Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is among the most influential artists of her generation. Using herself as model, wearing a range of costumes and portraying herself in invented situations, she interrogates the imagery employed by the mass media, popular culture and fine art. Television, advertising, magazines, fashion and Old Master paintings all form part of her visual language.

Whether using make-up, costumes, props and prosthetics to manipulate her own appearance, or devising elaborate tableaux, her entire body of 40 years’ work constitutes a highly distinctive response to contemporary and earlier culture, whose stylistic tropes she appropriates and quotes. This book will explore the rich cultural sources that Sherman plunders in creating provocative and ambiguous images that lead us to question the things we see.

Cindy Sherman considers Cindy Sherman's oeuvre through the lens of portraiture. Featuring key examples of her work - from her earliest photographs through to her most recent - it explores the mercurial relationship between appearance and reality.

Cindy Sherman was published to accompany the exhibition organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London in collaboration with the Vancouver Art Gallery:

National Portrait Gallery, London: 27 June to 15 September 2019
Vancouver Art Gallery: 26 October 2019 to 8 March 2020
Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris: 1 April 2020 to August 2020

Edited by Paul Moorhouse and Amelia Collins
Essays by Nicholas Cullinan (Director's Foreword); Erika Balsom (In the Company of Images: Untitled Film Stills); Magda Keaney (Cindy Sherman's Fashion Pictures) and Rochelle Steiner (The Digital Divide)