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Lot Essay
Cindy Sherman's photographs are of women and about women. Through costume, setting, and acting Sherman assumes different roles, a secretary, an actress or a model. She orchestrates her wardrobe including wigs and make up. Then she becomes an actress, using facial expressions, gestures and body poses. As Michael Danoff argues, "the viewer's pleasure comes in part from 'getting' each of the stereotypes so wittily portrayed. Setting, makeup, and costume all provide clues, and the reward is as much intellectual catching onto the stereotype and what it means as visual." (In: P Schiedahl and I.M. Danhoff, 'Cindy Sherman', New York 1984, p.194.)
In 'Untitled No.122', a unique large scale photograph, Sherman is dressed and made up as a fashion model, but a model that seems to be caught in a moment when she is not posing. As Amanda Cruz has noted, "It seems inevitable that Sherman be drawn to create her own versions of fashion spreads. Fashion is yet another means of masquerade for women, and ads for clothes promise to convert the buyer into a more perfect version of herself... Like all advertisements, fashion photographs manufacture a desire that can never be fulfilled. We clamor for the latest style, which will only be supplanted next year. Underlying the promise of originality in high-fashion ads is, paradoxically, conformity to a prescribed look. Sherman's Fashion photographs undermine the desirability of such images by emphasizing their contrived nature." (A. Cruz in: 'Cindy Sherman Retrospective', New York 1997, p.8)
In 'Untitled No.122', a unique large scale photograph, Sherman is dressed and made up as a fashion model, but a model that seems to be caught in a moment when she is not posing. As Amanda Cruz has noted, "It seems inevitable that Sherman be drawn to create her own versions of fashion spreads. Fashion is yet another means of masquerade for women, and ads for clothes promise to convert the buyer into a more perfect version of herself... Like all advertisements, fashion photographs manufacture a desire that can never be fulfilled. We clamor for the latest style, which will only be supplanted next year. Underlying the promise of originality in high-fashion ads is, paradoxically, conformity to a prescribed look. Sherman's Fashion photographs undermine the desirability of such images by emphasizing their contrived nature." (A. Cruz in: 'Cindy Sherman Retrospective', New York 1997, p.8)