Cindy Sherman
Untitled

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Artist Cindy Sherman (American, born 1954)American, born 1954

CultureAmerican

Titles

Untitled

Date1980

Place depictedNew York City, New York, United States

MediumChromogenic print

DimensionsImage: 16 × 23 1/2 in. (40.6 × 59.7 cm)
Sheet: 20 × 23 15/16 in. (50.8 × 60.8 cm)

Credit LineGift of William F. Stern

Object number81.151

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionSince the earliest days of photography, people have been portrayed in front of studio backdrops—often an exotic landscape, the garden of a country manor, or an elegant interior—as photographic proof of a desired but fictive life. After her late-1970s series of black-and-white self-portraits that masqueraded as old film stills, Cindy Sherman adopted a similar device—a rear-screen projection—“just to make it seem that I was on location,” she said, “without having to be on location.” In fact, her motivation was more complex. Her repeated placement of a cropped, close-up figure against a luminous but indistinct background is precisely what gives emotional power to the rear-screen projections series. The contrast between Sherman’s flesh-and-blood face and the out-of-focus park scene behind her gives this picture an eerie and unsettling quality, as if viewers are witnessing a pivotal moment in a narrative that they cannot quite make out.
ProvenanceWilliam F. Stern, Houston; given to MFAH, 1981.
Exhibition History"American Photography: A History in Pictures," San Antonio Museum of Art, April 21–July 31, 1994.

"Evocative Presence: Twentieth Century Photographs in the Museum Collection," The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, February 27–May 1, 1988.

"Contemporary Art and Photography: Spotlight on the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, September 30, 2001–February 3, 2002.

"Self, Model, and Self as Other," The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, July 13–September 29, 2013.

"Cindy Sherman," The Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles, June 11–October 2, 2016; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, September 16–December 31, 2017.

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