
1980s, with the rise of video, cinema entered a gilded obsolescence, a period
when all the possibilities previously hidden by its dominant use could be
revealed. Sherman seems to be bidding it farewell. This was when she started
using colour, a choice on which she rarely reneged. Olivier Michelon

Untitled #66, 1980

Untitled #74, 1980 87
88 Untitled #76, 1980 Untitled #75, 1980 89
 Untitled #68, 1980
90 Untitled #72, 1980 Untitled #69, 1980 91
CENTERFOLDS
1981

This series of twelve horizontal photos resulted from a commis-

sion by the magazine Artforum. The elongated format was dictated by
the fact that Cindy Sherman wanted to imitate the double-page spreads
in adult magazines. But here, instead of sexpots, we see pensive, fragile,
lovelorn young girls, like the one waiting for a phone call. They are lying
down (Untitled  #81, Untitled  #93, Untitled  #94, Untitled  #96), and there-
fore seen from above, or on all fours, in a position of fear and flight
(Untitled #92) or squatting with arms folded and gaze lost (Untitled #88).
In her notebook, the artist noted their different positions: outstretched,
sleeping, fallen, unable to walk, lounging; and their characters: drunk, but
well-dressed, innocent, paralysed, beaten woman, countrywoman, worn,
outdoors. The colours of the clothes – orange, pale green and purple – are
in harmony with the background. In the end, the magazine rejected these
photographs, which they felt presented a degrading image of woman. To
which Sherman replied that the young woman lying under a black sheet
was not a rape victim but simply someone who had drunk too much and
was struggling to wake up. This misunderstanding speaks volumes about
the many possible meanings of her works. Marie-Laure Bernadac

Untitled #88, 1981

Untitled #96, 1981
94 Untitled #90, 1981 95
96 Untitled #92, 1981 Untitled #93, 1981 97
98 Untitled #94, 1981 99
PINK ROBES, COLOR STUDIES
1982

Cindy Sherman made two different series, but with common

characteristics. Pink robes presents a model who, having posed – for the
centerfolds? – is hiding her nudity behind a carefully draped pink dress-
ing gown. Sherman’s looks are natural here, with very light make-up and
short hair. She frowns and looks us straight in the eye. Many have seen
these images as showing the ‘true’ Cindy Sherman, but this ‘naked truth’
is a complete fabrication: the framing, the contrasts of light and shade and
the dominance of the pink colour against a black ground reveal formal
concerns that we also find in the second series of images (Untitled #113,
Untitled #114), in which the artist offers very different versions of herself:
one, a rather rock ’n’ roll tomboy, and two others as a very feminine young
girl in her white dress or lace outfit. This last series is titled color studies, as
if Cindy Sherman wanted to indicate that this interest in colour is more
important than the actual subject. It is true that the subject almost disap-
pears into the ground, as if this relegation to the background was a way of
telling us more about herself. Marie-Laure Bernadac

Untitled #103, 1982

 Untitled #97, 1982 Untitled #99, 1982
102 Untitled #98, 1982 Untitled #100, 1982 103
104 Untitled #107, 1982 Untitled #113, 1982 105
106 Untitled #114, 1982 Untitled #112, 1982 107
FASHION
1983–1984, 1993–1994, 2007–2008,
2016–2018

Ever since the commission from Dianne B[enson] for her New York
store in 1983, Cindy Sherman has been engaged in a regular dialogue with
fashion, its designers and magazines. The principle of these collaborations
never varies: the artist works with the clothes entrusted to her and the result-
ing images can be used both by the patron and by Sherman herself, some-
times in a slightly altered version. These shoots are not a sideshow: clothing
is a decisive, trigger element in the simultaneous construction of Sherman’s
images and identities. Contrary to the appropriation of cinema archetypes in
the Untitled Film Stills, the first works that she made using clothes from Jean-
Paul Gaultier and Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons) do not quote the poses
or affects one would expect from the universe of glamour. On the contrary, the
photographer amplifies the ambiguity already present in the work of these
designers known for their understanding of clothing as a site for interrogating
the cultural norms of the body and delivers a gallery of absent, aggressive or
freakish figures. A decade later, commissions from Comme des Garçons and
Harper’s Bazaar magazine (1993) resulted finally in phantasmagorical crea-
tures in which we can still sense the violence done to the mannequins of the
sex pictures.
The series made in the 21st century for Balenciaga (2007–08) and
Harper’s Bazaar (2016) are very different. They are contemporaneous with
fashion’s new iconographic regime, attuned to the 24/7 of social media. This
time, Sherman embodies street-style fashionistas in a way that is spectacular
and tender yet cruel. Olivier Michelon

Untitled #122, 1983

110 Untitled #131, 1983 Untitled #138, 1984 111
112 Untitled #132, 1984 Untitled #133, 1983–1984 113
114 Untitled #276, 1993 Untitled #304, 1994 115
116 Untitled #302, 1994 Untitled #303, 1994 117
118 Untitled #462, 2007–2008 Untitled #458, 2007–2008 119
120 Untitled #459, 2007–2008 Untitled #460, 2007–2008 121
122 Untitled #461, 2007–2008 Untitled #586, 2016–2018 123
124 Untitled #590, 2016–2018 Untitled #588, 2016–2018 125
FAIRY TALES
1985

A young girl who likes to dress up and has a lively imagination is

bound to be attracted to fairy tales, to stories of witches and monsters.
Cindy Sherman has even illustrated the Brothers Grimm. In these works
she is not alluding to any scene in particular but is playing on contrasts
of scale, as in Untitled #150, in which a giantess with a great lolling tongue
towers over the Lilliputian figures below. Or again, she evokes the dark
atmosphere of a forest where a body lies lifeless (Untitled #155). For the
first time here, she uses prostheses (snout, teeth, breasts, hips, legs) to
create figures that are a hybrid of human and animal.
Here, Sherman goes deep into the register of horror and the
macabre, disguising herself as a swine (Untitled #140), an ogress or a
dog crouching on shell-strewn pebbles. We find this same background
in Untitled #143, which shows a soiled face with thick stubble and bite
marks. In Untitled #146 the artist evokes a hallucinogenic Oriental tale
with a woman wearing a turban and with a sheet draped over her body.
For Sherman, facing up to horror and the uncanny is a way of preparing
for the unthinkable. Marie-Laure Bernadac

Untitled #140, 1985

 Untitled #150, 1985
128 Untitled #143, 1985 Untitled #147, 1985 129
130 Untitled #155, 1985 Untitled #146, 1985 131
Untitled #156, 1985 133
DISASTERS
1986–1987

In the disasters, Sherman goes even further than her iconic fairy tales
series in the exploration of the grotesque, horror and fear, now entering
the register of trash, gore and repulsion. These carefully orchestrated compo-
sitions of agglutinated organic and inorganic materials, with close-ups
on varying degrees of putrefaction and tightly framed shots of mould, rot,
vomit and other liquid states, show the artist revelling in a paroxysm of
abjection and amorphousness in hallucinatory images that are as intense as
they are disturbing. In the first pictures, persons or bits of bodies can still be
made out – reflected in a pair of glasses, in the shadowy background or
off to one side at the top; in the later ones, the figure dissolves and, in
the process, the artist exits the frame, breaking for once with her practice
of the portrait. Ludovic Delalande

Untitled #175, 1987

136 Untitled #167, 1986 Untitled #180, 1987 137
HISTORY PORTRAITS
1989–1990

Sherman returned to her images in this revisiting of the Western

painting tradition and Old Master tropes. Partly produced during a stay in
Rome, this gallery of thirty-five portraits in differing formats sees the artist
passionately appropriating themes, schools – Italian, Flemish, French – and
languages in a way that toys overtly with artifice and caricature. Dressed
up in costumes that are not vintage but homemade efforts fashioned from
repurposed vintage clothes found at the flea market, kitted out with pros-
theses, wigs and other accessories of all kinds, she embodies Madonnas,
nobles, aristocrats and bourgeois, from the Renaissance to the 19th century.
Not only women but, for the first time, large numbers of men pose here
in rudimentary sets made using curtains or swags of material, detailed
with the occasional significant object. Sherman humorously parodies the
traditional styles and codes of representation – the poses, expressions,
hairstyles, clothes, etc. – as she invents her own pictures. Only four of
these explicitly refer to a known artwork: Caravaggio’s Young Sick Bacchus
(Untitled #224), Jean Fouquet’s Virgin and Child (Melun Diptych) (Untitled #216),
Madame Moitessier by Ingres (Untitled  #204) and Raphael’s La Fornarina
(Untitled #205). Ludovic Delalande

Untitled #205, 1989

140 Untitled #216, 1989 Untitled #195, 1989 141
142 Untitled #206, 1989 Untitled #225, 1989 143
144 Untitled #204, 1989 Untitled #201, 1989 145
146 Untitled #212, 1989 Untitled #224, 1990 147
148 Untitled #207, 1989 Untitled #228, 1990 149
SEX AND SURREALIST
PICTURES
1992–1996
BROKEN DOLLS
1999

In reaction to the success of the history portraits (1990) –  and

perhaps, too, because she was tired of staging herself – Sherman now
disappeared from the image, to be replaced by mannequins. She
composed strange “still lifes” with bits of the body – trunks, bellies, legs,
arms, genital organs – that combine female and male, as in the androgy-
nous trunk of Untitled #262, and strike all kinds of bold erotic postures.
This very explicit sexuality is, however, dehumanised and borders on
the grotesque, as in the case of the string of sausages coming out of an
old witch’s hairy lower belly (Untitled #250). Bodies are often reduced to
gaping orifices. In Untitled #307, the body of a redheaded horned woman
holding a cheap knife is cut into pieces. The mixture of the macabre and
the supernatural in these scenes reveals a Surrealist influence.
To make things more lifelike, Sherman painted certain parts,
thereby playing on the ambiguous relation between living and inorganic.
A kiss between two masks (Untitled #305) shows several layers of skin and
it is impossible to tell the false from the real, just as it is with the scarred
face of a child (Untitled #316).
This very provocative series must be seen in the context of the puri-
tan return to censorship in 1990s America. A few years later, Sherman
once again used disarticulated dolls, putting them into all kinds of posi-
tions. This was a nod to Hans Bellmer, but also a reference to the cruelty
and perversity of children who play at torturing their dolls and trans-
form transitional objects into erotic toys. Marie-Laure Bernadac

Untitled #307, 1994

152 Untitled #256, 1992 Untitled #261, 1992 153
154 Untitled #250, 1992 Untitled #253, 1992 155
156 Untitled #259, 1992 Untitled #258, 1992 157
158 Untitled #305, 1994 Untitled #316, 1995 159
 Untitled #335, 1999
160 Untitled #345, 1999 Untitled #332, 1999 161
HEADSHOTS
2000

With the series of headshots, Sherman went back to being an actress,

imitating the poses of has-been or wannabe actors trying to sell their
image with every artifice they can muster. With their false breasts, pierc-
ings and extreme, clown-like make-up, these poor women are pathetic
in their effort to look more attractive and fight the effects of aging. This
series could be broadly divided into Hollywood types and Hamptons
types, that is to say, between West Coast and East Coast, between vulgar,
extravagant women and women who try to be more intellectual and
elegant. This is a rather cruel vision of women: ‘My idea for the charac-
ters was would-be or has-been actors (in reality, secretaries, housewives
or gardeners) posing for headshots to get an acting job. These people
are trying to sell themselves with all their might’, says the artist, sharing
her empathy and compassion for these models.1 The headshots speak to
us of lost illusions, of aging and the difficulty of finding one’s place in
society today. Marie-Laure Bernadac

1. Cindy Sherman, interview with Isabelle Graw, ‘No make-up,’ in Cindy Sherman, Clowns, exh. cat., Hannover, Kestner Gesellschaft,
Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2004, p. 16.

Untitled #400, 2000

164 Untitled #352, 2000 Untitled #359, 2000 165
166 Untitled #401, 2000 Untitled #399, 2000 167
MASKS
1994–1996
CLOWNS
2003–2004

This is another emblematic series. Begun as a collaboration with

British Vogue, the clowns mark a high point in the carnivalesque dimension
that Sherman had begun to explore in her masks series. These feature masks,
reddish sometimes, covered with gold or silver or melted like chocolate, often
tightly framed in close-ups that heighten the sense of the grotesque and
monstrous. The height of cross-dressing, the clown is a tragicomic figure, ‘the
supreme embodiment of the buffoon that is the artist performer’ as Marie-
Laure Bernadac puts it. Sherman appropriates and caricatures the traditional
modes of representation with her freakishly exaggerated garb and makeup. In
their extravagant wigs, hats and other headgear, these characters have over-
size red mouths and thickly outlined eyes or bulging noses. As is her wont,
rather than hire her clown paraphernalia, Sherman made it herself from old
clothes, throwing in a remix of square dance accessories. Alone or in groups,
these grimacing clowns are crazy and grotesque, and sometimes disturbing or
distressing. Sherman ranges across registers, from the joyous chortler to the
sad moper, the cruel or the pathetic. She also extends the essentially mascu-
line vision of the clown, as perpetuated by the circus, into female and androg-
ynous versions. She plays, too, on age, showing clowns both young and old.
The clowns see Sherman transitioning from analogue to digital, a process she
completed in the next series. Here, the characters are still photographed using
an analogue camera, but the backgrounds – either solid washes of colour or
gaudy, multi-coloured patterns – were made exclusively on computer, using
Photoshop retouching software. Ludovic Delalande

Untitled #414, 2003

170 Untitled #314 A, 1994 Untitled #328, 1996 171
 Untitled #327, 1996 Untitled #323, 1996
172 Untitled #321, 1996 Untitled #324, 1996 173
Untitled #417, 2004 175
176 Untitled #411, 2003 Untitled #413, 2003 177
178 Untitled #424, 2004 Untitled #425, 2004 179
SOCIETY PORTRAITS
2008

Shortly after her severe vision of middle-aged womanhood (head-

shot), Sherman continued her investigation with the rich, socialite women
of the art world and upper class. These tall portraits of richly dressed
women are set in old architectural settings such as the interior of a clois-
ter (Untitled #466) or a handsome, wood-panelled home (Untitled #476, in
which the woman is sitting in front of a painting with a dog on her lap),
or again, a room full of drawings (Untitled #474). Often, Sherman adds a
niggling detail that shatters the smooth impression given by these well-
dressed figures with their jewellery and elegant surroundings: in one
case, pink mules with an ugly support stocking sticking out from under
the blue caftan; in another, a plush-toy dog.
When she is not depicting wealthy American women, some of
them art lovers, Sherman comes back to the image of the cover girl in
a cowboy hat in a natural setting, which embodies a certain vision of
America. ‘To me, it’s a little scary when I see myself. And it’s especially
scary when I see myself in these older women.’2 Marie-Laure Bernadac
1. David Hershkovits, ‘In Your Face?’, Paper, November 2008, p. 54.

Untitled #475, 2008

182 Untitled #465, 2008 Untitled #476, 2008 183
184 Untitled #477, 2008 Untitled #474, 2008 185
186 Untitled #466, 2008 Untitled #470, 2008 187
MURALS
2010
LANDSCAPES
2010–2012

In 2010, Sherman started working on an architectural scale. Her charac-

ters, whose eccentricity used to be hemmed in by the frame, were now unlim-
ited. These towering new figures project into the exhibition space, turning the
museum or gallery into a theatre. The black-and-white, print-like backgrounds
of these wallpaper pieces heighten the disparity between the fairy-tale setting
and creatures that are just as factitious, but ‘larger than life’. Tinselly knights,
noble ladies or acrobats out of some fantasy circus are embodied by the artist,
her face seemingly unadorned but dazed: without make-up, Sherman’s char-
acters still suggest slight disturbances, allusive deformations created by the
retouching software which she uses more and more often.
In terms of scale, these panoramic views were soon directly echoed in
the large-format works originally made for the journal Pop in collaboration with
Chanel. Timeless, thanks to a wardrobe that moves Coco’s Roaring Twenties to
the eclectic erudition of Lagerfeld, Sherman fills the space with the extravagant
restraint of a ‘woman who fell to earth’ in retouched photographs of wild nature
taken in Iceland or on the islands of Capri and Stromboli. Olivier Michelon
Untitled #544, 2010–2012
Following double page: Untitled #549 (E, C), 2010
190 191
192 Untitled #512, 2010–2011 193
194 Untitled #545, 2010–2011 Untitled #540, 2010–2012 195
COLLAGES
2015

Although, ever since the Untitled Film Stills, Cindy Sherman has
worked in series, suites of images with a common subject or characteris-
tics, the criteria applied in appreciating her works have always been closer
to those used for an individual painting than for a photograph that is part
of a corpus. They are autonomous objects rather than images to be read
within a larger ensemble. In 2013, on the occasion of the ‘Horror’ exhibi-
tion (Stockholm, Moderna Museet; Oslo, Aastrup Fearnley Museum; Zürich,
Kunsthaus), the artist inflected this position by hanging pre-existing works
on the wall in the form of sequences. Placed edged to edge, her photographs
were exhibited like sequences assembled in jump cuts whose juxtapositions
are rich in new meanings. In 2015, Sherman continued in this direction,
combining images of different series from her archives that had been left
unused. Underscoring the heterogeneity of the images by preserving their
diversity of format (Untitled  #559, Untitled  #561), she applies the montage
principle even within the same frame (Untitled #562) by placing one of her
headshots in front of a clown and a mask. Olivier Michelon

Untitled #561, 2015

198 Untitled #559, 2015 Untitled #562, 2015 199
FLAPPERS
2016–2018

Cindy Sherman calls the women she embodies in this series flap-
pers, a term that locates these liberated young women in the 1920s. We
imagine them as the bright young things of Hollywood’s golden age. It
was an enchanted interlude, for ten years later they were hit by the Wall
Street Crash of 1929 and the advent of the talkies. It was the end of the
era, and curtains for quite a few careers. Here they appear as fading glories
posing in front of sets that smell of success and decadence (Untitled #571,
Untitled #575 and Untitled #582); they accessorise their independence with
lamé and a cigarette (Untitled  #580), but are sometimes forced to replay
the same family comedies, despite their evident seniority (Untitled  #577,
Untitled  #584). Sometimes melancholic, they might appear with their own
ghost (Untitled #566). Sherman’s work always eludes the question of autobi-
ography, but not in this series. Forty years after the Untitled Film Stills, the
artist/actor produces promotional portraits in which neither make-up nor
digital retouching obliterate the mark of time. Olivier Michelon

Untitled #566, 2016

202 Untitled #571, 2016 Untitled #580, 2016 203
204 Untitled #585, 2018 Untitled #567, 2016 205
206 Untitled #579, 2016 Untitled #575, 2016 207
208 Untitled #577, 2016 Untitled #573, 2016 209
210 Untitled #582, 2016 Untitled #574, 2016 211
212 Untitled #578, 2016 Untitled #583, 2016 213
214 Untitled #584, 2018 215
MEN
2019–2020

Marking a turning point in Cindy Sherman’s work, men saw her switch

from female to male, opening up a whole new set of possible metamorpho-
ses. In fact, the artist began making occasional portraits of male figures in
her earliest works and continued to do so up to her history portraits, but this
was the first time she devoted an entire series to them. To explore this new
subject she took advantage of the opportunity provided by fashion designer
Stella McCartney to work with her collections, and especially her new line
of men’s clothes. As a result, she composed a set of androgynous male
silhouettes set in a variety of digitally reworked landscapes. Some are soli-
tary, others accompanied by a double who seems more probably feminine.
Sherman uses their poses, attitudes and expressions to reveal the vulnera-
bility of these characters, just as she does with her women figures. In this
portrait gallery she reinvents the codes of representation, portraying a new
and deliberately ambiguous masculinity that blurs the usual boundaries
between genders. Ludovic Delalande

Untitled #602, 2019

218 Untitled #603, 2019 Untitled #609, 2019 219
220 Untitled #610, 2019 Untitled #611, 2019 221
222 Untitled #613, 2019 Untitled #614, 2019 223
TAPESTRIES
2019–2020

Cindy Sherman’s exploration of a new medium, tapestry, has intro-

duced a major change in the production and printing of her images. Images
conceived on Instagram are printed in the weft of a weave combining cotton,
wool, acrylic and sometimes silk. Although, like the photographs printed on
paper, her tapestries are also hung on the wall (albeit from a rail), the nature
of these images that are transposed from screen to textile is radically differ-
ent, since they take us from virtual to material. Whereas these images usually
disappear almost as soon as they have appeared, Sherman gives them a new
longevity by combining a traditional technique with technological innovations.
On her Instagram account, Sherman also posts moments from her private life
alongside portraits whose future status remains to be determined. Although
she is still the model, the modalities have changed; she photographs herself
unadorned with her cellphone, à la selfie, before beginning the process of
digital metamorphosis (hair, eyes, faces, lips, etc.). Beauty apps like Facetune,
Perfect 365 and YouCam Makeup are designed to perfect the face by getting
rid of its flaws, but Sherman subverts their purpose to create fantasy figures,
caricatures and grotesques. Ludovic Delalande

Untitled #604, 2019

 Untitled #607, 2020 Untitled #608, 2019
226 Untitled #605, 2019 Untitled #606, 2020 227
ARCHIVES

This exhibition provided an opportunity to show a selection from

Cindy Sherman’s archives. The artist started collecting photograph
albums in the 1970s. The first of these, ‘Bobby and Cindi’, was given by
a friend. Her collection then developed following varied and somewhat
random themes: the life of a minor western actor, Charles McClelland,
in the 1940s and 1950s, the life of a circus, an album about mother-
hood, portraits of soldiers, young German girls, views from Denver,
family pastimes, Boyer’s Inn (1958), etc. One of the most famous, ‘Casa
Susanna’, documents a resort for people we suppose to be cross dress-
ing men or transgender women run by Susanna (Tito Valenti) and her
wife, Marie, a wig expert, in the Catskills (north of New York) in the early
1960s. Angeline Scherf

Above and following double page: pages from the photo albums collected by Cindy Sherman
231
 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books by Cindy Sherman
Sherman, Cindy, Fitcher’s Bird, New
York, Rizzoli, 1992.
Sherman, Cindy, Cindy Sherman: The
Complete Untitled Film Stills, New
York, The Museum of Modern Art,
2003.
Sherman, Cindy, A Play of Selves,
New York, Metro Pictures; Ostfildern,
Hatje Cantz Verlag; Cologne, London,
Munich, Sprüth Magers, 2007.
Monographs
Barnets, Els, Schjeldahl, Peter, Cindy
Sherman, Munich, Schirmer/Mosel,
1987.
Burton, Johanna (ed.), Cindy Sherman,
October Files, Cambridge (MA), MIT
Press, 2006.
Danto, Arthur C., Cindy Sherman:
Untitled Film Stills, New York, Rizzoli,
1990.
Danto, Arthur C., Cindy Sherman:
History Portraits, New York, Rizzoli,
1991.
DeAk, Edit (ed.), Cindy Sherman:
Specimens, Kyoto, Kyoto Shoin
International, 1991.
Dickhoff, Wilfried, Sherman, Kunst
Heute, no. 14, Cologne, Kiepenheuer &
Witsch, 1995.
Durand, Régis, Dabin, Véronique (eds.),
Cindy Sherman, Paris, Flammarion/
Musée du Jeu de Paume, 2006.
Felix, Zdenek, Schwander, Martin
(eds.), Cindy Sherman Photographien
1975–1995, Munich, Schirmer Art
Books, 1995.
Knape, Gunilla, Cindy Sherman: The
Hasselblad Award 1999, Göteborg,
Hasselblad Center, 2000.
Krauss, Rosalind, Cindy Sherman:
1975–1993, New York, Rizzoli, 1993.
Meneguzzo, Marco, Cindy Sherman,
Milan, Mazzotta, 1990.
Mori, Chika et al. (eds.), Cindy
Sherman, Shiga, Japan, Asahi
Shimbun, 1996.
232
Morris, Catherine, The Essential Cindy
Sherman, New York, Harry N. Abrams,
1999.
Schjeldahl, Peter, Danoff, I. Michael,
Cindy Sherman, New York, Pantheon
Books, 1984.
Schlüter, Maik, Graw, Isabelle, Cindy
Sherman: Clowns, Munich, Schirmer/
Mosel, 2004.
Schneider, Christa, Cindy Sherman:
History Portraits, Munich, Schirmer/
Mosel, 1995.
Schor, Gabriele, Cindy Sherman: The
Early Works, 1975–1977, catalogue
raisonné, Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz
Verlag, 2012.
Stocchi, Francesco, Cindy Sherman,
‘Super Contemporary’ series, Milan,
Electa, 2007.
Suzuki, Gyoh, Uyeda, Seiko (eds.), Cindy
Sherman, Tokyo, Parco, 1987.
Williams, Edsel, Early Work of Cindy
Sherman, East Hampton, Glenn
Horowitz Bookseller, 2000.
Solo exhibition catalogues
Houston 1980
Cindy Sherman: Photographs,
edited by Linda Cathcart, Houston,
Contemporary Arts Museum, 1980.
Amsterdam 1982
Cindy Sherman, edited by Els Barnets,
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, 1982.
Dijon 1982
Cindy Sherman, edited by Catherine
Bonnotte and Laurence Cyrot [Galerie
Déjà Vu], Dijon, Le Coin du Miroir,
1982.
New York 1983
Cindy Sherman, edited by Thom
Thompson, Stony Brook (NY), Art
Gallery, Fine Arts Center, State
University of New York, 1983.
Saint-Étienne 1983
Cindy Sherman, edited by Christian
Caujolle, Saint-Étienne, Musée d’Art et
d’Industrie, 1983.
Saint Louis 1983
Currents 20: Cindy Sherman, edited by
Jack Cowart, Saint Louis, Saint Louis
Art Museum, 1983.
Akron 1984
Cindy Sherman, edited by I. Michael
Danoff, Akron (OH), Akron Art
Museum, 1984.
Tokyo 1984
Cindy Sherman, Tokyo, Seibu
Contemporary Art Gallery, 1984.
Tokyo 1984
Next Wave of American Women,
vol. 2: Cindy Sherman, Tokyo, Laforet
Museum Harajuku, 1984.
Münster 1985
Cindy Sherman, Photographien, edited
by Marianne Stockbrand, Münster,
Westfälischer Kunstverein, 1985.
Hartford 1986
Cindy Sherman: MATRIX 88, edited
by Andrea Miller-Keller, Hartford, The
Wadsworth Atheneum, 1986.
Portland 1986
Perspectives 4: Cindy Sherman, edited
by Ruth Cloudman, Portland, Portland
Art Museum, 1986.
New York 1987
Cindy Sherman, edited by Lisa Phillips
and Peter Schjeldahl, New York,
Whitney Museum of American Art,
1987.
Wellington 1989
Cindy Sherman, edited by Luit
Bieringa, Wellington, National Art
Gallery, 1989.
Basel 1991
Cindy Sherman, edited by Thomas
Kellein, Basel, Kunsthalle Basel, 1991.
Milwaukee 1991
Currents 18: Cindy Sherman, edited
by Dean Sobel, Milwaukee, Milwaukee
Art Museum, 1991.
Dublin 1994
From Beyond the Pale: Julião
Sarmento and Cindy Sherman, edited
by Michael Tarantino, Dublin, Irish
Museum of Modern Art, 1994.
Weimar 1994
Cindy Sherman: New York
Photographien, edited by Klaus
Nerlich, Weimar, ACC Galerie, 1994.
São Paulo 1995
Cindy Sherman: The Self Which Is Not
One, edited by Carlos Basualdo, São
Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna de São
Paulo, 1995.
Washington 1995
Directions: Cindy Sherman, Film Stills,
edited by Phyllis D. Rosenzweig,
Washington (DC), Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian
Institution, 1995.
Rotterdam 1996
Cindy Sherman, edited by Karel
Schampers, Rotterdam, Museum
Boijmans-Van Beuningen, 1996.
Caracas 1997
Cindy Sherman: una selección de las
colecciones de la Eli Broad Family
Foundation, Caracas, Museo de Bellas
Artes, 1997.
Chicago, Los Angeles 1997
Cindy Sherman: Retrospective, edited
by Amada Cruz, Elizabeth A.T. Smith
and Amelia Jones [Chicago, Museum
of Contemporary Art; Los Angeles, The
Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997],
London, Thames & Hudson, 1997.
London 2003
Cindy Sherman, edited by Rochelle
Steiner, London, Serpentine Gallery
and Art Data, 2003.
New York 2003
Cindy Sherman: Centerfolds, edited by
Lisa Phillips, New York, Skarstedt Fine
Art, 2003.
Montclair 2004
The Unseen Cindy Sherman: Early
Transformations, 1975/1976, edited
by Gail Stavitsky, Montclair (NJ),
Montclair Art Museum, 2004.
Saint Louis 2005
Cindy Sherman: Working Girl, edited
by Paul Ha, Saint Louis, Contemporary
Art Museum Saint Louis, 2005.
Greenwich 2011
Cindy Sherman: Works from Friends of
the Bruce Museum, edited by Kenneth
E. Silver, Peter C. Sutton and Linda
Nochlin, Greenwich, Bruce Museum,
2011.
New York, San Francisco
Minneapolis, Dallas 2012
Cindy Sherman, New York, Museum
of Modern Art; San Francisco, San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art;
Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; Dallas,
Dallas Museum of Art, 2012.
Oslo, Stockholm, Zürich 2013
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Horrors, Oslo,
Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne
Kunst; Stockholm, Moderna Museet;
Zürich, Kunsthaus, 2013.
Munich 2015
Cindy Sherman [Goetz Collection],
Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2015.
Brisbane, Wellington 2016
Cindy Sherman, Brisbane, Queensland
Gallery of Modern Art; Wellington,
New Zealand, City Gallery, 2016.
Los Angeles, Columbus 2016
Cindy Sherman, Imitation of Life, Los
Angeles, Broad Museum; Columbus,
Ohio, Wexner Center, 2016.
London, Vancouver 2019
Cindy Sherman, London, National
Portrait Gallery; Vancouver, Vancouver
Art Gallery, 2019.
233
 LIST OF EXHIBITED WORKS

1975–77 p. 68 p. 76 1980 p. 94–95 p. 104 p. 112

Early works Cover Girl (Vogue), 1975–2011 Untitled Film Still #22, 1978 Rear screen projections Untitled #90, 1981 Untitled #107, 1982 Untitled #132, 1984
3 gelatin silver prints Gelatin silver print Chromogenic print Chromogenic print Chromogenic print
P. 53 26.7 × 20.3 cm (each) 76.5 × 97.2 cm p. 85 61 × 121.9 cm 96.5 × 46 cm 174.6 × 118.6 cm
Untitled B (detail), 1975 Private collection Fondation Louis Vuitton Untitled #66, 1980 Collection of the artist; courtesy Metro Fondation Louis Vuitton Fondation Louis Vuitton
1 gelatin silver print Chromogenic print Pictures
41.8 × 28.4 cm Cover Girl (Mademoiselle), 1975–2011 p. 77 38.9 × 59.5 cm p. 105 p. 113
Private collection 3 gelatin silver prints Untitled Film Still #32, 1979 Collection of the Vancouver Art p. 96 Untitled #113, 1982 Untitled #133, 1983–84
26.7 × 20.3 cm (each) Gelatin silver print Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery Major Untitled #92, 1981 Chromogenic print Chromogenic print
p. 54–55 Courtesy of the artist and Metro 40.64 × 50.8 cm Purchase and Acquisition Funds Chromogenic print 114.3 × 76.2 cm 181 × 120.7 cm
A Cindy Book, c. 1964–75 Pictures, New York Olbricht Collection 61 × 121.9 cm Fondation Louis Vuitton Fondation Louis Vuitton
26 colour and black and white p. 86–87 Collection of Cynthia and Abe
photographs, green marker, paper, p. 69 p. 78 Untitled #74, 1980 Steinberger p. 106 p. 114
staples Cover Girl (Family Circle), 1975–2011 Untitled Film Still #48, 1979 Chromogenic print Untitled #114, 1982 Untitled #276, 1993
22.5 × 29.8 cm 3 gelatin silver prints Gelatin silver print 40.6 × 61 cm p. 97 Chromogenic print Chromogenic print
Collection of the artist; courtesy Metro 26.7 × 20.3 cm (each) 76.2 × 101.6 cm Barbara & Richard S. Lane Untitled #93, 1981 124.5 × 76.2 cm 203.2 × 152.4 cm
Pictures Courtesy of the artist and Metro GF2010.013 Chromogenic print Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Fondation Louis Vuitton
Pictures, New York Glenstone Museum, Potomac, p. 88 61 × 121.9 cm Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial
p. 56–57 Maryland Untitled #76, 1980 Collection of Cynthia and Abe Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on- p. 115
Untitled #479, 1975 Cover Girl (Redbook), 1975–2011 Chromogenic print Steinberger Hudson, New York Untitled #304, 1994
Set of 23 hand-coloured gelatin prints 3 gelatin silver prints p. 79 50.8 × 61 cm Chromogenic print
11 × 7.6 cm (each) 26.7 × 20.3 cm (each) Untitled Film Still #35, 1979 Fondation Louis Vuitton p. 98–99 p. 107 154.9 × 104.1 cm
On loan from Dorothy and Peter Waldt Courtesy of the artist and Metro Gelatin silver print Untitled #94, 1981 Untitled #112, 1982 Collection of Raf Simons
Pictures, New York 25.4 × 20.3 cm p. 89 Chromogenic print Chromogenic print
p. 58–59 Collection of Pamela and Arthur Untitled #75, 1980 61.6 × 122.6 cm 114.9 × 78.3 cm p. 116
Air Shutter Release Fashions, 1975 Cover Girl (Cosmopolitan), 1975–2011 Sanders Chromogenic print Collection of the artist; courtesy Metro 97.4574 Untitled #302, 1994
17 black and white photographs 3 gelatin silver prints 50.8 × 61 cm Pictures Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Chromogenic print
7.6 × 5.1 cm (each) 26.7 × 20.3 cm (each) p. 80 Fondation Louis Vuitton New York, purchased with funds 167.4 × 110 cm
Collection of the artist; courtesy Metro Barbara & Richard S. Lane Untitled Film Still #14, 1978 contributed by the International Neda Young
Pictures Gelatin silver print p. 90 Director’s Council and Executive
p. 70–71 25.4 × 20.3 cm Untitled #68, 1980 Committee Members: Eli Broad, Elaine p. 117
p. 60–61 Untitled #499–510, 1977–2011 Collection of Samuel and Ronnie Chromogenic print 1982 Terner Cooper, Ronnie Heyman, J. Untitled #303, 1994
Untitled A, B, C, D, E, 1975 12 gelatin silver prints Heyman, Palm Beach 40.6 × 61 cm Pink robes and color studies Tomilson Hill, Dakis Joannou, Barbara Chromogenic print
5 gelatin silver prints 22.2 × 17.5 cm (each) Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Lane, Robert Mnuchin, Peter Norton, 172.7 × 109.2 cm
41.8 × 28.4 cm (each) Fondation Louis Vuitton p. 81 Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial p. 101 Thomas Walther and Ginny Williams, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery,
Private collection Untitled Film Still #84, 1978 Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on- Untitled #103, 1982 1997 Gift of Sandra L. Simpson
Gelatin silver print Hudson, New York Chromogenic print
p. 62–63 20.3 × 25.4 cm 76.2 × 50.8 cm
Doll Clothes, 1975 Fondation Louis Vuitton Untitled #72, 1980 Fondation Louis Vuitton
16 mm film transferred to DVD (2017) 1977–80 Chromogenic print
2 minutes 22 seconds Untitled Film Stills Untitled Film Still #53, 1980 40.5 × 59.1 cm p. 102 1983–84 / 1993–94 / 2007–08 / p. 118
Black and white, silent Gelatin silver print Collection of the Vancouver Art Untitled #97, 1982 2016–18 Untitled #462, 2007–08
Courtesy of the artist, Metro Pictures p. 73 69.5 × 97 cm Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery Major Chromogenic print Fashion Chromogenic print
and Sprüth Magers Untitled Film Still #7, 1978 Tate: presented by Janet Wolfson de Purchase and Acquisition Funds 114.3 × 76.2 cm 158.6 × 177.8 cm
Gelatin silver print Botton 1996 Courtesy of the artist and Metro p. 109 Julie & Barry Smooke
p. 64 25.4 × 20.3 cm p. 91 Pictures, New York Untitled #122, 1983
I Hate You, 1975 Olbricht Collection p. 82 Untitled #69, 1980 Chromogenic print p. 119
Super-8 film, colour, silent Untitled Film Still #38, 1979 Chromogenic print Untitled #98, 1982 187.3 × 122.6 cm Untitled #458, 2007–08
6 minutes 24 seconds p. 74 Gelatin silver print 50.8 × 60.9 cm Chromogenic print Courtesy of the artist, Metro Pictures Chromogenic print
Collection of the artist; courtesy Metro Untitled Film Still #11, 1978 101.6 × 76.2 cm Fondation Louis Vuitton 114.3 × 76.2 cm and Sprüth Magers 197.8 × 148 cm
Pictures Gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist and Metro Courtesy of the artist and Metro Collection Ringier, Switzerland
40.64 × 50.8 cm Pictures, New York Pictures, New York p. 110
p. 65 Collection of Mitchell and Nina Untitled #131, 1983 p. 120
Unhappy Hooker, 1976 Davidson p. 83 p. 103 Chromogenic print Untitled #459, 2007–08
Super-8 film, colour, silent Untitled Film Still #13, 1978 1981 Untitled #99, 1982 240 × 113.7 cm Chromogenic print
3 minutes 33 seconds Untitled Film Still #43, 1979 Gelatin silver print Centerfolds Chromogenic print Collection of the artist; courtesy Metro 152.4 × 102.5 cm
Collection of the artist; courtesy Metro Gelatin silver print 24 x 19.1 cm 114.3 × 76.2 cm Pictures Fondation Louis Vuitton
Pictures 76.2 × 101.6 cm Barbara & Richard S. Lane p. 93 Courtesy of the artist and Metro
Didier and Dominique Guyot Untitled #88, 1981 Pictures, New York p. 111 p. 121
p. 66–67 Chromogenic print Untitled #138, 1984 Untitled #460, 2007–08
A Play of Selves (detail), 1975 p. 75 61 × 121.9 cm Untitled #100, 1982 Chromogenic print Chromogenic print
72 black and white photographs Untitled Film Still #27, 1979 Fondation Louis Vuitton Chromogenic print 181.9 × 121.9 cm 113.7 × 87 cm
mounted on cardboard Gelatin silver print 114.3 × 76.2 cm Fondation Louis Vuitton Collection of the artist; courtesy Metro
Dimensions variable 50.8 × 40.6 cm Untitled #96, 1981 Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures
GF2010.011.1-72 Fondation Louis Vuitton Chromogenic print Pictures, New York
Glenstone Museum, Potomac, 61 × 121.9 cm
Maryland Fondation Louis Vuitton

234 235
p. 122 p. 131 p. 143 p. 153 2000 p. 172 2008 p. 190–191
Untitled #461, 2007–08 Untitled #146, 1985 Untitled #225, 1989 Untitled #261, 1992 Headshots Untitled #327, 1996 Society portraits Untitled #549 (E, C), 2010
Chromogenic print Chromogenic print Chromogenic print Chromogenic print Chromogenic print Pigment print on PhotoTex adhesive
154.3 × 122.6 cm 180.3 × 122.3 cm 121.9 × 83.8 cm 167.5 × 114 cm p. 163 149.4 × 92.8 cm p. 181 fabric
Collection of Pamela and Arthur Fondation Louis Vuitton Olbricht Collection Fondation Louis Vuitton Untitled #400, 2000 Fondation Louis Vuitton Untitled #475, 2008 Dimensions variable
Sanders Chromogenic print Chromogenic print Fondation Louis Vuitton; courtesy of
p. 132–133 p. 144 p. 154 93.3 × 66 cm Untitled #321, 1996 219.4 × 181.6 cm the artist and Metro Pictures, New
p. 123 Untitled #156, 1985 Untitled #204, 1989 Untitled #250, 1992 GF2012.020 Chromogenic print Olbricht Collection York
Untitled #586, 2016–18 Chromogenic print Chromogenic print Chromogenic print Glenstone Museum, Potomac, 145.6 × 97.6 cm
Dye sublimation metal print 122.4 × 179 cm 152.4 x 111.8 cm 127 × 190.5 cm Maryland Fondation Louis Vuitton p. 182 p. 192–193
152.4 × 172.4 cm Fondation Louis Vuitton Courtesy of the artist and Metro Fondation Louis Vuitton Untitled #465, 2008 Untitled #512, 2010-2011
Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York p. 164 p. 173 Chromogenic print Chromogenic print
Pictures, New York p. 155 Untitled #352, 2000 Untitled #323, 1996 163.8 × 147.3 cm 202.6 × 347.7 cm
p. 145 Untitled #253, 1992 Chromogenic print Chromogenic print Private collection, Paris Courtesy of the artist and Metro
p. 124 Untitled #201, 1989 Chromogenic print 68.6 × 45.7 cm 145.6 x 98.4 cm Pictures, New York
Untitled #590, 2016–18 1986–87 Chromogenic print 190.5 × 127 cm Collection Metro Pictures Fondation Louis Vuitton p. 183
Dye sublimation metal print Disasters 102.9 × 75.9 cm Fondation Louis Vuitton Untitled #476, 2008 p. 194
185.4 × 208.3 cm Fondation Louis Vuitton p. 165 Untitled #324, 1996 Chromogenic print Untitled #545, 2010–11
Courtesy of the artist and Metro p. 135 p. 156 Untitled #359, 2000 Chromogenic print 214.6 × 172.7 cm Chromogenic print
Pictures, New York Untitled #175, 1987 p. 146 Untitled #259, 1992 Chromogenic print 145.7 × 97.4 cm Collection of Pamela and Arthur 180.3 × 300.4 cm
Chromogenic print Untitled #212, 1989 Chromogenic print 74.9 × 49.5 cm Fondation Louis Vuitton Sanders Young Family, New York
p. 125 120.7 × 181.6 cm Chromogenic print 152.2 × 101.6 cm GF2012.017
Untitled #588, 2016–18 Collection Metro Pictures 83.8 × 61 cm Fondation Louis Vuitton Glenstone Museum, Potomac, p. 174–175 p. 184 p. 195
Dye sublimation metal print Fondation Louis Vuitton Maryland Untitled #417, 2004 Untitled #477, 2008 Untitled #540, 2010–12
168.9 × 168.9 cm p. 136 p. 157 Chromogenic print Chromogenic print Chromogenic print
Courtesy of the artist and Metro Untitled #167, 1986 p. 147 Untitled #258, 1992 p. 166 151.9 × 227.6 cm 139.4 × 137.2 cm 180.3 × 221.3 cm
Pictures, New York Chromogenic print Untitled #224, 1990 Chromogenic print Untitled #401, 2000 Collection of Patricia Marshall, Collection of Carla Emil and Rich Private Collection
152.4 × 228.6 cm Chromogenic print 172.2 × 115.8 cm Chromogenic print Los Angeles Silverstein
Fondation Louis Vuitton 121.9 × 96.5 cm Fondation Louis Vuitton 91.4 × 61 cm
Courtesy of the artist, Metro Pictures Fondation Louis Vuitton p. 176 p. 185
p. 137 and Sprüth Magers p. 158 Untitled #411, 2003 Untitled #474, 2008
1985 Untitled #180, 1987 Untitled #305, 1994 p. 167 Chromogenic print Chromogenic print 2015
Fairy tales Chromogenic print p. 148 Chromogenic print Untitled #399, 2000 111.4 × 76.1 cm 230.5 × 152.4 cm Collages
236.5 × 320 cm Untitled #207, 1989 126.4 × 186.7 cm Chromogenic print Fondation Louis Vuitton Collection of Cynthia and Abe
p. 127 Fondation Louis Vuitton Chromogenic print Collection of Michael Schwartz, 99.1 × 66 cm Steinberger p. 197
Untitled #140, 1985 167.5 × 127 cm New York Fondation Louis Vuitton p. 177 Untitled #561, 2015
Chromogenic print Fondation Louis Vuitton Untitled #413, 2003 p. 186 Dye sublimation metal print
178.4 × 120.7 cm p. 159 Chromogenic print Untitled #466, 2008 115.6 × 281 × 5.1 cm (with frames)
Fondation Louis Vuitton p. 149 Untitled #316, 1995 112.4 × 74.6 cm Chromogenic print Courtesy of the artist, Metro Pictures
1989–90 Untitled #228, 1990 Chromogenic print Neda Young 254.3 × 174.6 cm and Sprüth Magers
p. 128 History portraits Chromogenic print 121.9 × 81.3 cm 1994–96 David Roberts Collection, London
Untitled #143, 1985 208.3 × 121.9 cm Collection MJS, Paris Masks p. 178 p. 198
Chromogenic print p. 139 Courtesy of the artist and Metro 2003–04 Untitled #424, 2004 p. 187 Untitled #559, 2015
128.2 × 122.5 cm Untitled #205, 1989 Pictures, New York p. 160 Clowns Chromogenic print Untitled #470, 2008 Dye sublimation metal print
Fondation Louis Vuitton Chromogenic print Untitled #335, 1999 136.5 × 139.1 cm Chromogenic print 120.7 × 266.4 × 5.1 cm (with frames)
136.7 × 103.7 cm Gelatin silver print p. 169 Private collection 214.7 × 145.5 cm Courtesy of the artist, Metro Pictures
p. 129 Fondation Louis Vuitton 54.6 × 82.6 cm Untitled #414, 2003 Sammlung Goetz, Munich and Sprüth Magers
Untitled #150, 1985 Courtesy of the artist and Metro Chromogenic print p. 179
Chromogenic print p. 140 1992–96 Pictures, New York 147.3 × 99.7 cm Untitled #425, 2004 p. 199
125.7 × 169.5 cm Untitled #216, 1989 Sex and surrealist pictures Fondation Louis Vuitton Chromogenic print Untitled #562, 2015
Collection of Allison and Neil Rubler Chromogenic print 1999 Untitled #345, 1999 179.7 × 228 cm Dye sublimation metal print
221.3 × 142.6 cm Broken dolls Gelatin silver print p. 170 Neda Young 2010 110.5 × 217.8 × 5.1 cm (with frames)
Untitled #147, 1985 Private collection 64.7 × 97.8 cm Untitled #314 A, 1994 Murals Private collection, Paris
Chromogenic print p. 151 Collection of Patricia Marshall, Chromogenic print 2010–12
124 × 182.5 cm p. 141 Untitled #307, 1994 Los Angeles 72.7 × 108.2 cm Landscapes
Fondation Louis Vuitton Untitled #195, 1989 Chromogenic print Fondation Louis Vuitton
Chromogenic print 196.5 × 103 cm p. 161 p. 189
p. 130 78.8 × 35.5 cm Collection of Rachel and Jean-Pierre Untitled #332, 1999 p. 171 Untitled #544, 2010–12
Untitled #155, 1985 Fondation Louis Vuitton Lehmann Black and white print Untitled #328, 1996 Chromogenic print
Chromogenic print 97.8 × 64.8 cm Chromogenic print 173 × 254.4 cm
180.8 × 122 cm p. 142 p. 152 Fondation Louis Vuitton 97.6 × 142.5 cm Private collection
Fondation Louis Vuitton Untitled #206, 1989 Untitled #256, 1992 Fondation Louis Vuitton
Chromogenic print Chromogenic print
180.7 × 122 cm 160.7 × 113.9 cm
Fondation Louis Vuitton Fondation Louis Vuitton

236 237
2016–18 p. 209 p. 220 p. 227 Copyrights
Flappers Untitled #573, 2016 Untitled #610, 2019 Untitled #608, 2019
Dye sublimation metal print Dye sublimation metal print Cotton, wool, acrylic, cotton mercurisé, Unless otherwise noted, all images of artworks by Cindy Sherman are courtesy Front cover
p. 201 113 × 85.1 cm 189.2 × 228.6 cm and polyester cotton woven together of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York; for #559 and #561, courtesy of the Untitled #584 (detail), 2018
Untitled #566, 2016 Laura and Barry Townley Courtesy of the artist and Metro 285.8 x 218.4 cm artist, Metro Pictures, New York and Sprüth Magers.
Dye sublimation metal print Pictures, New York Courtesy of the artist and Metro © Cindy Sherman / Metro Pictures, New York Back cover
121.9 × 128.3 cm p. 210 Pictures, New York Untitled #466 (detail), 2008
GF2016.078 Untitled #582, 2016 p. 221 © Martha Wilson / P.P.O.W., New York: p. 18
Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Dye sublimation metal print Untitled #611, 2019 Untitled #606, 2020 © Elaine Shemilt / The Verbund Collection, Vienna: p. 18 Back flap
Maryland 137.2 × 178.4 cm Dye sublimation metal print Polyester, cotton, wool, and acrylic © Eleanor Antin / Courtesy of Richard Saltoun Gallery, London: p. 18 Untitled #602 (detail), 2019
Courtesy of the artist and Metro 231.1 × 272.4 cm woven together © Annette Messager / Adagp, Paris 2020: p. 18
p. 202 Pictures, New York Courtesy of the artist and Metro 284.5 × 221 cm © Courtesy Artes Magnus, Inc.: p. 21 Inside front cover and inside back cover
Untitled #571, 2016 Pictures, New York Courtesy of the artist and Metro © AO ‘Neptun’ / TCD/Prod. DB: pp. 33, 34 Untitled #549 (detail)
Dye sublimation metal print p. 211 Pictures, New York © The Gentlewoman, London: p. 37
137.2 × 176.5 cm Untitled #574, 2016 p. 222 © Giovanni Giovanni / Courtesy of Raf Simons: p. 37
Collection of Aishti Fondation, Beirut, Dye sublimation metal print Untitled #613, 2019 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission: p. 37
Lebanon 116.8 × 99.1 cm Dye sublimation metal print © Mark Seliger / Trunk Archive: p. 44
Young Family, New York 201.3 × 258.4 cm © Christopher Little: p. 46
p. 203 Courtesy of the artist and Metro Untitled #616, 2020 © Genevieve Hanson, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London:
Untitled #580, 2016 p. 212 Pictures, New York Cotton, wool, acrylic, cotton mercurisé, pp. 47, 49, 50
Dye sublimation metal print Untitled #578, 2016 and polyester cotton woven together © Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York: p. 48
109.2 × 90.2 cm Dye sublimation metal print p. 223 286 × 218 cm (approximate © Martyn Thompson / Trunk Archive: p. 51
Courtesy of the artist and Metro 128.3 × 121.9 cm Untitled #614, 2019 dimensions)
Pictures, New York Courtesy of the artist and Metro Dye sublimation metal print Courtesy of the artist and Metro
` Pictures, New York 231.1 × 231.1 cm Pictures, New York
p. 204 Courtesy of the artist and Metro (not reproduced)
Untitled #585, 2018 p. 213 Pictures, New York
Dye sublimation metal print Untitled #583, 2016 Untitled #617, 2020
90.8 × 96.5 cm Dye sublimation metal print Cotton, wool, acrylic, cotton mercurisé,
Private collection, Paris 179.1 × 121.9 cm and polyester cotton woven together
Private collection, Paris 286 × 218 cm (approximate
p. 205 2019–20 dimensions)
Untitled #567, 2016 p. 214–215 Tapestries Courtesy of the artist and Metro
Dye sublimation metal print Untitled #584, 2018 Pictures, New York
128.3 × 116.8 cm Dye sublimation metal print p. 225 (not reproduced)
Courtesy of the artist and Metro 101.9 × 158.8 cm Untitled #604, 2019
Pictures, New York Private collection; courtesy Metro Cotton, wool, yarn, acrylic, cotton
Pictures, New York mercurisé, and Lurex woven together
p. 206 290.8 × 226.7 cm
Untitled #579, 2016 Courtesy of the artist and Metro
Dye sublimation metal print Pictures, New York
148.6 × 118.7 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Metro 2019–20 p. 226
Pictures, New York Men Untitled #607, 2020
Cotton, wool, acrylic, cotton mercurisé,
p. 207 p. 217 and polyester cotton woven together
Untitled #575, 2016 Untitled #602, 2019 284.5 × 218.4 cm
Dye sublimation metal print Dye sublimation metal print Courtesy of the artist and Metro
137.2 × 157.5 cm 193.7 × 222.3 cm Pictures, New York
Private collection Fondation Louis Vuitton
Untitled #605, 2019
p. 208 p. 218 Cotton, wool, acrylic, cotton mercurisé,
Untitled #577, 2016 Untitled #603, 2019 and polyester cotton woven together
Dye sublimation metal print Dye sublimation metal print 281.9 × 218.4 cm
122.2 × 133.4 cm 215.3 × 195.6 cm Courtesy of the artist and Metro
GF2016.079 Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris 2020
Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Pictures, New York © Éditions Hazan, Vanves 2020
Maryland ISBN: 978 2 7541 1166 9
p. 219 Nuart: 44 2790 6
Untitled #609, 2019 Legal deposit: April 2020
Dye sublimation metal print
158.8 × 231.8 cm Colour separation: Reproscan, Orio Al Serio
Courtesy of the artist and Metro Printing: Stamperia Artistica Nazionale, Trofarello
Pictures, New York Printed in Italy

238