Cindy Sherman

At 70 years old, Cindy Sherman has this physical status:

Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose body is mainly made up of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in a variety of contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough film "Complete Untitled Film Stills" is a series of 70 black-and-white photographs of her self in many of the roles of female artists in performance media (particularly arthouse films and popular B-movies).

Sherman used color film and large prints in the 1980s and 1980s, and he honed more on costume, lighting, and facial expression. Sherman was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995.

She received an honorary doctorate degree from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2013.

Early life and education

Sherman was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, on January 19, 1954, the youngest of Dorothy and Charles Sherman's five children. Her family and her family immigrated to Huntington, Long Island, just short of her birth. Her father was an engineer for Grumman Aircraft. Her mother teaches reading to children who have learning difficulties. Sherman has described her mother as "better than fine" and her father as strict and cruel. She was born Episcopalian.

Sherman was an artist who enrolled in the Buffalo State College visual arts department, where she began painting. She began to investigate the concepts that would have made her career a success: She dressed herself as different characters cobbled together from thrift-store clothing during this period. She dropped painting as a medium of art after being dissatisfied with what she saw as the flaws of painting as a medium of art. "There was nothing more to say [through painting]," she recalled. "I was painstakingly copying other works of art, but then I realized that I should just use a camera and turn my attention into an idea rather." "One of the reasons I started photographing myself was that, in the spring, one of my instructors would take the class outside to a place near Buffalo where everyone romps around without clothes on and snaps of each other." I thought, 'Oh, I don't want to do this.' However, we shouldn't have to go to the woods, so we might as well prepare early.' The remainder of her college experience was concentrated on photography. Though Sherman missed a mandatory photography class as a freshman, she resurrects the course with Barbara Jo Revelle, whom she credited with introducing her to experimental art and other contemporary styles. Robert Longo, a fellow artist who encouraged her to record her process of "dolling up" for parties, was a common occurrence at college. This was the start of her Untitled Film Still collection.

Hallwalls, an arts center established in 1974 as a space that would welcome artists from diverse backgrounds, was created by Margaret Dwyer, Longo, Charles Clough, and Nancy Dwyer. Sherman was also exposed to contemporary art on display at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the two Buffalo campuses of the SUNY school system, Media Studies Buffalo, and the Center for Exploratory and Perpetutive Arts in Lewiston, N.Y.

Sherman encountered Hannah Wilke, Eleanor Antin, and Adrian Piper's photo-based experimental works in Buffalo. Sherman is considered a member of the Pictures Generation, alongside musicians Laurie Simmons, Louise Lawler, and Barbara Kruger.

Personal life

Sherman worked with fellow artist Robert Longo from 1974 to 1980, when they separated. Sherman married director Michel Auder in 1984, giving her stepmother and Auder's daughter Alexandra and her half-sister Gaby Hoffmann. They divorced in 1999. She had a friendship with artist David Byrne from 2007 to 2011. She lived in a fifth-floor co-op loft in 84 Mercer Street in Manhattan's Soho neighborhood from 1991 to 2005; she later sold it to actor Hank Azaria. In West Soho, she purchased two floors in a 10-story condo building overlooking the Hudson River and using one as her apartment and the other as her studio and office.

Sherman had spent her summers in the Catskill Mountains for a long time. Marvin Hamlisch, a songwriter, purchased a 4,200-square-foot home on 0.4 acres in Sag Harbor for $1.5 million in 2000. On Accabonac Harbor in East Hampton, New York, she later purchased a nineteenth-century home on a ten-acre waterfront property.

Sherman is a member of the American Academy of the Arts' artistic advisory committee and on the Artists Committee of the New York City Corporation. She and David Byrne were a member of the Estoril Film Festival jury in 2009.

She joined Yoko Ono and nearly 150 others in the establishment of Artists Against Fracking, a resistance to hydraulic fracturing to extract gas from underground deposits.

Sherman has expressed contempt for social media pages, calling them "so vulgar." However, she does have a fan page on Instagram of her selfies.

Source

Awards and other recognition

• 1981: Artist-in-residence, Light Work, Syracuse, New York
• 1995: MacArthur Fellowship. This fellowship grants $500,000 over five years, no strings attached, to important scholars in a wide range of fields, to encourage their future creative work.
• 1993: Larry Aldrich Foundation Award
• 1997: Wolfgang Hahn Prize
• 1999: Hasselblad Award from the Hasselblad Foundation
• 2001: National Arts Award
• 2005: Guild Hall Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Arts
• 2003: American Academy of Arts and Sciences Award
• 2009: Jewish Museum's Man Ray Award
• 2010: Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Arts, London
• 2012: Roswitha Haftmann Prize
• 2012: Honored by actor Steve Martin at the 10th anniversary Gala in the Garden at the Hammer Museum
• 2012: Sherman was among the artists whose works were given as trophies to the filmmakers of winning pictures in the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival's jury competitions
• 2013: Honorary doctorate degree from the Royal College of Art, London
• 2017: Induction into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum
• 2020: Wolf Prize in Art