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Cindy Sherman Essay
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Cindy Sherman is a well known American photographer and film director. She was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, but soon after her birth her family moved to Huntington, Long Island. Cindy first became interested in visual arts when she was studying at the Buffalo State College. Sherman at first was more into painting than photography but when she became frustrated with painting she became interested in photography. She chose photography because she wanted to capture her own art rather than copy something and make it into a painting. Alongside Charles Clough, Robert Longo, and Nancy Dwyer they created an art center called Hallwalls. Sherman was also considered to be a part of The Pictures Generation which was an exhibition that was the first formal labeling of groups of artists with their images. …show more content…
Cindy Sherman has many popular pieces of art but the one that stood out most was her landmark 69 series.
Sherman photographs herself in several different costumes and poses for them herself. All of the photos in the series are taken in black and white, she also used her own belongings in these pictures for props. For example, she appeared as B-movie, foreign film, and film noir style actresses. Her work is very controversial to some art critics; they find it quite disturbing as well as in some ways funny. Sherman does not consider herself a feminist but some people assume she is due to some of her pictures. For example, the 1981 “Centerfolds” shows examples of the way women are stereotyped in magazines, television, and films. Due to some artists having to fight against censorship with their work Sherman created the series called the “Sex Series”. In these photographs she captured pieced together medical dummies caught having sex as well as in different sex
positions.
To begin, Scott’s article Reading the Popular Image argues that there are many ways and factors that can affect the meaning of an image of a New Woman. One argument that Scott presents is the importance of context to fully understand the picture so to not jump to conclusions. Scott uses the example of editorial context in the Life magazine to point out that the pictures, while on the surface may have a negative connotation attached to it, turns out to be quite positive and supportive. Scott also notes that new technologies emerged around 1890 allowed new “thoughts and significations” through pictures. She finishes her chapter by examining how the Gibson girl affected women individually as well as groups of women.
Led by Laura Mulvey, feminist film critics have discussed the difficulty presented to female spectators by the controlling male gaze and narrative generally found in mainstream film, creating for female spectators a position that forces them into limited choices: "bisexual" identification with active male characters; identification with the passive, often victimized, female characters; or on occasion, identification with a "masculinized" active female character, who is generally punished for her unhealthy behavior. Before discussing recent improvements, it is important to note that a group of Classic Hollywood films regularly offered female spectators positive, female characters who were active in controlling narrative, gazing and desiring: the screwball comedy.
In this paper I will talk about some information that I have obtained from reading Mary Piphers, Reviving Ophelia, Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls and give my view on some of her main points and arguments. I also will discuss why I feel Mary Pipher’s views on the toxic influence of media are accurate, and that it does affect adolescent girls. This paper will also point out the importance of Mary Pipher’s studies on the problems that today’s female teens are facing and why I feel they are important and cannot be ignored.
Annie Leibovitz (born Anna-Lou) was born in Waterbury, Connecticut on October 2 1949 to her father Samuel Leibovitz, a was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, and her mother, Marilyn Edith, née Heit, a modern dance instructor of Estonian Jewish heritage. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Leibovitz) Because her father was part of the military, it forced her and her large family to move around constantly. “Years before it ever occurred to me that one could have a life as a photographer, I became accustomed to looking at life through a frame. The frame was the window of my family’s car as we traveled from one military base to another.” (Leibovitz 11) Annie attended Northwood High School and became interested in a variety of artistic accomplishments such as writing, music. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute where she enrolled as a painting major in 1967. For several years, she continued to develop her photography skills while working various jobs, including a stint on a kibbutz in Amir, Israel, for several months in 1969. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Leibovitz)
By the late 70’s, early 80’s, Sherman began establishing a name for herself in not only the art world, but the fashion world as well. Designers such as Dianne Benson hired Cindy Sherman to create a series of advertisements for her store (Schjeldahl), improving Sherman’s photo shoots with extravagant articles of clothing. Despite mainstream success, Sherman’s photographs are far from what one would expect to see in magazines such as Vogue. In fact, her characters were often disgusting or dirty looking women. Sherman's on Page 5 shows a shaggy blonde woman lying in the bed, the power of this image led many viewers to assume the worse, naming it “The Black Sheets.”
Annie was born in Waterbury, Connecticut and spent most of her childhood in military bases, because her father had a career as an officer in the AIR FORCE. Growing up one of six, her father was circulating everywhere. Annie’s mother, was a stay at home mom, a wife, and a teacher. If she ever talked clamorously or if she was eager, she claimed it was because of her extensive and uproarious family foundation. She took classes at night to study the art of painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1970, her distinctive portraits started showing in Rolling Stone magazine, and have been ever since (“Annie Leibovitz a photographers life1990-2005”). Annie Leibovitz is one of Americas’ most well known celebrity portrait photographer for her work in Rolling Stone magazine and her work in Vanity Fair.
In this photograph it is a solo black and white picture of Cindy Sherman, and it appears that is she is laying on her back in a bed. Not only is she just lying in a bed but she is only wearing a bra and underwear leaving her stomach and legs exposed. In this picture her eyes are looking straight up at the celling. Also in this overhead shot photograph Sherman’s right leg is resting on top of her left leg exposing her the back of her right thigh. The back of her right hand is relaxed and touching her face on the right check, while her left hand is resting on the bed and slightly holding on to what seems to be a small bag or
After a brief couple of months there she moved back to the United States to California in the Bay area where she lived with her sister. She later enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute with the goal of becoming an art teacher with an emphasis in painting. As she began to take more classes focused in art she instead falls in love photography. Not soon after starting college she heads to a “Kibbutz” which is a communal settlement in Israel, typically a farm. She intended to never return to the United States again, but in 1970 despite her efforts she returns to the States to accept her frost assignment from Rolling stone and to her own surprise the photo she had taken of John Lennon makes the cover. Not long after in 1971 she received her first job with one of her soon to be long-term employers Vogue for their September issue starring the world renowned psychologist Dr. Arthur Janov who invented a new primitive form of therapy. In 1973 she receives a major accomplishment she appears on the Rolling Stone’s master head as “Chief Photographer.” Her photography does a beautiful job of capturing Nixon–era political figures and classic rock...
No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman’s photography is part of the culture and investigation of sexual and racial identity within the visual arts since the 1970’s. It has been said that, “The bulk of her work…has been constructed as a theater of femininity as it is formed and informed by mass culture…(her) pictures insist on the aporia of feminine identity tout court, represented in her pictures as a potentially limitless range of masquerades, roles, projections” (Sobieszek 229).
Terror and mockery come together in the portraits of Cindy Sherman on display at the Crocker Art Museum. Walking into the large, dimly lit ballroom, one may begin to feel a slight sense of trepidation as the viewer looks around to find nine sets of beady eyes watching one’s every move. Sherman produced her History Portraits during the late eighties and early nineties, nine of which are displayed at the museum. In her portraits she uses lush fabrics, lavish jewelry, and false body parts to decorate herself in these self-portraits. Her portraits have been know to cause discomfort in the viewers who find the general stereotypes, depicted in her portraits, amusing, yet confusing and terrorizing.
Amy Cuddy's editorial "Your iPhone is ruining your posture- and your mood" make the most credible arguments because she uses the method of Ethos. In Cuddy's editorial and Ted Talk, she uses a lot of real-life situations and examples that people can see when they go out in the world. For example, in cuddy’s Ted Talk, Cuddy states that " What we tend to do when it, comes to power is that we complement the other's nonverbal. So if someone is being really powerful with us, we tend to, make ourselves smaller. We don't mirror them. We do the opposite of them." She explains that when you go out and see really shy people we tend to see them like they want to hide from the world and they try not to make any contact with anyone but when we see a really
middle of paper ... ... Greenberg, H. R. & Greenberg, H. R. "Rescrewed: Pretty Woman's Co-opted Feminism. " Journal of Popular Film and Television 195605th ser. 19.1 (1991): 1-8.
Her unique techniques, which are shown through parody, provide different aesthetic values to contemporary artistic designs. mainly four expressive techniques used to create Cindy Sherman's art; female viewed from a male's perspective, pornography and sexual satire, narrative and realistic reproductions, and foreignness and harmony in conflict. In her arts it is discovered that based on these four expressive techniques, contemporary photography works can produce the following four results according to their production styles, clothing, and colors, the beauty of the retro pinup girl style, and the beauty of eroticism and sexual satire, the beauty of history through reinterpretation of the past, and the beauty of compromise through
For centuries, the objectification of women has become the norm, forever portraying them as submissive and passive for the benefit of the male gaze. Eternally capsulated in a world, perfected, unanimously the viewer and viewed alike. Jenny Saville defies expectations in creating the female nude with herself as both subject and painter. Taking on the roles given to women by men and making them her own, Saville elevates the status of women by making them their own judge of beauty. Kenneth Clark, a renowned art historian of his time, believed to create a form of art, the nude must be reformed and not directly recorded from life. In doing so, scouring away all evidence of the woman before the painting, before being perfected.
There are many people each day asking themselves the same question “ What should we do to improve colleges?” and they can't really find an answer to their question, but if you look harder and put more thoughts to it you can always find something to improve about your college no matter if you think there might be nothing wrong with it and it's working the way it should. There always will be a flaw you just need to look harder into it. In the reading by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel “Why so many students are spending six years getting a college degree” ,Douglas-Gabriel explains how sometimes it takes student longer to graduate because of colleges add to many unnecessary degree requirements to keep students in school for much longer than needed. Douglas-Gabriel