Reflection Of Art And Identity In Cindy Sherman's Art

A review of the world’s great artists conjures familiar images: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel; Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night; Pablo Picasso’s The Tragedy. There are many more, of course: Monet, Moya, Warhol, Rembrandt, Kandinsky. What is immediately noticeable, however, upon any brief study of art, is the significant absence of women as heralded artists—not only in our ancient pasts, but even today, amongst valiant efforts for gender equality.

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

This relationship between creator and consumer, and how the consumer’s involvement is responsible for authenticating social identities is best understood in terms of what Alfred Gell calls the art nexus. In his book Art and Agency, Gell’s theory of the art nexus considers the living presence response where viewers, or recipients, react to works of art as if they are living beings or even persons, that in turn act back upon the viewer, entering into a personal relationship with them that elicit a feeling or reaction. Through the art nexus, Gell demonstrates how art objects are able to embody intentionalities and facilitate agency. The art nexus becomes a network of social relations, mediating the push and pull

1985 (Figure 2) first appeared in 1985 plastered on billboards around New York City. The piece is illustrated in monochrome colours so to not distract viewers from the meaning of the poster. The harsh contrast in colours between the black writing and white background make the piece stand out and draw the attention of bypassers. Written on the artwork is a list of well-known museums in New York City and beside them is a score of how many women artists have had one-person exhibits there in the past year. The results showed that the Guggenheim, Metropolitan and Whitney museums each had zero, whilst the Modern museum had one. These results are supposed to shock the audience and make gallery curators feel a sense of guilt, that it’s clear the art world don’t appreciate women artists like they do men. Whist they are confronting the public with that truth they are also providing another critical message with this piece. The Guerrilla Girls identified these museums by first name, not out of convenience, but to make a statement, that the only museums to allow women artist some form of respect like male artist do was the ‘modern’ museum. Emphasising the fact that gender discrimination and bias nature in the art world should be in the past, and the only museum that realises and recognises this is the modern one. The poster’s main message challenges the patriarchal world of art and confronts art galleries

In order to answer this question one would have to consider whether art should speak of an individual or community, ethnicity, race, gender, age, or what we see of each other. Furthermore and more specific to “Art Is”, does life lie most in the streets they inhabit? What about their performance style, or what they do in their personal lives, like how they chose to to live? Or is it possible that this is simply just a parade? For O’Grady it was all of this and more, but only she provides the frames.

Identity is a central concern of contemporary life. Identity plays a large part in societies and individuals lives; however it has not just become a central concern. For the last couple of hundred years identity has been a central concern. This central concern of identity is and has been portrayed, explored and discussed through art. In contemporary art there are multiple different art techniques, styles, codes, conventions and forms of art which explore and express identity. In the classical era of art the privilege of having a self-portrait created by

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.

     Art, in each and every form that it comes in, shows us who we are. Our

The characters Sherman portrays, lighting, clothing and expressions are cliché of what is present in cinema, so much that viewers of her work have told Sherman that they ‘remember the movie’ that the image is derived from, yet Sherman having no film in mind at all.[iv] Thus showing that her word has a pastiche of past cinematic genres, and how women are portrayed in cinema and photography and how Sherman has manipulated the ‘male gaze’ around her images so they become ironic and cliché.

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

Judy Chicago (artist, author, feminist and educator) has a career that now spans five decades. In the late 1960s, her inquiry into the history of women began a result of her desire to expose the truth of women’s experiences, both past and present. She still continues on a crusade to change the perception of women from our history, “Women’s history and women’s art need to become part of our cultural and intellectual heritage.” (Chicago, 2011) Through our history women - their struggles, accomplishments and contribution to history, have been overlooked, downplayed and even completely written out of a male dominated society and culture. In anthropologist Sherry Ortner’s 1974 essay “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” she supports this view, writing “…woman is being identified with—or, if you will, seems to be a symbol of—something that every culture devalues,” (Ortner, 1974) Where Mendieta's work primarily came from a striving to belong and an understanding of where she came from, I feel that Chicago's aim was to find a place for all women, past and present in this world, starting with herself in the art world. Chicago did explore her peronal heritage in later works entitled 'Birth Project' and 'Holocaust Project'.

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

Feminist art sought to elicit a response from its audience in order to get people to acknowledge and discuss feminist issues so that society as a whole could move toward change. By challenging the norms of patriarchal structure – not only within the art community but in everyday life as well – feminist art worked in parallel with the core objectives of feminism. A key component of feminism is confronting the oppression of women, and feminist artists addressed this in many forms, one of which was bringing light to violence perpetrated against women. This theme in feminist art helped to foster a dialogue that forced viewers to talk about violence against women and inspire involvement towards a less complicit society. Feminist art is particularly powerful because it worked to educate its viewers on the extent of this problem, as well as empower and heal victims.

Barbara Kruger, artist and theorist, has directed and informed much of the curatorial project. Kruger’s perspectives on feminism speak to

Kim is a 34 year old makeup artist who lives in North Carolina. Despite her profession of making everyone look beautiful, she considers herself to be ugly, out of shape and an unworthy human being. She is suffering from the feeling of loneliness and has a very low self esteem. Kim's childhood was not peaceful and happy like many other children. Since her birth, she has been brought up in a violent environment where her parents continuously fought. They finally got divorced when Kim was 4 years old. Her mother accepts the fact that she was unable to give her time to her child as she was more busy and occupied with focusing on saving her marriage. Due to this negligence, it could be seen that Kim's needs remain unfulfilled. Soon Kim developed a high attachment need and an obsession towards her mother which soon had to subside