The Fantasm of Fascination

Cindy Sherman "Untitled," #314A, 1994, 76,2 x 111,7 cm

G R E G O R Y V O L K

O N C I N D Y S H E R M A N

A T M E T R O P I C T U R E S

Cindy Sherman "Untitled," #314B, #314C, #314D, #314E, 1994, 111,7 x 76,2 cm

T h e F a n t a s m

of F a s c i n a t i o n

Cindy Sherman "Untitled," #314F, 1994, 76,2 x 111,7 cm

VAIn reviewing the voluminous critical response that has attended Cindy Sherman's achievements during the last decade and a half, one thing becomes glaringly apparent: her work has a way of evading, if not utterly confounding, all attempts to sum it up. And it's not that these attempt have been lacking; on the contrary, quite a number have been truly inspiring and illuminating. It's rather that Sherman's photographs occur in a profoundly complex, allusive, and at times maddeningly elusive realm, which itself is resistant to didacticism, fundamentally and comprehensively. It would be tempting to say that Sherman is always one step, or perhaps quite a number of giant steps, ahead of her critics, whatever their ilk, and that she consistently evades all that seeks to proclaim her, but much more importantly her art, as representative of a particular agenda, no matter how intellectually keen or morally noble. While this may or may not have been a conscious strategy on her part, what is clear is that a central elusiveness, or multiplicity, has characterized her photographs from the beginning. At all stages of her career, including this current one, her photographs reveal a fairly remarkable ability to operate intensely on numerous, in fact, seemingly endless levels, which, after all, is pretty much the province of substantial and enduring art.

This recent exhibition marks another departure for Sherman, most immediately in her use of large-scale Cibachrome prints with exorbitant, often gorgeous, coloration. Furthermore, the photographs do not comprise a unified series, which is how much of her work has been presented in the past. While there are connections between the individual works ? in the use of dolls, mannequins, masks, or other human-like figures depicted in completely staged or arranged scenes ? the tenor of the exhibition is varied and wide-ranging, moving easily between the grotesque and the sublime, between what is psychologically disturbing and overtly, even garishly, theatrical. In several close-ups, a reddish, partly horrific, and ridiculous monster face, constructed out of a cut-up and reassembled rubber mask, fills the entire frame. The simultaneously gnarled and mobile features of this demonic figure have a tactility that leaps out toward the viewer, extending the photographs in the direction of both painting and sculpture. In another completely opposite work, two blissfully tender mannequin heads with closed eyes and passionate lips nuzzle one another in a frank portrayal of erotically-charged peace. As much as this shot is antithetical to Sherman's lurid and disturbing sex dolls of the early 1990s, the sheer artificiality of the scene distances one from its emotional appeal. These are, after all, lifeless figures, in a beautiful yet frozen pose, not human beings disclosed in a moment of transcendent joy.

As often happens with a superior artist, the genesis of a particular body of work can be profoundly simple. At its most basic level, this work involved playing around in the studio with dolls, with costume shop knick-knacks, and with the kind of oddball cultural effluvia that haunts the teeming closets of those who have an aptitude for the bizarre. Yet despite this seemingly casual context, the results are visually stunning and have a real resonance, a kind of eerie lyricism. Many of the photographs, both because of their large sizes and because of their voluptuous, Cibachrome-augmented use of color, tend to evoke large-scale paintings, especially narrative paintings. One witnesses what seems to be a story, perhaps a moment of catharsis condensed into a single image, yet it is impossible to either determine what that story is, or even whether there is one. A horned female figure with cascading hair, minus legs below her thighs as well as one arm, with pronounced genitalia, and holding a squiggly knife, is presented with her body in several floating sections against a rich blue background. She could be a mythic figure, a deity reimagined from an ancient, eclipsed religion, but then again maybe not, and in any event what she clearly is, is an inexpensive artifice rigged into that provocative position.

Surrealist photography figures prominently as a background reference in these photographs, and Sherman also experimented with various distorting techniques, such as out of focus shots, double exposure, and in one instance, scratching up the negative. The visual immediacy of this particular photograph ?it's of a blurry Apollonian head and torso set atop a slightly larger mid-section of an obviously male body? is concentrated in the blue and white scratches protruding from the head, like hair, but which also suggests the spiky brittleness of a crown of thorns. In the weirdest, most nightmarish work, a naked doll's body is double exposed against an opulent swath of purple velvet. The body angles toward a triangular, vibrantly flesh-colored face, its toothy mouth agape in what could be laughter (of the maniacal, horror-flick variety) or a scream, or perhaps both; the solitary eyeball in the center of its forehead stares with a look of both ecstasy and malevolence. It is difficult, if not impossible, to connect such a scene with anything recognizable as an outside point of reference. It simply is, it's there and it has a kind of queasy authority, yet at the same time it is so obviously "made." In the same way that one cannot look to Sherman's "Film Still" portraits from the late 1970s and early 80s, or to her "Fashion Portraits" from the 1980s as indications of her own states of being, one cannot look to these tableaux as clear signs of psychological reality, either hers, or anyone else's. They are fictions, artifices, models, and while they have the aura of eternal archetypes, they're also suspect. The fascinating thing is how, in the midst of all this brazen artifice, one is inevitably drawn into Sherman's strange, obviously invented, little worlds.

Background image: Cindy Sherman "Untitled," 1995, cibachrome, 48 x 32 in. framed

Cindy Sherman "Untitled," #314A, 1994, 76,2 x 111,7 cm G R E G O R Y V O L K O N C I N D Y S H E R M A N A T M E T R O P I C T U R E S Cindy Sherman "Untitled," #314B, #314C, #314D, #314E, 1994, 111,7 x 76,2 cm T h e F a n t a s m of F a s c i n a t i o n Cindy Sherman "Untitled," #314F, 1994, 76,2 x 111,7 cm
	VAIn reviewing the voluminous critical response that has attended Cindy Sherman's achievements during the last decade and a half, one thing becomes glaringly apparent: her work has a way of evading, if not utterly confounding, all attempts to sum it up. And it's not that these attempt have been lacking; on the contrary, quite a number have been truly inspiring and illuminating. It's rather that Sherman's photographs occur in a profoundly complex, allusive, and at times maddeningly elusive realm, which itself is resistant to didacticism, fundamentally and comprehensively. It would be tempting to say that Sherman is always one step, or perhaps quite a number of giant steps, ahead of her critics, whatever their ilk, and that she consistently evades all that seeks to proclaim her, but much more importantly her art, as representative of a particular agenda, no matter how intellectually keen or morally noble. While this may or may not have been a conscious strategy on her part, what is clear is that a central elusiveness, or multiplicity, has characterized her photographs from the beginning. At all stages of her career, including this current one, her photographs reveal a fairly remarkable ability to operate intensely on numerous, in fact, seemingly endless levels, which, after all, is pretty much the province of substantial and enduring art.

	This recent exhibition marks another departure for Sherman, most immediately in her use of large-scale Cibachrome prints with exorbitant, often gorgeous, coloration. Furthermore, the photographs do not comprise a unified series, which is how much of her work has been presented in the past. While there are connections between the individual works ? in the use of dolls, mannequins, masks, or other human-like figures depicted in completely staged or arranged scenes ? the tenor of the exhibition is varied and wide-ranging, moving easily between the grotesque and the sublime, between what is psychologically disturbing and overtly, even garishly, theatrical. In several close-ups, a reddish, partly horrific, and ridiculous monster face, constructed out of a cut-up and reassembled rubber mask, fills the entire frame. The simultaneously gnarled and mobile features of this demonic figure have a tactility that leaps out toward the viewer, extending the photographs in the direction of both painting and sculpture. In another completely opposite work, two blissfully tender mannequin heads with closed eyes and passionate lips nuzzle one another in a frank portrayal of erotically-charged peace. As much as this shot is antithetical to Sherman's lurid and disturbing sex dolls of the early 1990s, the sheer artificiality of the scene distances one from its emotional appeal. These are, after all, lifeless figures, in a beautiful yet frozen pose, not human beings disclosed in a moment of transcendent joy.

	As often happens with a superior artist, the genesis of a particular body of work can be profoundly simple. At its most basic level, this work involved playing around in the studio with dolls, with costume shop knick-knacks, and with the kind of oddball cultural effluvia that haunts the teeming closets of those who have an aptitude for the bizarre. Yet despite this seemingly casual context, the results are visually stunning and have a real resonance, a kind of eerie lyricism. Many of the photographs, both because of their large sizes and because of their voluptuous, Cibachrome-augmented use of color, tend to evoke large-scale paintings, especially narrative paintings. One witnesses what seems to be a story, perhaps a moment of catharsis condensed into a single image, yet it is impossible to either determine what that story is, or even whether there is one. A horned female figure with cascading hair, minus legs below her thighs as well as one arm, with pronounced genitalia, and holding a squiggly knife, is presented with her body in several floating sections against a rich blue background. She could be a mythic figure, a deity reimagined from an ancient, eclipsed religion, but then again maybe not, and in any event what she clearly is, is an inexpensive artifice rigged into that provocative position.

	Surrealist photography figures prominently as a background reference in these photographs, and Sherman also experimented with various distorting techniques, such as out of focus shots, double exposure, and in one instance, scratching up the negative. The visual immediacy of this particular photograph ?it's of a blurry Apollonian head and torso set atop a slightly larger mid-section of an obviously male body? is concentrated in the blue and white scratches protruding from the head, like hair, but which also suggests the spiky brittleness of a crown of thorns. In the weirdest, most nightmarish work, a naked doll's body is double exposed against an opulent swath of purple velvet. The body angles toward a triangular, vibrantly flesh-colored face, its toothy mouth agape in what could be laughter (of the maniacal, horror-flick variety) or a scream, or perhaps both; the solitary eyeball in the center of its forehead stares with a look of both ecstasy and malevolence. It is difficult, if not impossible, to connect such a scene with anything recognizable as an outside point of reference. It simply is, it's there and it has a kind of queasy authority, yet at the same time it is so obviously "made." In the same way that one cannot look to Sherman's "Film Still" portraits from the late 1970s and early 80s, or to her "Fashion Portraits" from the 1980s as indications of her own states of being, one cannot look to these tableaux as clear signs of psychological reality, either hers, or anyone else's. They are fictions, artifices, models, and while they have the aura of eternal archetypes, they're also suspect. The fascinating thing is how, in the midst of all this brazen artifice, one is inevitably drawn into Sherman's strange, obviously invented, little worlds.

	Background image: Cindy Sherman "Untitled," 1995, cibachrome, 48 x 32 in. framed