Monday, May 21, 2012
6:30 p.m.
Parsons The New School for Design
Tishman Auditorium, Alvin Johnson/J. M. Kaplan Hall
66 West 12th Street, New York City
The event is free and open to the public
Top: Untitled #489. 1976. Cut-out gelatin silver prints mounted on board, 13 5/8 x 48 3/16 x 1 7/16″ (34.6 x 122.4 x 3.7 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Purchased with funds contributed by the International Director’s Council and Executive Committee Members: Eli Broad, Elaine Terner Cooper, Ronnie Heyman, J. Tomilson Hill, Dakis Joannou, Barbara Lane, Robert Mnuchin, Peter Norton, Thomas Walther, and Ginny Williams, 1997 © 2012 Cindy Sherman
Bottom: Untitled. 2010. Pigment print on PhotoTex adhesive fabric, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist at Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman
On the occasion of the Cindy Sherman retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the publication of Cindy Sherman: The Early Work, 1975-1977, Catalogue Raisonné, this lecture will cover Sherman’s career from the very beginning to the present. Gabriele Schor, author of the catalogue raisonné, will discuss Sherman’s early works, produced during her studies in Buffalo from 1975 through the summer of 1977. In just two-and-a-half years the young artist created an impressive number of portraits, films, and complex cutout pictorial narratives that have remained unknown until now. Eva Respini will discuss connections between early works and more recent bodies of work, emphasizing how identity, feminine roles, and the artifice of photography have been at the heart of Sherman’s artistic practice from its earliest phases.
Eva Respini is Associate Curator at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and curator of the exhibition Cindy Sherman. She has organized numerous exhibitions on contemporary art and photography at MoMA, including Boris Mikhailov: Case History (2011); Staging Action: Performance in Photography since 1960 (co-curated 2011); Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography (co-curated 2010); Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West (2009); Artist’s Choice: Vik Muniz (2008); New Photography (2012, 2009, 2007, and 2005), among others. She is the author of Cindy Sherman, Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West, co-author of Fashioning Fiction in Photography since 1990, and a contributor to other museum publications.
Gabriele Schor, director of the collection Sammlung Verbund in Vienna, is author of Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975–1977, Catalogue Raisonné (published by Hatje Cantz, Germany, 2012), which is available in English and German. She is the curator of the exhibition Cindy Sherman: That’s me – That’s not me: The Early Works 1975–1977. For more information visit www.verbund.com/kt/en
Cindy Sherman
February 26–June 11, 2012
The Museum of Modern Art
Bringing together more than 170 photographs, this retrospective survey traces the artist’s career from the mid 1970s to the present. Highlighted in the exhibition are in-depth presentations of her key series, including the groundbreaking series “Untitled Film Stills” (1977–80), the black-and-white pictures that feature the artist in stereotypical female roles inspired by 1950s and 1960s Hollywood, film noir, and European art-house films; her ornate history portraits (1989–90), in which the artist poses as aristocrats, clergymen, and milkmaids in the manner of old master paintings; and her larger-than-life society portraits (2008) that address the experience and representation of aging in the context of contemporary obsessions with youth and status. The exhibition will explore dominant themes throughout Sherman’s career, including artifice and fiction; cinema and performance; horror and the grotesque; myth, carnival, and fairy tale; and gender and class identity. Also included are Sherman’s recent photographic murals (2010), which will have their American premiere at MoMA. Visit www.moma.org/cindysherman for more information.
This program is hosted by the BFA and MFA Photography Programs at Parsons. Visit www.parsons.edu for more information.
