Cindy Sherman at MoMA – The Critics Speak

Cindy Sherman. Untitled Film Still #56. 1980. Gelatin silver print, 6 3/8 x 9 7/16? (16.2 x 24 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder in memory of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd © 2012 Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman. Untitled Film Still #56. 1980. Gelatin silver print, 6 3/8 x 9 7/16? (16.2 x 24 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder in memory of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd © 2012 Cindy Sherman

 

As the reviews come out, Cindy Sherman’s retrospective at MoMA (open Feb 26 – June 11) seems set to break ‘best-loved show’ records.  Universal critical adoration usually arouses suspicion of cliquish agreeability.  But Sherman takes the very notion of conformity to fashion and self-presentation -negotiated through society’s expectations – as her subject matter.  Absurdity and grotesquery appear at every turn in this show, making Sherman an uber-critic whose acuity forces the following homages from New York’s major cultural commentators:

Roberta Smith, New York Times:

Though Smith takes umbrage with the show’s selection and non-chronological arrangement, calling it “magnificent if somewhat flawed,” Sherman herself is “…an increasingly vehement avenging angel waging a kind of war with the camera, using it to expose what might be called both the tyranny and the inner lives of images, especially the images of women that bombard and shape all of us at every turn.”

Cindy Sherman. Untitled #463. 2007-08. Chromogenic color print, 68 5/8 x 6? (174.2 x 182.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman. Untitled #463. 2007-08. Chromogenic color print, 68 5/8 x 6? (174.2 x 182.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman

Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine:

Saltz also gives Sherman fighting cred, calling her “…a warrior artist – one who has won her battles so decisively that I can’t imagine anyone ever again embarking on a lifetime of self-portraiture without coming up against her.”  He adds, “I think of Cindy Sherman as an artist who only gets better.”

Cindy Sherman. Untitled #131. 1983. Chromogenic color print, 7? 10 3/4? x 45 1/4? (240.7 x 114.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman. Untitled #131. 1983. Chromogenic color print, 7? 10 3/4? x 45 1/4? (240.7 x 114.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman

Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker:

Schjeldahl affords Sherman the highest praise, saying, “The mysteries are irreducible…they qualify Sherman, to my mind, as the strongest and finest American artist of her time.”  Pointing out that delusion allows a disconnect between “inner feeling” and “outer attributes” he adds that, “…Sherman makes hard, scary truths sustainable as only great artists can.”

Cindy Sherman. Untitled #183. 1988. Chromogenic color print, 38 x 22 3/4? (96.5 x 57.8 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman. Untitled #183. 1988. Chromogenic color print, 38 x 22 3/4? (96.5 x 57.8 cm). Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York © 2012 Cindy Sherman

Howard Halle, Time Out:

Halle calls the MoMA retrospective “…the best show I’ve seen there since the Gerhard Richter survey [in 2002], and probably the best exhibit I’ve seen anywhere in a while…The way I’d put it is that Sherman uses glamour and horror to send up and celebrate the feminine mystique, including her own. She quantifies and categorizes the notion of one’s appearance, which fashion also does. But unlike Anna Wintour, Sherman isn’t in the business of marketing the cultural; she’s in the business of laying it bare.”

Cindy Sherman at the Museum of Modern Art

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #466, 2008.
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #466, 2008.

The biggest surprise in Cindy Sherman’s major career retrospective, opening to previews today (and officially on Feb 26th) at the Museum of Modern Art, is that there are few surprises.  It testifies to Sherman’s stature and influence that so much of the work in the show – 171 photos from the 1977-80 Untitled Film stills to the most recent send-ups of society matrons – is so familiar that it’s hard to even find the critical distance to reconsider it.

What does emerge is Sherman’s consistent and merciless pillorying of character types from the fashion victim to the aging coquette in galleries arranged by series – history portraits, centerfolds, etc – or by theme – fashion, carnival, abjection.  By comparison, the Untitled Film Stills (appearing in their entirety) appear kind by virtue of their hidden fakery and purposefully glamorized subjects.

Grotesquery – not limited to the fairy tale or sex series – is a heavy component of most of the work, whether in the repellent muscles of a prosthetic cleavage or the big hair and garish makeup of a woman trying desperately to hang on to her looks.  Sherman’s caricatures let most of us off the hook – at least until we start wearing caftans to lounge around our loggias – by representing ‘other people’ who’ve lost their style compass.

Sherman’s early work – seen at the beginning and end of the show – belies such distancing, specifically a stop motion animated short film depicting Sherman as a paper doll who selects her own outfit only to be returned to her case by a giant hand.  The artist’s ‘hand of God’ is now aided by Photoshop, as she alters facial details like those on an 18 foot high mural at the gallery entrance.  But though technology lends Sherman the potential for serious distortion, she holds back, continuing to tweek the conventions of dress and representation to which we adhere to a greater or lesser degree.

Doug Wheeler at David Zwirner Gallery

Doug Wheeler, SA MI 75 DZ NY 12, 2012, photo courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery.
Doug Wheeler, SA MI 75 DZ NY 12, 2012, photo courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery.

Relational aesthetics took a beating last fall as critics decried participatory artworks like Carsten Holler’s three story slide at the New Museum and MoMA’s installation of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s free lunch.  The visitor’s physical experience is also key to Doug Wheeler’s installation which opened today at David Zwirner Gallery and recreates a 1975 piece made in Milan by the influential So Cal ‘Light and Space’ artist.  But the hushed environment, limited to ten people at a time and entered after donning white booties so as to keep the floor pristine, is all about aesthetics, and less about interrelating with your fellow gallery goers.

The lighting in the installation changes in intensity and color as it simulates the transitions from dawn to day to dusk, slowly revealing where the boundaries of the flat floored, egg-shaped room are.  But even in the strongest light, it’s a strain to make out where gallery wall ends and floor begins; only the toes can tell as you feel the floor’s upward slope.  The impulse is to find the spot where your senses are most confused.

Visitors who stayed in the gallery the longest this morning inched their way to the front and center of the installation and stood looking into an optical illusion – a space that appeared to extend to infinity.  The sensation was like peering into a deep fog or a snowstorm (under comfortable conditions) as my perception of space kept shifting to make sense of what I was seeing.

Wheeler’s installation recalls James Turrell’s installations, in which visitors approach a shape on the wall only to realize that it’s a rectangle of recessed light.  Here, the experience is more intimate – like entering into the space occupied by light rather than gazing in from the outside.  Uta Barth’s photographs of light come to mind, as do Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Nets but both treat light and infinity as more concrete subjects than Wheeler does with what he calls his ‘molecular mist.’  The scale and ambition of Wheeler’s project won’t be matched again soon in New York; catch it while you can and arrive early to avoid lines.

For more background, read Randy Kennedy’s Jan 15th NYT article.

 

Uta Barth, “…and to draw a bright, white line with light,” Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Uta Barth, ...and to draw a bright white line with light (Untitled 11.2), inkjet print, 2011.  Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.
Uta Barth, ...and to draw a bright white line with light (Untitled 11.2), inkjet print, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.

The centerpiece of Uta Barth’s latest solo show is a photo series depicting a continually morphing strip of light beneath her living-room curtains, a preposterously simple conceit which nevertheless yields complex optical illusions. As this diaphanous sliver shifts course over an afternoon, it variously resembles a snake, a line on an EKG or a trail of cigarette smoke, all the while transforming the space between the camera, the curtain and the window into an ambiguous territory where volumes flatten or swell, and light can pass for white paint.

Two glimpses of Barth’s hand arranging the curtain folds remind us of her agency, but it’s nature’s hand that propels the work’s attractively simple narrative as the sun’s changing position gradually increases the width of the band. At this time of year, as the onset of winter makes Barth’s invitation to contemplate sunlight especially attractive, the work entices us into the pleasures of solitary idleness that are at odds with the pace of everyday urban life.

In the back room, by comparison, a second group of photographs depicting built-in closets and drawers in the artist’s bedroom seems coldly architectural. Each image is emblazoned by squares or rectangles of light cast from an opposite window: One features a particularly bright patch that suggests celestial or alien visitation; another, a band of shadow over a door latch, creates the illusion that the surface of the print is scratched. But otherwise, the real drama of transformation takes place in the front gallery.

Originally published in Time Out New York, issue 839, Dec 1-7, 2001.

Paul Sietsema at Matthew Marks Gallery

Paul Sietsema, "Untitled figure/ground study (Degas/Obama)," 2011. Photograph courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

If it weren’t for the schooner by the doorway at Paul Sietsema’s first New York gallery solo, I’d have missed the boat.  Not-quite-right details reveal that what looks like an aged old photograph of a sailboat is in fact a meticulous drawing that demonstrates in a flash how painterly skill adds value and interest to an artwork.  In this otherwise aesthetically restrained but intellectually stimulating show, Sietsema allows trace evidence of his hand in pieces that look digitally produced or printed, questioning his own role as a craftsman in the digital age and floating an inconclusive but engaging argument that artistic survival means cleverly thwarting expectations.

In the past, Sietsema has exhibited films of sculptural objects; the drawings here allow us the intimacy to appreciate his handiwork.  Two untitled pieces resembling expressive abstractions in black ink also include depictions of bottles of Krylon ‘Short Cuts’ paint, humorously highlighting how Sietsema doesn’t take shortcuts in his labor intensive, cerebral, and non-emotive project.  At the bottom of one, the phrase “broken down and experimental…broken down beauty,” bespeaks the pleasure of piecing together Sietsema’s deconstructions.

Two pieces titled, ‘Painter’s Mussel’ refer to shells used to hold paint but show Sietsema flexing his intellectual muscle in complicated pictures of disassembled framed photographs drawn to resemble photographic negatives which appear to have been printed.  From the aged photograph of the boat and images that pit old technology (the brush) with new, to two pieces replicating the dated medium of newspaper pages (including an article on Obama reversing a Bush policy) Sietsema suggests that with passage of time ascendency fades – the smart artist adapts by working outside of traditional expectations.

Condensed version of this review published in Time Out New York, issue 815, June 2-8, 2011.