Cindy Sherman (B. 1954)

Untitled Film Still #24

Details

Cindy Sherman (B. 1954)
Untitled Film Still #24
signed, numbered and dated 'Cindy Sherman, 2/10, 1978' (on the reverse)
black and white photograph
8 x 10in. (20.3 x 25.4cm.)

Provenance

Metro Pictures, New York.

Literature

A. C. Danto, 'Cindy Sherman: Untitled Film Stills', Munich 1990.
H. Muschamp, 'Cindy Sherman's Sixty-Nine 70', Artforum, v. 35 (another from the edition illustrated p. 109).
'Cindy Sherman: Film Stills', Washington 1995 (another from the edition illustrated).
'Cindy Sherman: Retrospective', London 1997 (another from the edition illustrated pl. 25).
'Cindy Sherman: The Complete Film Stills', New York 1997 (another from the edition illustrated).

Lot Essay

Cindy Sherman's promenade in the streets and quays of Manhattan does not refer to a specific movie, but rather, evoke the archetypal journey of a brazen young secretary out of the office ("Untitled Film Still #24") or a nubile Italian 'Femme Fatale' ("Untitled Film Still #19") ready to affront male gaze and play their own seductive game.
These women are seductresses, as Sherman is, and she wrote of her concerns with portraying them: "To pick (characters) like (these) was about my own ambivalence about sexuality - growing up with the women role models that I had, and a lot of them in films, that were like (these) characters, and you were supposed to be a good girl." (In: 'Anatomy of an Artist', Art Papers 19, no. 4, July-Aug. 1995, p. 7.)

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