#i apologize if this post is a mess and my rant on sherman didnt make sense

[writeraquamarinara]

Thoughts on an artist you love? Alternately, thoughts on the false STEM vs humanities dichotomy? 💕💕

alternately?? strap yourself in, cuz you’re getting both

(this is gonna be long and I apologize. I’m on mobile and can’t figure out how to add a “read more” cut. I’ll try to keep it short by not adding any images of Sherman’s work—pls just google it if ur interested)

an artist I love but can criticize because you can enjoy imperfect content: Cindy Sherman

I wrote a 10 page paper on her this semester so I could truly talk about this for way too long but let’s try to keep it short and sweet.

Sherman came to prominence for her series Untitled Film Stills, which were self-portraits, even though she was playing a part in each one: the small, scared, feminine woman in film noir. the compositions look like they came straight from a movie, but they didn’t.

this is in the 70s, peak feminism, and everyone’s immediately hailing her the new feminist photographer. but men walking into the museum (who can later purchase these images individually to hang in their homes, and not see them as part of a critique of pop culture) feel protective of the figure—a critic writing in an expo brochure literally said that the images prompted him to want to overpower her (yikes).

so when do “subversive” images pointing out the stereotyping of women in film become just another part of the repertoire of stereotyped women on film? Sherman herself never made a statement about her intent, but rather let people see what they wanted to see.

so some people start questioning her work (is it really All That?) and she does a 180: let’s critique the other stereotype of women in pop culture. let’s depict the monstrous. let’s make body parts out of prosthetics and plastic. let’s depict death, and the abject, and disgust all of these critics, while simultaneously riding the psychoanalysis wave to get more people talking about my work.

(listen, I love her, so this is not to drag her. if anything, this is a critique of the art world and the way that women have to reinvent themselves and their work to get people to buy it. for example, Sherman’s photographs are displayed and sold at immense sizes, in order to justify the prices that her name now guarantees)

her photographs are super interesting, and an exploration of femininity as performance, of the mother as monstrous, of an exploration of the self through the other, etc. but they can also be criticized. her most recent photos of older women seem to be a critique of the ageist culture of the 21st century, but also a critique of the women who give into this culture and try to fit in.

one of her biggest missteps was a series of pictures in which she, iirc, is pretending to be waiting for the bus—in full blackface. that series is almost never shown, and I think I only found out about it through a journal article. it’s definitely not displayed on the MOMA’s website like her other work.

so yeah, we can love people’s work (as in I find it aesthetically pleasing or interesting, despite its problematics), but the people themselves? meh.

~~~

you’ve come to the right place for discourse on the STEM vs. humanities dichotomy!!

ur girl wrote her entire college essay on the falsehood of that dichotomy, and she’s now majoring in art history and organismal bio (not orgasmal, ria), so I guess I’m living proof.

psa: you can love both English and calc. you can love both physics and musical theatre. those subjects should not even be considered two different ends of a spectrum in the first place!

so don’t limit yourself! and fuck institutions that force you to limit yourself!

do I know how I’m gonna integrate art history and bio into a career in the “real world”? no. am I still gonna major in them because I enjoy them and honestly life is too short to pick one over the other? hell yeah