Monday’s Muse: Cindy Sherman

“We’re all products of what we want to project to the world. Even people who don’t spend any time, or think they don’t, on preparing themselves for the world out there – I think that ultimately they have for their whole lives groomed themselves to be a certain way, to present a face to the […]

Cindy-Sherman7

“We’re all products of what we want to project to the world. Even people who don’t spend any time, or think they don’t, on preparing themselves for the world out there – I think that ultimately they have for their whole lives groomed themselves to be a certain way, to present a face to the world.” – Cindy Sherman

Widely recognized as one of the most important and influential artists in contemporary art, Cindy Sherman explores contemporary identity and the nature of representation. For over thirty years she has captured herself in a range of personas – amusing and disturbing, distasteful and affecting, all drawn from the unlimited supply of images from movies, TV, magazines, the Internet, and art history. Although the majority of her photographs are pictures of herself, Sherman claims that these photographs are most definitely not self-portraits. Rather, she uses herself as a vehicle to communicate on a variety of issues of the modern world, such as the role of the woman and the role of the artist.

Toying with the line between art and reality, Sherman brings light to political and cultural ideas that both highly relevant and heartbreakingly beautiful. Cindy Sherman is not only a muse in her own right, but someone that we can ‘listen’ to and learn from.