Cindy Sherman in "Transformation" - Season 5 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

[ CIND SHERMAN ] With this particular series, I was really 
so struck.

It was such a change for me to see them really big

from seeing them just on my computer screen, because suddenly, they seemed much more tragic.

They’re kind of aggressive but not exactly aggressive.

- And then let's move her to the left.

Yeah, I think she looks good there.

I wonder if these two...

Maybe?

The ones that were subtle, that I thought, 
"Oh, it looks too much like me. I don't

know if she's really that successful 
as a piece,"

Just because I thought, you know—
I don't feel like I’m lost in it anymore.

But I just noticed that they just felt like such real people.

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

There are family snapshots that are just
stuck throughout.

And then I circled myself in them.

And wrote, 
"That's me" under each one.

And I guess I kept it up for a couple of years

and then forgot about 
it until college, found it and decided, "Oh, maybe I’ll update it."

At that point, I faked 
making the handwriting seem like it was growing up along with the figure in the pictures.

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

It’s just interesting to also see your evolution.

Growing up in the '50s and early '60s, women did wear a lot of makeup.

And yet, you know, as the '60s and the '70s progressed,

it was all about being natural.

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

So I think I would play in my room just out of curiosity, see what makeup could do,

sometimes, you know, become a character.

The clowns, I mean, I loved them so much.

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

you know, that's easy enough to say when you have clown makeup on.

But how do you make one clown really look like it's a different person underneath the makeup?

I was really inspired by 
looking online at clown sites.

They'd have to be, you know, sincere people that just want to be 
hired to entertain at somebody's birthday party. And...

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

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?"

The idea sort of continued, where it's like,
say the whole world is a world of clowns,

as if it's another dimension, like the
dimension of clowns,

another planet where they all happen
to be clowns.

I was just experimenting with this new camera 
that I had because it was digital. And...

just set some lights up in my studio and just— 
I think I was just playing around.

First couple things I was doing were experimenting 
with this tape that you put on your skin

to, like, pull back your wrinkles.

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

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

so I continued working on that. And

it turned into this other series. They were going to be 
like society portraits of rich Upper East Side people.

I was trying to make her seem dowdy 
but very like she's firm, and, you know, she's...

The rock, center, of her family, 
or thinks she is. Umm...

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

And the lab I work with said, you know, "Please 
get us a green screen, because it's just easier to

separate the figure from the background that way."

And I was kind of resistant, 'cause I thought,

you know, "I don't need that."

But actually, it does really help. And with digital shooting,

it's a lot easier to keep going. I can 
just stay in character, continue working,

and see when it's not working.

Sometimes I don't 
know why, but I can just tell, like, "Something's not right."

And while I liked this character, 
I think she didn't look old enough for the dowdiness of her outfit.

Then I started to add the 
paunch in the stomach to get the figure a little bit better.

Then I reshot it to be a much older 
woman. So basically, that was how she evolved.

The background was at the very end after 
all the characters were done.

I wanted to approach the background with the same kind of 
license that a painter would take with—

That artistic license of selectively removing stuff.

I liked the idea that she's just floating in this background.

Basically, this is just my 
little neurotic organization here of,

like, the fake lips and teeth and noses, a lot of clown noses, eyeballs and eye-related things,

little tiny jewelry. I know, it's kind of 
ridiculous how organized I am.

So these are all the masks and parts of masks. Some of them 
I’ve cut up to use for other things.

Umm...

Let’s see.

When I was in college, I made this book of doll 
clothes of myself and my clothes. And...

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.

So from here, I went to do several series,

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.

And from there, I started to put these little figures together to 
tell narratives, which is what the murder mystery Pictures were,

just as a movement study, I 
suppose, and character study.

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

realized I just need to do it in one shot and alone, because I was always working alone. And

how to imply narrative when I’m working alone just led me to the film stills.

I didn't want to make what looked like art, in terms of painting.

I just thought, "No, I want to make something that looks mass-produced"

and I didn't want it to have anything to do with art theory.

And I wanted it to look like, you know, anybody would understand it, because it's—

you know, I looks like it's from a movie, and maybe I saw that movie.

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

In a way, the character, the face, is not really reacting. It’s, like, in between a reaction.

Either they've 
just screamed, or they're about to scream.

You don't know, as the viewer, what has
just happened, what's about to happen.

Film has always kind of been more influential to me 
than the art world.

Well, when I was a kid, I watched TV pretty much all the time. 
It was in the basement. And that's where

my sort of—I don't know—where I 
hung out all the time.

I had, like, my paints and little projects down there. 
And I would just sit in front of the TV and

work on my school projects or little art 
projects and watch movies all the time.

I haven't titled anything, really, since the 
film stills.

That was the only series that had an official title.

And the individual works were 
really just numbered according to the gallery.

But some series have been named not through me 
but through other people writing books.

I mean, the fairy tales—I guess I call them the 
fairy tales 'cause I don't know what else to call them.

The centerfolds I’ve also called "The 
Horizontals."

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

I didn't want people to have a preconceived notion of what they're supposed to imagine this character to be.

One of the centerfold pictures, which I 
call "The Black Sheets" for obvious reasons,

I think of that character as having just 
woken up from, like, a night out on the town,

and she's just gone to bed, like, five 
minutes before, and the sun is waking her up,

and she's got, like, the worst 
hangover. You know, it's like,

"Oh, my god" and she's about to pull the sheets 
over her head or something to go to sleep.

And other people look at that and think she's a 
rape victim.

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

I guess I could've gotten away
with it for that one.

Calling it "The Black Sheets" isn't any more interesting than "Untitled Number 79" or whatever it is.

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

like the Hollywood Hampton types.

When I first showed them out in L.A.,

there was some criticism that they thought I was just making fun of these Hollywood types.

As if, you know, "Here she comes from the east coast, and who 
does she think she is?" or something.

I kind of liked those characters too. It’s not like I didn't 
like them and I’m gonna make fun of these women.

I think especially in the recent work,

they—maybe because they're not so stereotypical type characters, they

seem, I think, extremely compassionate and poignant and moving.

In these pictures, I was trying to make it look like people who were actually sitting for somebody

painting and painting and painting and taking days 
or weeks or however long it took.

And so there's this sort of boredom that, I think, I wanted them 
to have, like to look like, you know,

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

The only thing that just occurred to me, 
looking at it again, that I don't think

anybody even realizes is that in the bottom 
right corner are actually these big toes of

a huge foot. I thought, you know, "What if 
it's like she's a powdered-wigged woman,

but then she's got these big feet sticking out 
from under her?"

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,

The breast that looks like it's just, you 
know, like half of a grapefruit stuck on to someone's chest.

I hadn't done too many 
characters that were men.

It wasn't as challenging as I thought.

What made it easier in these pictures that was harder in earlier work was that they're just sitting there

kind of frozen in time and not really—There's not really anything emotional that you're getting out of that character other

than they're just sort of sitting there 
posing and they look like who they are.

These were not really done in any 
kind of referential way towards art history.

If anything, I was showing how—
not little I care about it, but

how it's just another thing that can influence me along with television and along with cheap magazines.

It’s not any more relevant to my time than any of that other stuff.

Usually, when I go to a particular store, it's 
one particular thing in mind for a character.

- Aha, yeah.
Let's see.

See, that would be great.

Tigress lady.

Leopard lady.
Oh, my god.

Oh, my god.
More wacky pants.

I mean, this is, like, the wacky pants section 
or something.

Bob Mackie. No way.

Oh, my god. Ok.

Well, we might be inspiring 
a whole new series right here. Rich hippie ladies.

Hmm. Eh.
I got to be discriminating somewhere, I guess.

[ sighs ] I really made out, really...
[ chuckles ]

- It's gonna be too heavy.
- I think it's ok.

- That one's heavy, this one's light.
[ laughs ]

- Ok, thanks a lot.

Thanks a lot. Take care.

- Thank you.
- Thank you.

Often, I’ve thought, you know, I can't 
imagine really doing this my whole life, my whole career.

And in the late '80s and '90s, 
I was experimenting more with gradually taking myself out of the picture,

you know, I was 
just sort of a reflection in something

and then eventually just using a lot of mannequins 
and dolls to

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

A lot of that work, people just assume
that I’m still there, that, you know,

my eyes are the eyes that you see
through the mask or that

the hand in the foreground was actually my hand, as if I still have to be in the picture somehow.

And I wasn't in this whole group of work.

It was much harder than using myself, because

when I use myself, I can play so that every single picture is completely different.

I wanted to make pictures 
that were really big, really in your face.

Before I even shot anything, I thought, "I 
want to make a show of really big pictures," Because

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

a picture as big as the entire wall of the gallery.

It just seemed like such a big egotistical thing. And I thought,

"I don't know that many women that
really do that." And I thought,

"Damn it, I’m gonna do that, make this really big picture." So

yeah, that was kind of part of it too.

- See you guys.
Bye.

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