Word: artistes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...self and on culture. Sherman herself has attracted international attention for her provocative and grotesque photographs, most of which she appears in. Yet Sherman's photographs, which will be on display at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) through January 17, cannot be called self-portraits, for the artist uses make-up, costumes and wigs to create different characters, different personae in each piece...
...Sherman's short career. Her earliest photographs are "film stills," small black-and-white pieces in which she assumes the role of an imaginary starlet caught for the camera in a contrived Hollywood moment. Already in these early works, which date from the late '70s, one sees the artist's preoccupation with her own transformed image. The film stills reflect, says Sherman, "the role playing that everyone does through life...
Moving from these small black and white photos, one is startled by the large, horizontal, color "centerfold" images which make up makeup Sherman's next series of pieces. Commissioned and then rejected by Vanity Fair, these photos picture the artist crouched on the floor or on a bed in various costumes and wigs. In all the images, her characters express fear, alienation and helplessness. Some accuse Sherman of reinforcing negative female stereotypes, but she resolutely denies the charge. She wants, she says, merely "to make people uncomfortable in their expectations of seeing cleavage...
...Gogh. The irony is that the artist never had an inkling of how precious his work would become. Van Gogh sold only one painting in his life -- The Red Vineyard, for about $80 -- and died a pauper...
...more than a joke-joke comic; he is a philosopher." Mason seems to be the only one who admits that he is a "sensation for the same Jewish jokes that made me a failure." Perhaps, he thinks, it is the setting: "In the theater they see ; you as an artist instead of a bum telling jokes in a toilet." Then again, the Honda commercial may have it right: "Nobuddy understends dis." Or needs to. "As long as they laugh," Mason figures with rabbinical wisdom, "who cares...