Nov
9
Response #2: “Disasters” as The Breaking Point
November 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
- Peter Zimmerman
You write, “I see the portrait as the framing of the human face within a 2-D plane, using the artist’s own emotive reading of the face in order to create a sense of the sitter.” I feel this coding of the portrait verges on the archaic, thereby not allowing for more plastic conceptions [...]
Oct
5
A Potential Third Dimension? Cindy Sherman In Between Modernism and Postmodernism
October 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment
by Peter Zimmerman
The following essay is based on a reading of a 1981 feature by Andy Grundberg on the work of Cindy Sherman:
Cindy Sherman: A Playful and Political Post-Modernist
By Andy Grundberg
Published November 22, 1981
Grundberg, in opening his article on Cindy Sherman, presents a broad look at the history of Modernist photography. He claims that the [...]
Sep
30
Photographic Analysis: “Untitled #72″ (1980)
September 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Cindy Sherman, “Untitled #72″ (1980)
by Peter Zimmerman
In 1980, Cindy Sherman chose to finish the Untitled Film Stills series, feeling that she had exhausted much of her subject material and had begun repeating herself. Because the photographs evoke such great nostalgia for the 1950s, mysterious European film stars, urban lifestyle, and stylized cinematic expanses, Sherman was [...]
Sep
19
The Liminal Space
September 19, 2008 | 1 Comment
- Peter
In Victor Turner’s investigation of ritual practices among the Ndembu of Rhodesia (modern-day Zambia), he theorizes that ritual follows a specific sequence of events for a subject within an ideological and cultural structure. He utilizes Arnold van Gennep’s theory of the “ritual process” found in his article “The Rites of Passage,” which breaks ritual [...]
Sep
14
Eyes Wide Shut: First Look at Cindy
September 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
~Joan Bowlen
American society loves to be terrified. Nothing seems to get the public more excited than to continually consume books, movies, and interactive entertainment which instill a sense of fear and heart-pounding doom. One delights in the ability to partake of another’s terror, to throw oneself into another’s plight all the while secure in [...]