Cindy Sherman
Fascinating exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of work by Cindy Sherman. Sherman uses herself, wigs and clothes to comment on contemporary society. I feared that as all the work was self-portraits it would feel quite self-centred but in fact using the same model, herself, anonymised the figure and made you look at the accessories and what they represented instead. I loved the early set of pictures called “Film Stills” in which created 70 pictures resembling film adverts from the 1940s to 1960s. Each one could have been a short story! Also the history pictures done when she was living in Rome which were pastiches of historic portrait styles. It was a lovely touch to have borrowed Madam Moitessier by Ingres from the National Gallery to show with them. The central gallery was a recreation of her studio using illusionistic photographs of the shelves covered in artefacts and wigs and the most recent works were murals which I wasn’t sure worked so well in the space....