Recently, Cindy Sherman indicated to The New York Times that her latest series of chameleonlike self-portraits may be her last. “I’m so sick of using myself, how much more can I try to change myself?” she said. But even if she continues producing the kind of photographs that made her famous, there’s a definite air of finality to this newest crop—a sense that they represent a coda to an extraordinary body of work going back 40 years to her “Untitled Film Stills.”
Back then, she was an ingénue in her twenties; now, she’s in her sixties, so naturally these images deal with aging—as, arguably, Sherman has over the past five years. What’s different is that she’s once again playing upon cinematic archetypes, circling back, in effect, to her beginnings. The results are the most self-referential works of her career.
Early on, Sherman’s role-playing referenced film noir, the French New Wave and Italian neorealism—the kind of movies, in other words, that a university student of the 1970s might have seen in a film studies class. In this show, Sherman harkens back to the studio system of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, the golden era when female icons of the silver screen were minted by Hollywood’s dream factories. These sirens, however, aren’t depicted at the height of their allure but at a point where fame has passed them by. Sherman channels the likes of Gloria Swanson and Greta Garbo once the lights have gone down and the gates have swung shut on mansions where the only audience members left are the awards on the mantle and the photos on the wall. As Swanson herself demonstrated by playing Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, retreating into obscurity can trap memories in the amber of self-delusion. Here, Sherman makes the same point in richly costumed detail.
Cloches, soigné gowns, strands of pearls and fur stoles are just some of the items she employs to strike glamorous poses while wearing expressions more wistful than self-assured. Yearning is as much of a clothing option as the garments that mark these characters as phantoms of the past. They stand in front of digitally altered backdrops that may or may not reflect their state of mind, but it’s worth noting that several include tall buildings like the one behind Sherman in her seminal photo as a young secretarial type in 1950s New York.
Like movie actors, Sherman has aged before our eyes, which is something that doesn’t happen to artists who make paintings or sculptures. Until now, she’s maintained that her characters aren’t herself but simply blank screens for viewers to project upon. Perhaps she’s come to see this position as a fantasy worthy of Norma Desmond, who famously explained away her break with reality by insisting, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.” Sherman is still big, but she knows time eventually diminishes us all.