Cindy Sherman's Conceptual Portraits

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’Keefe was born November 15, 1887 where she was the second child out of seven in her family. She spent most of her time growing up on a farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. O’Keeffe when to an art institute in Chicago and New York wear she learned the lifestyle of realist painting. O’Keefe started mailing some of her drawings to a friend that lived in New York but her friends saw the talent that O’Keefe had and sent them to a guy named Alfred Stieglitz (art dealer) where he would soon become O’Keefe’s husband. In 1915 Georgia O’Keeffe taught art school in South Carolina and in Texas. At this time O’Keefe was trying to figure herself out on what kind of artist she wanted to be which led her to charcoal drawing. O’Keeffe’s charcoal drawings made her one of the first

Throughout history the unique and changeable Australian landscape has inspired a diverse array of artistic responses. Impressios of its power and beauty, expressions of individuals' responses, symbolic religious orientation, the range of landscape art works extends onwards. A great example of the vast variations of styles can be seen in the artworks of Glover, Drysdale, Berkowitz and Reid.

One of my most favorite artists is the Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo. She was born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon in Coyoacan, Mexico, July 6, 1907 and died July 13, 1954. She was one of four daughters born to a Hungarian-Jewish father and a mother of Spanish and Mexican Indian descent. Frida Kahlo is the most famous Mexican woman artist on the contemporary art scene. In 1922, Kahlo hung out with a group of politically and intellectually like-minded students. The Mexican mural movement begins. Frida first learns of Diego Rivera, who is painting his mural "Creation" at the school 's lecture hall. Kahlo becoming a painter, was not a part of Frida 's career goals. Her goal in life was to become a doctor but a tragic accident at age 18 left her mentally and physically scared for life. It changed the course of her life forever. It was during her months of convalescence that Frida began to take painting seriously…"to combat the boredom and pain". she said. "I felt I still had enough energy to do something other than studying to become a doctor. Without giving it any particular thought, I started painting." It was the beginning of a life-long career for Frida.

Julie Becker was born in 1972, and passed away in 2016 at the age of 43[i]. Los Angeles was an integral part of her life as she grew up, created, and died in L.A; however she studied briefly at Hochschule der Kunste, Berlin in 1991 and completed a residency in Basel, Switzerland at Stiftlung Laurenz-Haus Foundation. Becker was the daughter of artists[ii], and subsequently grew up in constant travel from one apartment to the next while her parents worked odd jobs to survive. In lieu of finishing her senior year at Santa Monica High School, she became the youngest student ever to attend California Institute of the Arts in 1989 at the age of 16. From CalArts in Valencia, Becker received her BFA in 1993, and her MFA in 1995. Paul Schimmel, curator at the L.A Museum of Contemporary Art, selected Becker’s MFA thesis project, Researchers, Residents, A Place to Rest 1993-96, for the 23rd São Paulo Biennial, where she was the youngest participant.

Georgia Totto O’Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Throughout her long career, O’Keefe covered a wide range of subjects including landscapes, flowers, bones and skyscrapers using different medias such as charcoal, watercolor and oil paint. Having contributed many pieces of iconic and original artwork, she is considered by many to be the “Mother of American Modernism”.

Georgia O'Keeffe was a famous American artist who was born on November 17, 1887 in Sun Praire, Wisconsin. She studied at many art schools, including the Art Institute of Chicago, before dramatically changing her art style from representational to abstraction in 1915. Her highly abstract paintings were shown to her future husband, Alfred Stieglitz, and they were put on display at his world famous 291 gallery in New York City the next year. By the mid-twenties, she was one of America's most important artists. Over seven decades of her career in the American arts she made over 900 paintings, including landscapes and flowers, but her most popular paintings were based on her multiple trips to New Mexico. They were paintings of animal skulls, such as Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue and Ram's Head with Hollyhock. Georgia O'Keeffe's said that the skulls were painted to represent the beauty of the desert more than death. (metmuesum.org) It was this perspective and her unique style of abstract painting that added

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.

The idea of art being a unique interpretation of what an artist’s feels towards a particular thing has always been a given when talking about art. However, where is the line drawn on what art truly is and what it means to its audience? To do this, the idea of what art means must be applied to the idea of what art is. In Dorothy Allison’s This is Our World, the author touches on points of what art is and what it means to its viewers. These points and supporting stories point to the idea that art is subjective, personal, and provocative. This allows Allison to draw her conclusion that arts purpose is to depict the deeper meaning into situations and incidents that occur in our world. In Dorothy Allison’s journal, one can see how the author effectively conveys the ideas of art being personal and subjective, but fails at detailing how art can be subjective.

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

Georgia O’Keeffe was an American artist, who is known for her creative, bold art and for her style of painting. Georgia was born on November 15, 1887 and grew up near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Georgia’s family moved to Virginia making Georgia and her siblings switch schools. When Georgia excelled in her school’s art program, she started her art career. Georgia continued this career when she attended the art institute of Chicago.There, Georgia learned more about painting and exhibited her first paintings in 1916. She was recognized as an important artist when her paintings of flowers, landscapes, and skyscrapers became well known. Georgia died in 1986 at age 98. She was one of the greatest American modernism

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 attended buffalo State College. There she grew an interest in visual arts. She began painting but realized that there were limitations that slowed her work and ideas down. From there she took interest in photography. “I was meticulously copying other art and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.” says Sherman. Her primary focus was set on photography. Her, Robert Longo, Charles Clouhgh, and Nancy Dwyer created an arts center in Buffalo. Sherman produces her photography in a series which she usually shoots by herself. Sherman dresses up in a wide array of costumes and plays multiple roles, for example a model, director or hairstylist. Sherman’s work has

Sherman’s work talks about her own belief that representations itself is pre-coded, and in this case by cinema. In one of the stills in particular, Still Number 6, Sherman poses as a woman who looks as though she is daydreaming. In this photograph she is holding a mirror in one hand, and has a chilling blank stare on her face. The photograph has a disturbing undertone to it, which gives the feeling that she could also

The “bag piece” (See figure 2) is another artwork in the corner of the whole exhibition. It is composed by a low platform, which is white; and a large black bag on the top of it. The visitors are allowed to crawl into the bag and do some movement in it, like roll on the ground of do some postures. Most of the people feel that they enjoy doing something in it and in front of many viewers because they are covered. Also, when someone is in the bag, they can see through the bag a little bit, but the viewers cannot see anything from the outside. The bag is very soft and cozy, witch makes people feel comfort and do not want to come out.[footnoteRef:11] [11: Blake Gopnik, “Art Critic Gets Trapped in Bag at MoMA’s Yoko Ono Gala”, may 15, 2015, Accessed