There is a whole set of different ideas and believes that can make up someone’s identity, from their religion to their facial features. All of which can be changed according to how you want them too and possibly how others want them to be. Your identity is seen as what makes you and how people see you in everyday life, you can create different types of identity if you wanted/needed to. This is down to plastic surgery, changeable features and extras you can have done to yourself in today’s world.
Cindy Sherman’s work, portraits of Botoxed ageing females, (all of which is played by herself) is illustrating the idea that woman are trying everything and anything to hold onto their youth and beauty. Her first series of images was questioned whether it was about woman/wives of the wealthy collector that walk around the art fairs and galleries with their cheque books in hand. Sherman’s work is to the extreme, she extenuates the women’s bad taste and fake look, ranging from the fake tan to the painted on false eyebrows and lashes.
Cindy Sherman’s idea of photographing herself portrayed as other individuals in society some according to the social class, came from a soap star in the 1980’s talking about how 'you too could look as fabulous as I do; all you need to do is watch my video and I'll tell you my makeup tips'. Sherman explained how the woman spoke with a ‘snooty’ voice, taking her role-play very serious and enjoying it. A large photograph of the woman was in the background of the video was brought to Sherman’s attention and she thought about the fact that it is normally the wealthy people who can afford paintings of themselves and want to show them off. Somewhere, somehow, this is coded into the image", she explains. How the people are shown is also encoded in the portraits, from the extreme, dramatic plastic surgery to the wrinkles is just a small range of changes to the faces and bodies which suggest an underlying melancholy, which keeps the series of work from being critiqued of been rich and tasteless.
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Untitled (#471)
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This image presents a woman dressed in a prom like evening gown, and candy coloured painted nails, her stiff pose and red-rimmed eyes disguise the youthful image she is trying to project.
Photograph from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/apr/22/cindy-sherman-photography-art-exhibition#/?picture=346248314&index=8
Reference:
AUTHOR:
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LAURA ALLSOP
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TITLE:
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THE 'REAL' Cindu Sherman
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SOURCE:
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Art Review (London, England) no31 70-5 Ap 2009
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COPYRIGHT:
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Copyright Art Review, Ltd. USA and Canadian subscription to Art Review are handled by agents: International Media Service, 3330 Pacific Ave., Ste. 404, Virginia Beach, VA 23451, 800-428-3003. Annual subscription price $79, Canada $85. Our Internet address is http://www.art-review.co.uk/
The woman with a hundred faces
She first tried photography out in the State University College in Buffalo but this was a failure, but her second tutor shown her the conceptual art, which had a big effect on Sherman. Cindy started off by painting self portraits and copying photographs she saw in magazines. In 1975 she took a self portrait, the first impression was humours, she gave herself the look of a worker or an auto mechanic, her work is very up close and personal, so the body basically isn’t there. In the first series of work Untitled A-E she makes her appearance, only sunbathing (natural or fake) is the reminder of her feminine attributes. Sherman got more and more involved with the work and started to buy more clothes, "I was buying and collecting more and more of those things, and suddenly the characters appeared quite simply because I owned something of theirs."
This is exactly why identities can change and someone else could possible take your role on, this is if you see an identity of a person by their clothing and the way they portray themselves.
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