Cindy Sherman Research Paper

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,

Georgia O’Keeffe was born to the parents of Francis Calyxtus O’Keeffe and Ida (Totto) O’Keeffe on November 15, 1887 near Wisconsin. Georgia was the second oldest child and by the age of ten she knew she wanted to become an artist someday. Her first aspiration was doing abstracts. She was selective about what she painted, but often times she would paint to please others and not herself. Her paintings were thought of as sexual paintings because of the way they were drawn and painted in which she would say is one’s own opinion. Georgia O’Keeffe was best known for her flower canvas and southwestern landscapes. Her husband who is a famous photographer by the name of Alfred Stieglitz used to paint nice portraits of her. She was very fond of him, they both liked what each other did as far as how they were making ends meet, and he just didn’t want her to sell any of her paintings. He would often times tell people “No” so they wouldn’t buy any of her paintings because he wanted them all to himself. She had an interest in nature and used bright colors in her paintings.

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.

Mary Fields was born in 1834 and she passed away in 1914. Mary Fields was the very first African-American women to carry the mail. Mary Fields was born into slavery while she lived in Tennessee, she stopped being a slave when the war ended and slavery had been outlawed. Mary Fields was also known as Stagecoach Mary or Black Mary, she was also an American pioneer. After slavery was outlawed she then began to work for Judge Edmund Dunne in her home. When Mary was a slave her original owner was Judge Edmund Dunne and after slavery was outlawed she still proceeded to work for and with her. Mary Fields was a female African-American pioneer. Mary Fields was said to be one of the most colorful characters in the history of the Great Plains it's also been said that she was six feet tall and she weighed over 200 pounds. She also

Every girl growing up always use to play dress up in clothes as a childhood past time for fun. Cindy Sherman used that passed time as a way to create art with photography and is known for her talent of this act and taking self-portraits of it. Her ideas come stereotypes of women throughout past and present society. These self-portraits are known to “confront and explore the representations of women in society.” (Jankauskas).

His work is quite similar to American artist Cindy Sherman. He was one of the first international artists to fully use digital photography in the 1980's and has developed a sophisticated craft combining this technology with painstaking makeup, backdrops, and costumes.

You can never envision the world without Emma Goldman. Emma Goldman passed on May 14, 1940. Emma committed her life to the production of a fundamentally social request. Likewise, she grasped insurgency for its vision; and it offered freedom, concordance, and social equity. Political agitation, in spite of the fact that its foundations are dated considerably before, was conceived only two years after Emma's introduction to the world. Bakunin, a Russia progressive, as Emma was to wind up, split the worldwide socialist development in two, making revolutionaries. She had a profound duty to supreme opportunity and that drove her to embrace a scope of disputable causes. Goldman was a radical scholar. Forty years on she is more than meaningful, she is notorious. The majority of this began with her introduction to the world on June 27, 1869, in Kovno, Lithuania.

Emma Goldman was born into an orthodox jewish family in Kovno, Russia to her parents Taube Bienowitch and Abraham Goldman. She had three brothers named Morris, Louis, and Herman Goldman and two half sisters Helena and Zena Zodikow. At an early age Emma became familiarized with poverty, injustice and women and children abuse. Her hot tempered and impatient father used violence when his children disobeyed him while her mother rarely interfered only to tell Abraham to take his beatings down a notch. Her father whipped Emma the most due to her being the most rebellious child of the bunch and she was an unwelcomed child because of her fathers wanting of a son.

Mary Cassatt is known world-wide for her impressing art in which she focuses mainly in the everyday life of women and children. She is an American artist born in Pennsylvania on May 22, 1844, but later relocates to Europe in 1866 to pursue to work in art. This was mainly due to her family’s and society’s objections to women in the field of art. There she met and befriended famous Impressionist Edgar Degas. Because of her close friendship with Degas, she grew courage to continue to do art in her own way. She continued to paint until she slowly began to lose her eyesight and later died in 1926. Cassatt was part of the Impressionist style movement, in which she painted portraits unlike many others who painted landscapes (biography.com). Her artwork

The two portrait photographers, Cindy Sherman and JR have different approaches to photography. Cindy Sherman is a historical portrait photographer, while JR is a contemporary portrait photographer and active as of now. These artists have unique aesthetics and techniques used to capture images and distinguish themselves. Not only that but, their methods and interpretation on photography are complete foils of one another.

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

Throughout history many artistic works have been deemed "great" and many individuals have been labeled "masters" of the discipline. The question of who creates art and how is it to be classified as great or greater than another has commonly been addressed by scholars and historians. The last quarter of the 20th century has reexamined these questions based on the assertions that no women artists have ever created or been appreciated to the level of "greatness" that perpetually befalls their male counterparts. The position that society has institutionalized on women as unable to be anything but subordinate and unexpressive is a major contributor to this claim. Giving a brief history of gender discrimination in the art

drawing and art and during her education she developed her own style. Also she was one of the

Perception of the Female in the Modern Era: Gender Identity and the Act of "Becoming" in Cindy Sherman's History Portraits

Mary Cassatt always knew she wanted to become an artist from a young age. When she was about 15 she persuaded her parents to let her go to a prestigious Pennsylvania fine arts academy. After she started going to the academy, she easily became frustrated because she thought that the academy didn't move at the correct pace and didn't have the offerings she liked. She soon left the academy and went to Europe to find a better academy. She finally started to study in Paris. While she studied in Paris, she copied works by Jean Leon