Cindy Sherm Stereotypes And Representations Of Women

Postmodern American artist’s Cindy Sherman and Kara Walker critique and question grand narratives of gender, race and class through their work and art practice. Cindy Sherman, born 1954, is well renowned for her conceptual portraits of female characters and personas that question the representation of women, gender identity and the true (or untrue) nature of photography (Hattenstone 2011). Kara Walker, born 1969, is known for her black silhouettes that dance across gallery walls and most recently her sugar sphinx, A Subtlety, address America’s racist slavery past (Berry 2003). These practitioners differ in their practical application of different mediums, Sherman constructs characters and scenes of stereotypical female personas in her photographs where she operates as the actress, director, wardrobe assistant, set designer and cameraman (Machester 2001). Simone Hatenstone, writer for The Guardian, states “She 's a Hitchcock heroine, a busty Monroe, an abuse victim, a terrified centrefold, a corpse, a Caravaggio, a Botticelli, a mutilated hermaphrodite sex doll, a man in a balaclava, a surgically-enhanced Hamptons type, a cowgirl, a desperate clown, and we 've barely started.” (Hattenstone 2011).Whereas, Walker creates paper silhouettes that are installed into a gallery space, as writer Ian Berry describes,

Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity was written by Griselda Pollock in 1988, and later published in The Expanding Disclosure in 1992. Griselda Pollock is an art historian, and writes this article for fellow art historians. This is an article written to show the different approaches to femininity in the late 19th century, mainly dealing with the field of art. This article shows how during this time period there were women artists, but due to the gendered ruled ideas attached to art history, these women are largely ignored by art historians. Pollock thought that these women artists are primarily overlooked due to the fact that they are judged by the same standards that are affixed to the work of their male counterparts. But she argues

Cindy Sherman, well known for her photography of her representing issues that commonly represent both the roles of being an artist, being a woman and the two combined. Sherman grew up in a large family that did not have any interest in art. Her knowledge of art growing up was very minimal until she went to college. She, then, started to paint. She quickly realized she did not like painting because of the lack of intimacy or recreation of a particular setting. She did, however love photography and started pursued an interest in that.

Terror and mockery come together in the portraits of Cindy Sherman on display at the Crocker Art Museum. Walking into the large, dimly lit ballroom, one may begin to feel a slight sense of trepidation as the viewer looks around to find nine sets of beady eyes watching one’s every move. Sherman produced her History Portraits during the late eighties and early nineties, nine of which are displayed at the museum. In her portraits she uses lush fabrics, lavish jewelry, and false body parts to decorate herself in these self-portraits. Her portraits have been know to cause discomfort in the viewers who find the general stereotypes, depicted in her portraits, amusing, yet confusing and terrorizing.

Over the years the United States has grown to love each other as the way people are, especially women. Women have proven to be even stronger than what people expected them to be. You can see the strength, the courage, and the confidence they have gained. It has been discussed many years that women shouldn’t be allowed in combat for not being “strong enough”. Men have shown that they can be “manly” enough to do women or girl things, so why can’t women do “manly” things? If women feel like they can handle being on the frontline then we should respect their decision and allow them to go.

The 1980’s are typically viewed as being a great decade for the United States; the Cold War came to an end, the economy experienced major growths under President Reagan, and the United States was starting to emerge as the sole world power whose actions with regards to foreign policy, economics, and social culture would influence how the rest of the world would react in the decades that followed. However, the 1980’s also consisted of the AIDS epidemic. The AIDS epidemic was first identified in the United States in 1981 and by the time the first antiretroviral AZT was approved and released for treatment of HIV/AIDs in 1987, 48,000 people had died directly as a result of AIDS, and over 700,000 people have died from 1981-2017.1 Many people that

According to Kim Bartel, the stereotype of a housewife was created through the continuation, and constant exposure of consumers to patterns of imagery (91). The female role has naturalized in popular culture, especially in advertisements. These advertisement constantly portray women as either the cook, maid, or caretaker of the home. During the early 1950s and late 60s advertisements start to objectify female identity in order to use their images to sell either products or a lifestyle. In this sense marketer begin to realize the value women had on selling items.

Cindy Sherman was born in New Jersey in 1954. She was raised by a father who was an engineer, and her mother who taught disabled children, and was the youngest of five. The arts didn’t catch her eye until she began attending Buffalo State College where she started with painting but quickly lost interest. For her, painting had limitations and she didn't like what she was doing so she picked up photography, where she was able to “Use a camera and put {her} time into an idea instead”. During her pursuit of photography in college, she met Robert Longo and others who helped create the “Hallwalls”, photos of buffalo in the 1970s. While in Buffalo she was exposed to many different artists and forms of art that influenced and widened her view of art

A 2014 Rasmussen Reports national survey reported that 59% of U.S. Voters believe that the “war on women” is a political ploy used to entice voters where only 22% believe there really is a political battle. 19% are uncertain as to whether or not a ‘war’ is really raging. (Rasmussen Reports, 2014) The “war on women” is the political agenda of conservative political representatives, who are predominantly male, to impose their religious and social views on women, and their bodies, to inflict oppression, gain power, and continue the rise of the patriarchy.

No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman's photography is part of the culture and

Cindy Sherman was born in New Jersey in 1954. She was the youngest of five siblings. Although she did not have an artistic family she still decided to go to art school after high school. She takes photos of herself but not dressed as she normally would. She dresses in different caricatures and archetypes that represent the roles of women in today’s society. She eventually changed her style to include distorted and often disgusting images in the photos, usually having body parts of dolls substituted in for her own. She eventually directed a few movies and she cameoed in a film playing herself. She enjoyed a large deal of success in her early years having a set of her pictures selling for one million dollars. She has recently returned to using

I would like to dispel the idea that Black women were passive observers during the women’s movement. It’s understandable that they would be perceived as such. A lack of photographs certainly did not help their cause. Photography played a crucial role in chronicling events from the pre-Civil War well onto the passing of the 19th Amendment. There is historic value in a documentary photograph. It captures a moment in its actual time. There are no images of African-American women marching ten-by-ten along New York City Avenues. And so, without this type physical evidence, they are easily written out of history.

Cindy Sherman was born on January19, 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. In Highschool, Cindy Sherman was big into painting, however toward the 1980's, she decided to move into photography. She did this so that she could ensue a "wide range of personas" (The Art Story). The way that Sherman could explore a wide range of personas was by self photography. The sexual and devious nature of women is really what got her brain going and what she strove to exploit and study. She used a variety of camera angles and makeup to generate illusions, and was able to exploit our self identities, and how unstable they truly are.

Cindy Sherman was well known for her conceptual portraits, which portrayed to audiences to represent an idea that would be successful at completing the artwork. Sherman’s 1981 work, Untitled #96, was one of many that displayed Sherman herself in various poses, expressions, and style choices that usual poked fun at women’s cliché roles. In this particular photograph, Sherman is shown lying either dreamingly or unsettled by thoughts on a tile floor, perhaps in a kitchen in a very housewife outfit while clutching what seems to be a torn piece from a newspaper. This is where I believe Sherman’s views of gender roles comes into frame with her showing that in this time period women were mostly in their homes alone to handle all sorts of situations.

Identity is one of the most significant aspects in the discourses of contemporary art. An artist’s identity can reveal cultural and personal truths about them through the employment of specific subjects, techniques, and colors incorporated into their artwork. Cindy Sherman, the famous feminist artist, portrays a plethora of different identities in her photographic works in order to highlight societal issues such as stereotypes, perceptions, and biases. Although Sherman does not blatantly set out to become an activist for femininity, audiences inherently view her work as attempting to cross boundaries and bring forth political statements because of the myriad androgynous, feminine, and sexist facets integrated into her images. In order to display the importance of identity in culture, Cindy Sherman refrains from revealing her own identity in her art and because of these ambiguous images, she allows for the identities of her audience to be reflected back at them, bringing forth awareness of inequality, while quietly calling for the anticipated change of these enduring stigmas.