LOT Phillips de Pury & Company  /  PHOTOGRAPHS PART I  / 

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CINDY SHERMAN (American, b. 1954) UNTITLED FILM STILL #60 signed, editioned and dated

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CINDY SHERMAN (American, b. 1954) UNTITLED FILM STILL #60 signed, editioned and dated
CINDY SHERMAN (American, b. 1954) UNTITLED FILM STILL #60 signed, editioned and dated "Cindy Sherman, 1/10, 1980" in pencil on verso gelatin silver print 9 1/4 x 7 3/8 in. (23.5 x 18.7 cm) paper: 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm) 1980 this print is number 1 from an edition of 10 PROVENANCE Metro Pictures, NEW YORK Private Collection, NEW YORK LITERATURE Cindy Sherman and text by Arthur C. Danto, CINDY SHERMAN: UNTITLED FILM STILLS, NEW YORK, 1990 (not illustrated) Amada Cruz, Elizabeth A.T. Smith and Amelia Jones, CINDY SHERMAN: RETROSPECTIVE, NEW YORK, 1997, pl. 62 (illustrated) These are two examples of Sherman's 69 UNTITLED FILM STILLS that are in the 8x10 inch "glossy" format. Each still is instantly recognizable as a publicity print for a B-movie whose principal appeal is the pop icon starring in the film. Like a seductive movie poster, these images represent clichés that never fail to entice us. Sherman is the actor in each of the stills, always embodying both vulnerability and strength. Neither photography nor performance art rightfully categorize what Sherman creates. The grainy, sometimes blurred nature of the still is a deliberate means to underscore that her artistic concerns lie not with her technical mastery of the photographic process, but with her desire to convey her concepts. Sherman's body is the neutral medium to be manipulated into representations of the universally recognized heroine. In Lot 49, we sense what the heroine does not, the presence of a lurking visitor who secretly gazes at her through the doorway. The woman seems content with her assumed solitude, but her seclusion in the woods makes us dread the events we predict will come. The cliché of the campy horror movie inevitably comes to mind. A similar sensation is evoked by Lot 48, as the heroine stands alone amidst abandoned, decaying buildings. Her eye seems to have caught a hint of danger, which is demonstrated by her stance. In his analysis of Sherman's Untitled Films Stills, Arthur C. Danto claims: "I can think of no body of work at once so timeless and yet so much of its own time as Cindy Sherman's stills, no oeuvre which addresses us in our common humanity and at the same time induces the most advanced speculations on Post-Modernity, no images which say something profound about the feminine condition and yet touch us at a level beyond sexual difference" (Danto, p. 14).
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