Regrettably I am confused and disappointed with Cindy Sherman's new large photographs at Metro Pictures Gallery. I realize that these photographs deal with artifice and the way "women of a certain age" were portrayed by Hollywood in the 1920's - ie: Gloria Swanson - the eyebrows penciled on - thin and hard etched into one's forehead with the precision of a knife and thereby erasing their humanity. Is Sherman indicting the power of the Motion Pictures Industry to set standards and tastes of that era and relegating the older woman to an object of derision? Or is she perpetuating those earlier myths?
Focusing on the theatricality of this particular "look" and ignoring Hollywood's other cliched portrayal of older women as homemakers, nurturers and loving grandmothers Sherman chooses to portray "glamorous" older women with a feline appearance - one that depicts aging as a process that invokes ridicule. The backgrounds that are intentionally photoshopped behind the figures are selected from movies and help to accentuate the contrivance.
These are powerful images, but they are also a one-note broad brush portrait of a generation. Each character is Cindy Sherman made up by professionals with different wigs and prosthetics, her altered appearances lit by expertsfrom the Industry - yet there was a sameness to every piece that I attributed to simplistic alterations to the make up - the sensuality of the mouth reduced to changing the curves of the upper lip, morphing from heart shape to pointy triangles; the eyebrows thin - some shorter some lengthened to accentuate eyes that felt vacant and brittle.
There is a poignancy to these images but it demands a commitment to digging behind the curtain of artfulness.
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