Born
Cynthia Morris Sherman
January 19, 1954 (age 64)
Glen Ridge, New Jersey, U.S.
Nationality: American
Education: Buffalo State College
Known for——Photography Notable work——Untitled #96, Untitled #153, Complete Untitled Film Stills, 1977–1980
Spouse(s)
Michel Auder
(m. 1984; div. 1999)
Awards
MacArthur Fellowship
Honorary doctorate degree from the Royal College of Art, London.
In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.In 2013 she received an honorary doctorate degree from the Royal College of Art, London.
Early life and education Edit
Sherman was born on January 19, 1954, in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, the youngest of the five children of Dorothy and Charles Sherman.[3][4][5] Shortly after her birth, her family moved to the township of Huntington, Long Island, where her father worked as an engineer for Grumman Aircraft.[6] Her mother taught reading to children with learning difficulties.[7]
In 1972, Sherman enrolled in the visual arts department at Buffalo State College, where she began painting. During this time, she began to explore the ideas which became a hallmark of her work: She dressed herself as different characters, cobbled together from thrift-store clothing.[8] Frustrated with what she saw as the limitations of painting as a medium of art, she abandoned it and took up photography. "[T]here was nothing more to say [through painting]", she recalled. "I was meticulously copying other art, and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead."[9] Sherman has said about this time: "One of the reasons I started photographing myself was that supposedly in the spring one of my teachers would take the class out to a place near Buffalo where there were waterfalls and everybody romps around without clothes on and takes pictures of each other. I thought, ‘Oh, I don't want to do this. But if we're going to have to go to the woods I better deal with it early.’ Luckily we never had to do that."[10] She spent the remainder of her college education focused on photography. Though Sherman had failed a required photography class as a freshman, she repeated the course with Barbara Jo Revelle, whom she credited with introducing her to conceptual art and other contemporary forms.[11] At college she met Robert Longo, who encouraged her to record her process of "dolling up" for parties.[12] This was the beginning of her Untitled Film Still series.[8]
In 1974, together with Longo, Charles Clough and Nancy Dwyer, she created Hallwalls, an arts center intended as a space that would accommodate artists from diverse backgrounds. Sherman was also exposed to the contemporary art exhibited at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the two Buffalo campuses of the SUNY school system, Media Studies Buffalo, and the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts, and Artpark, in nearby Lewiston, N.Y.[13]
It was in Buffalo that Sherman encountered the photo-based Conceptual works of artists Hannah Wilke, Eleanor Antin, and Adrian Piper.[14] Along with artists like Laurie Simmons, Louise Lawler, and Barbara Kruger, Sherman is considered to be part of the Pictures Generation.[15]
In the early 1990s, Sherman worked with Minneapolis band Babes in Toyland, providing photographs for covers for the albums Fontanelle and Painkillers, creating a stage backdrop used in live concerts, and acting in the promotional video for the song "Bruise Violet."[42] She also worked as a film director. Sherman moved from photographs to film with her movie Office Killer in 1997, starring Jeanne Tripplehorn, Molly Ringwald and Carol Kane. Dorine, played by Carol Kane, is a stand-in for Sherman and has a shared interest with arranging bodies and is like a puppeteer and arranges her own dioramas.[43][page needed] According to author Dahlia Schweitzer, Office Killer is full of unexpected characters and plot twists. Schweitzer considers the film to be a comedy, horror, melodrama, noir, feminist statement, and an art piece.[43] The film got mixed reviews. In a review for The New York Times, art critic Roberta Smith states that the film lacks the artist's usual finesse and is a retrospective of her work - "a fascinating if lumpish bit of Shermaniana." [44] Movie critic colleague to Roberta Smith, Stephen Holden, called the film "sadly inept." [45] Later, she had a cameo role in John Waters' film Pecker, and also appeared in The Feature in 2008, starring ex-husband Michel Auder, which won a New Vision Award.[citation needed] Echoing similar grisly and gory elements as her Untitled Horror series, the film includes several artistically executed murder scenes. Office Killer grossed $37,446 and received generally poor reviews, which called the film "crude" and "laugh-free."[46]
