0:00:16.400,0:00:21.016
[ CIND SHERMAN ] With this particular series, I was really [br]so struck.

0:00:21.016,0:00:24.600
It was such a change for me to see them really big

0:00:24.600,0:00:32.149
from seeing them just on my computer screen, because suddenly, they seemed much more tragic.

0:00:32.149,0:00:35.672
They’re kind of aggressive but not exactly aggressive.

0:00:36.955,0:00:40.884
- And then let's move her to the left.

0:00:42.412,0:00:44.329
Yeah, I think she looks good there.

0:00:46.266,0:00:48.266
I wonder if these two...

0:00:48.730,0:00:49.744
Maybe?

0:00:53.280,0:00:56.400
The ones that were subtle, that I thought, [br]"Oh, it looks too much like me. I don't

0:00:56.400,0:00:59.307
know if she's really that successful [br]as a piece,"

0:00:59.307,0:01:03.554
Just because I thought, you know—[br]I don't feel like I’m lost in it anymore.

0:01:03.554,0:01:08.829
But I just noticed that they just felt like such real people.

0:01:22.804,0:01:30.026
"The Cindy Book," I don't know exactly when I started it. Maybe I was seven or ten. I’m not really sure.

0:01:30.927,0:01:35.131
There are family snapshots that are just [br]stuck throughout.

0:01:37.069,0:01:39.718
And then I circled myself in them.

0:01:44.058,0:01:46.723
And wrote, [br]"That's me" under each one.

0:01:50.462,0:01:54.188
And I guess I kept it up for a couple of years

0:01:55.116,0:02:01.362
and then forgot about [br]it until college, found it and decided, "Oh, maybe I’ll update it."

0:02:04.774,0:02:11.463
At that point, I faked [br]making the handwriting seem like it was growing up along with the figure in the pictures.

0:02:12.000,0:02:18.058
It’s kind of an interesting thing to see yourself, to think that that's really the same person now.

0:02:18.358,0:02:22.034
It’s just interesting to also see your evolution.

0:02:22.034,0:02:26.743
Growing up in the '50s and early '60s, women did wear a lot of makeup.

0:02:26.743,0:02:31.055
And yet, you know, as the '60s and the '70s progressed,

0:02:31.055,0:02:33.205
it was all about being natural.

0:02:33.205,0:02:41.386
And so I kind of missed the stuff and the before and after, I guess, of what it does to you and the transformation.

0:02:41.386,0:02:46.518
So I think I would play in my room just out of curiosity, see what makeup could do,

0:02:46.518,0:02:49.053
sometimes, you know, become a character.

0:02:51.591,0:02:56.404
The clowns, I mean, I loved them so much.

0:02:56.404,0:03:01.444
Well, the idea was, okay, I’m making these pictures of clowns, but I don't want it to look like me, but

0:03:01.444,0:03:04.052
you know, that's easy enough to say when you have clown makeup on.

0:03:04.052,0:03:08.946
But how do you make one clown really look like it's a different person underneath the makeup?

0:03:11.430,0:03:16.019
I was really inspired by [br]looking online at clown sites.

0:03:19.294,0:03:25.914
They'd have to be, you know, sincere people that just want to be [br]hired to entertain at somebody's birthday party. And...

0:03:25.914,0:03:31.051
yet, you're looking at all the various faces, and some of them just look like, I don't know that this person—

0:03:31.051,0:03:38.801
you know, like, there's something about them that just, like, I don't trust or, like, is suspicious or like, "Why are they a clown?"

0:03:41.176,0:03:46.825
The idea sort of continued, where it's like, [br]say the whole world is a world of clowns,

0:03:47.617,0:03:52.086
as if it's another dimension, like the [br]dimension of clowns,

0:03:53.478,0:03:56.459
another planet where they all happen [br]to be clowns.

0:04:13.560,0:04:20.180
I was just experimenting with this new camera [br]that I had because it was digital. And...

0:04:20.180,0:04:27.436
just set some lights up in my studio and just— [br]I think I was just playing around.

0:04:27.436,0:04:36.504
First couple things I was doing were experimenting [br]with this tape that you put on your skin

0:04:36.504,0:04:39.400
to, like, pull back your wrinkles.

0:04:39.400,0:04:48.851
So I did some tests with that and then added a wig and then, you know, kind of evolved from there.

0:04:49.124,0:04:55.841
At this point, I hadn't gone shopping for any other costumes. So I liked this red polka-dot shirt

0:04:55.841,0:05:00.797
so I continued working on that. And

0:05:00.797,0:05:11.096
it turned into this other series. They were going to be [br]like society portraits of rich Upper East Side people.

0:05:13.225,0:05:19.879
I was trying to make her seem dowdy [br]but very like she's firm, and, you know, she's...

0:05:19.879,0:05:25.153
The rock, center, of her family, [br]or thinks she is. Umm...

0:05:25.153,0:05:32.993
And it's actually also the first time I used the green screen behind me, because I realized I wanted to add backgrounds.

0:05:33.960,0:05:41.760
And the lab I work with said, you know, "Please [br]get us a green screen, because it's just easier to

0:05:41.760,0:05:45.433
separate the figure from the background that way."

0:05:45.433,0:05:47.240
And I was kind of resistant, 'cause I thought,

0:05:47.240,0:05:48.764
you know, "I don't need that."

0:05:48.764,0:05:55.280
But actually, it does really help. And with digital shooting,

0:05:55.280,0:05:59.480
it's a lot easier to keep going. I can [br]just stay in character, continue working,

0:06:00.240,0:06:02.668
and see when it's not working.

0:06:02.668,0:06:08.890
Sometimes I don't [br]know why, but I can just tell, like, "Something's not right."

0:06:08.890,0:06:16.401
And while I liked this character, [br]I think she didn't look old enough for the dowdiness of her outfit.

0:06:16.401,0:06:21.739
Then I started to add the [br]paunch in the stomach to get the figure a little bit better.

0:06:21.739,0:06:31.063
Then I reshot it to be a much older [br]woman. So basically, that was how she evolved.

0:06:35.184,0:06:39.825
The background was at the very end after [br]all the characters were done.

0:06:40.180,0:06:47.287
I wanted to approach the background with the same kind of [br]license that a painter would take with—

0:06:47.287,0:06:54.798
That artistic license of selectively removing stuff.

0:06:55.207,0:06:57.900
I liked the idea that she's just floating in this background.

0:07:11.847,0:07:16.520
Basically, this is just my [br]little neurotic organization here of,

0:07:16.520,0:07:26.434
like, the fake lips and teeth and noses, a lot of clown noses, eyeballs and eye-related things,

0:07:26.434,0:07:31.786
little tiny jewelry. I know, it's kind of [br]ridiculous how organized I am.

0:07:31.786,0:07:40.725
So these are all the masks and parts of masks. Some of them [br]I’ve cut up to use for other things.

0:07:41.273,0:07:42.263
Umm...

0:07:43.455,0:07:44.783
Let’s see.

0:07:50.788,0:07:57.601
When I was in college, I made this book of doll [br]clothes of myself and my clothes. And...

0:07:57.601,0:08:09.178
But then I, for a film course I was taking, wanted to bring the doll to life. And so then I shot myself doing all the poses.

0:08:11.416,0:08:15.198
So from here, I went to do several series,

0:08:15.198,0:08:22.840
where it's all these, like, characters that have been cut out and basically sort of spread out like a deck of cards or something.

0:08:24.314,0:08:33.977
And from there, I started to put these little figures together to [br]tell narratives, which is what the murder mystery Pictures were,

0:08:37.416,0:08:42.749
just as a movement study, I [br]suppose, and character study.

0:08:46.106,0:08:54.272
After doing that for a year or so, when I moved to New York, I was so fed up with cutting these things out to tell stories that I

0:08:54.272,0:09:01.755
realized I just need to do it in one shot and alone, because I was always working alone. And

0:09:01.755,0:09:09.274
how to imply narrative when I’m working alone just led me to the film stills.

0:09:09.574,0:09:13.075
I didn't want to make what looked like art, in terms of painting.

0:09:13.075,0:09:16.508
I just thought, "No, I want to make something that looks mass-produced"

0:09:16.508,0:09:19.386
and I didn't want it to have anything to do with art theory.

0:09:21.160,0:09:24.759
And I wanted it to look like, you know, anybody would understand it, because it's—

0:09:24.759,0:09:27.880
you know, I looks like it's from a movie, and maybe I saw that movie.

0:09:28.753,0:09:36.983
I found, at least through the film stills that I was finding, that it was European movies that the women looked more blank.

0:09:37.556,0:09:43.079
In a way, the character, the face, is not really reacting. It’s, like, in between a reaction.

0:09:44.580,0:09:47.507
Either they've [br]just screamed, or they're about to scream.

0:09:49.499,0:09:53.120
You don't know, as the viewer, what has [br]just happened, what's about to happen.

0:09:58.360,0:10:03.592
Film has always kind of been more influential to me [br]than the art world.

0:10:05.557,0:10:15.966
Well, when I was a kid, I watched TV pretty much all the time. [br]It was in the basement. And that's where

0:10:16.720,0:10:21.230
my sort of—I don't know—where I [br]hung out all the time.

0:10:21.230,0:10:27.080
I had, like, my paints and little projects down there. [br]And I would just sit in front of the TV and

0:10:27.080,0:10:32.899
work on my school projects or little art [br]projects and watch movies all the time.

0:10:34.400,0:10:38.835
I haven't titled anything, really, since the [br]film stills.

0:10:38.835,0:10:43.468
That was the only series that had an official title.

0:10:43.987,0:10:50.185
And the individual works were [br]really just numbered according to the gallery.

0:10:50.185,0:10:57.639
But some series have been named not through me [br]but through other people writing books.

0:10:58.048,0:11:02.789
I mean, the fairy tales—I guess I call them the [br]fairy tales 'cause I don't know what else to call them.

0:11:11.168,0:11:14.333
The centerfolds I’ve also called "The [br]Horizontals."

0:11:15.452,0:11:22.003
The reason I wasn't titling them, besides the fact that I never felt very much of a wordsmith—

0:11:22.003,0:11:28.960
I didn't want people to have a preconceived notion of what they're supposed to imagine this character to be.

0:11:32.080,0:11:39.440
One of the centerfold pictures, which I [br]call "The Black Sheets" for obvious reasons,

0:11:39.440,0:11:45.320
I think of that character as having just [br]woken up from, like, a night out on the town,

0:11:45.320,0:11:48.720
and she's just gone to bed, like, five [br]minutes before, and the sun is waking her up,

0:11:48.720,0:11:51.520
and she's got, like, the worst [br]hangover. You know, it's like,

0:11:51.520,0:11:56.041
"Oh, my god" and she's about to pull the sheets [br]over her head or something to go to sleep.

0:11:56.041,0:11:58.868
And other people look at that and think she's a [br]rape victim.

0:12:00.860,0:12:06.960
Of course, by saying "The Black Sheets," if I had titled it "The Black Sheets," you know, it would still be ambiguous enough.

0:12:06.960,0:12:10.149
I guess I could've gotten away [br]with it for that one.

0:12:14.380,0:12:21.187
Calling it "The Black Sheets" isn't any more interesting than "Untitled Number 79" or whatever it is.

0:12:30.000,0:12:38.320
Other series, I’ve been kind of criticized because people thought I was making too much fun of the characters I was portraying,

0:12:38.320,0:12:41.168
like the Hollywood Hampton types.

0:12:43.815,0:12:46.456
When I first showed them out in L.A.,

0:12:46.456,0:12:50.925
there was some criticism that they thought I was just making fun of these Hollywood types.

0:12:53.409,0:12:57.254
As if, you know, "Here she comes from the east coast, and who [br]does she think she is?" or something.

0:12:58.946,0:13:04.870
I kind of liked those characters too. It’s not like I didn't [br]like them and I’m gonna make fun of these women.

0:13:09.264,0:13:13.814
I think especially in the recent work,

0:13:13.814,0:13:18.340
they—maybe because they're not so stereotypical type characters, they

0:13:19.132,0:13:25.416
seem, I think, extremely compassionate and poignant and moving.

0:13:34.096,0:13:39.600
In these pictures, I was trying to make it look like people who were actually sitting for somebody

0:13:39.600,0:13:44.469
painting and painting and painting and taking days [br]or weeks or however long it took.

0:13:44.469,0:13:51.366
And so there's this sort of boredom that, I think, I wanted them [br]to have, like to look like, you know,

0:13:51.366,0:13:56.576
"My god, I’ve been sitting here in the same position for, you know, so long. Please hurry up."

0:13:59.440,0:14:04.240
The only thing that just occurred to me, [br]looking at it again, that I don't think

0:14:04.240,0:14:12.160
anybody even realizes is that in the bottom [br]right corner are actually these big toes of

0:14:12.160,0:14:16.360
a huge foot. I thought, you know, "What if [br]it's like she's a powdered-wigged woman,

0:14:16.360,0:14:19.896
but then she's got these big feet sticking out [br]from under her?"

0:14:21.042,0:14:28.243
I want there, in some of them, to be, like, a little joke that you can see, like the big nose on the young girl,

0:14:29.800,0:14:34.448
The breast that looks like it's just, you [br]know, like half of a grapefruit stuck on to someone's chest.

0:14:36.359,0:14:40.552
I hadn't done too many [br]characters that were men.

0:14:41.262,0:14:43.145
It wasn't as challenging as I thought.

0:14:44.510,0:14:51.446
What made it easier in these pictures that was harder in earlier work was that they're just sitting there

0:14:51.446,0:15:00.560
kind of frozen in time and not really—There's not really anything emotional that you're getting out of that character other

0:15:00.560,0:15:06.000
than they're just sort of sitting there [br]posing and they look like who they are.

0:15:07.800,0:15:13.633
These were not really done in any [br]kind of referential way towards art history.

0:15:13.633,0:15:18.511
If anything, I was showing how—[br]not little I care about it, but

0:15:18.511,0:15:27.445
how it's just another thing that can influence me along with television and along with cheap magazines.

0:15:29.134,0:15:38.130
It’s not any more relevant to my time than any of that other stuff.

0:15:48.365,0:15:54.412
Usually, when I go to a particular store, it's [br]one particular thing in mind for a character.

0:15:55.381,0:15:58.670
- Aha, yeah. [br]Let's see.

0:15:58.670,0:16:00.457
See, that would be great.

0:16:05.343,0:16:07.188
Tigress lady.

0:16:07.870,0:16:10.909
Leopard lady. [br]Oh, my god.

0:16:11.673,0:16:15.993
Oh, my god. [br]More wacky pants.

0:16:15.993,0:16:20.012
I mean, this is, like, the wacky pants section [br]or something.

0:16:20.531,0:16:23.301
Bob Mackie. No way.

0:16:23.301,0:16:25.013
Oh, my god. Ok.

0:16:25.013,0:16:31.620
Well, we might be inspiring [br]a whole new series right here. Rich hippie ladies.

0:16:33.558,0:16:38.840
Hmm. Eh. [br]I got to be discriminating somewhere, I guess.

0:16:39.086,0:16:44.712
[ sighs ] I really made out, really...[br][ chuckles ]

0:16:44.712,0:16:47.532
- It's gonna be too heavy.[br]- I think it's ok.

0:16:47.532,0:16:49.532
- That one's heavy, this one's light.[br][ laughs ]

0:16:49.532,0:16:51.042
- Ok, thanks a lot.

0:16:51.042,0:16:53.293
Thanks a lot. Take care.

0:16:53.293,0:16:54.840
- Thank you.[br]- Thank you.

0:16:54.840,0:16:59.228
Often, I’ve thought, you know, I can't [br]imagine really doing this my whole life, my whole career.

0:16:59.416,0:17:08.753
And in the late '80s and '90s, [br]I was experimenting more with gradually taking myself out of the picture,

0:17:09.408,0:17:13.512
you know, I was [br]just sort of a reflection in something

0:17:19.680,0:17:24.640
and then eventually just using a lot of mannequins [br]and dolls to

0:17:24.640,0:17:31.304
suggest that there's actually a living person In the picture, but it was, in fact, all still life.

0:17:34.634,0:17:37.747
A lot of that work, people just assume [br]that I’m still there, that, you know,

0:17:37.747,0:17:41.358
my eyes are the eyes that you see [br]through the mask or that

0:17:41.358,0:17:46.092
the hand in the foreground was actually my hand, as if I still have to be in the picture somehow.

0:17:49.258,0:17:52.186
And I wasn't in this whole group of work.

0:17:55.734,0:18:00.812
It was much harder than using myself, because

0:18:01.003,0:18:08.910
when I use myself, I can play so that every single picture is completely different.

0:18:13.686,0:18:18.691
I wanted to make pictures [br]that were really big, really in your face.

0:18:19.019,0:18:23.778
Before I even shot anything, I thought, "I [br]want to make a show of really big pictures," Because

0:18:23.778,0:18:30.000
you see male artists doing it all the time, even when they're not even, like, well known. They just, like, make

0:18:30.000,0:18:34.215
a picture as big as the entire wall of the gallery.

0:18:34.215,0:18:38.674
It just seemed like such a big egotistical thing. And I thought,

0:18:38.674,0:18:42.411
"I don't know that many women that [br]really do that." And I thought,

0:18:42.411,0:18:47.703
"Damn it, I’m gonna do that, make this really big picture." So

0:18:47.703,0:18:50.268
yeah, that was kind of part of it too.

0:19:04.882,0:19:07.105
- See you guys.[br]Bye.

0:19:33.882,0:19:37.874
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0:19:37.874,0:19:40.065
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0:19:47.018,0:19:52.758
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0:19:58.260,0:20:02.607
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