lemmon_the sherman phenomena
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THE SHERMAN PHENOMENA:
The Image of Theory or
A Foreclosure of Dialectical Reasoning?
By Nadine Lemmon
In the early 80s, as theoretical models were being developed to address the
perplexing issues raised by postmodern culture, Cindy Shermans work was
adopted by theorists as the visual manifestation of theoretical tenets.
However, if examined closely, these developing theories often served to
foreclose dialectical reasoning and critical questioning of Shermans work
instead of opening it up.
Although Sherman is often heralded as the quintessential postmodern
artist, the modernist tendencies of her work coupled with the critics inability
to confront the ambiguity of her work, have rendered her postmodern label
problematic. Postmodern theory advocates a deconstruction of the power
structures embedded in late capitalist society. But Shermans work functions
seamlessly (and successfully) within the market strategies of the 80s, typified
by corporate control of museums and market control of galleries. Given that
her work can be read as both a challenge to the art market and a creative,
marketable product, the boundary between postmodern critique of the
market and marketability has clearly been eroded. While critics applaud
Shermans work for deconstructively denying the totality of a real Cindy, the
meaning of her work is dependent upon the concept of the celebrity Cindy.
Simultaneously, critics partially negate her deconstruction, mythologizing
her as the autonomous artist-genius, harkening back to the modernist
heroization of the creative individual. On one level, Shermans work appears
to be subversively linked to low art characterized by b-grade film and
photography, on another level, her work is fetishized as the modernist ideal
of the high' art object.
Most disturbingly, and I shall concentrate on this point, Sherman has been
heralded as the subversive feminist that has boldly confronted issues
concerning the female body. This is a very debatable position, a position not
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necessarily supported by Shermans images or interviews. What is very clear
about this position is that it reflects critics desire for a visual example of
their theories. The following excerpts from my 1993-1994 articles
inDiscourse, Perspektif, and San Francisco Camerawork1 trace the often
precarious use of Shermans images to support postmodern theories of
visuality.
-----------------------
The theory of the gaze is probably the most important issue relevant to
Shermans work. It is definitely the most controversial. Critics have radically
divergent opinions as to whether Sherman replicates or deconstructs
oppressive ways of seeing.
Many critics feel that since Sherman poses and takes pictures of herself, she
is in control of her image. According to Lisa Phillips in the Whitney
catalogue:
because Sherman is both the subject and object of these fictions, actress and
director, image and author, she takes control of the dynamic that regulates
desire... she deflects the gaze of desire away from her body toward
reproduction itself, forcing the viewers to recognize their own
conditioning.2
And yet in the same catalogue, Peter Schjeldahls statements seem to
contradict this thesis:
As a male, I also find these pictures sentimentally, charmingly, and
sometimes pretty fiercely erotic: I'm in love again with every look at the
insecure blonde in the nighttime city. I am responding to Shermans knack,
shared with many movie actresses, of projecting feminine vulnerability,
thereby triggering (masculine) urges to ravish and/or to protect. But it is the
frame, with its exciting safety, that makes my response possible. 3
Schjeldahls comments, combining voyeurism with an undisguised (male)
desire for dominance (insecure blonde, feminine vulnerability, ravish,
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protect) lucidly show that Sherman mightnot have vdeflected the male
gaze, but rather, provoked it.
Mira Schor, one of Sherman's few critics, takes the exact opposite position to
Phillips in reference to the gaze. She states that Shermans
negative representations are disturbingly close to the way men have
traditionally experienced or fantasized women. Shermans camera is male.
Her images are successful partly because they do not threaten phallocracy,
they reiterate and confirm it. 4
Irony and parody through double mimesis seem to be the keys that
distinguish Shermans work as critical. 5 How does one differentiate between
ironic double mimesis and replication of oppressiveness? In Sherman's work,
the viewer is left to differentiate between the two. As Martha Rosler notes,
irony is not accessible to everyone. For those without a pre-existent critical
relation to the material, the [mimesis] seems a slicked-up version of the
original, a new commodity.6 The contradictory responses to Shermans work
throws into question the level of sophistication and the effectiveness of her
critique.
Some critics have stretched the boundaries of theory in order to image
Sherman as progressive. In reference to the Film Stills, Craig Owens
acknowledges that the spectator posited by this work is invariably male but
that Shermans work denies the male desire (specifically, the masculine
desire to fix the woman in a stable and stabilizing identity) because
Sherman does not portray one identity but many.7 However, I would argue
that almost all of the identities that Sherman portrays fit into the already
existing stereotypes of woman that serve to fulfill male desire. Hence,
Sherman may be fulfilling the males desires for fixity itself.
Judith Williamson implies that the viewer is guilty for the negative readings
of Shermans images. In a way, it [Shermans constructed image of
woman] is innocent; you supply the femininity simply through social and
cultural knowledge. Referring to the reaction of a gallery visitor who
criticized Sherman for presenting women as sex objects, Williamson
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concludes: I was certain his anger must have come from a sense of his own
involvement, the way those images speak not only to him but from him --
and he kept blaming Sherman herself for it, deflecting his sexism onto her, as
if she really were a bit of a whore.8 Though this is a tempting argument, it
essentially alleviates the responsibility any producer has for any production
of meaning. Williamson appears to believe that if an artist utilizes signs that
are laden with constructed meanings in a public realm, it is the receiver that
is primarily responsible for the production of meaning. Doesnt Sherman
control the viewing context, the targeted audience, and, most importantly,
the juxtaposition and composition of signs? Are Sherman and her work
innocent?
While discussing Shermans horizontal series (a controversial series inspired
by porno magazines), Rosalind Krauss gyrates into a discussion of the
fetishization of the vertical. She mentions the psychoanalytic use of vertical
metaphors (the phallus, the fetish, the Lacanian mirror stage) as well as the
art historical and visual dependence upon verticality (paintings hung on the
vertical axis, and vision represented from a standing position). Krauss states
that, like Jackson Pollock, Sherman disturbs this verticality by using a
downward camera angle in her photographs. Yes, the angle makes one
aware of the horizontal, but it also emphasizes the vertical
(power/domination) position of the viewer in relation to the apparent
weakness of the horizontally inclined woman (Sherman). It is revealing that
Krauss barely mentions the porn inspiration for these images. Theory has
enabled Krauss to agilely cover up the sticky issues raised by this series.
Michael Brenson concludes that Shermans figures in familiar pornographicpositions have a consciousness or emotional expressiveness that prevents
them from being perceived as sexual objects. 9Yet, how is this
consciousness or emotional expressiveness perceived? Clearly, the
opposite conclusion could be derived from the symbolic structure of the
womans gestures and facial expressions, and through the visual technique
used in the image. Therefore, this perception must be grounded in the
viewers cognitive position. The fact that these images are made by a woman
(who has been critically linked to deconstruction) and that the images are
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exhibited in an art world context (historically linked with progressiveness),
the viewer can easily project his/her own desires for the subversion of the
gaze and the imaging of woman as sex object.
After the small bout of negative criticism on the horizontals, Sherman made
a shift in her work towards the grotesque. She comments that her next series,
the fairy tale images, shows just how wrong those people really
were. 10 Indeed, the women in the fairy tale and fashion series no longer
show the passive/vulnerable woman. However, she is replaced by the demon,
the witch, and the evil castrating woman -- that other stereotyped (male)
way of seeing women. To Mulvey, the hideousness of the fairy tale series
seems to personify the stuff of the unconscious itself.11 But whose
unconscious? The males unconscious who, according to psychoanalytic
theories, ultimately fears castration by the female? Jamey Gambrell feels
that Sherman seems to be venturing into an imaginative territory beyond
the confines of received ideas. 12 However, Shermans women are much
closer to an archetypal imaging of the castrating women than an imaging of
the woman that exists beyond the realm of received ideas.
In reference to Shermans 1985 & 1986 objects series which utilize the signs
of a de-idealized detritus of femininity (used cosmetics, torn clothing,
deformed bodyparts, blood, and vomit), Norman Bryson tries to argue that
Sherman is reaching towards a body that exists outside of discourse, a body
in the realm of the (Lacanian) Real. Since the Real, by definition, cannot be
represented, it must be accessed through other means -- like the abject, the
horror-object, the grotesque. Bryson feels that postmodernism's key
practitioners -- Sherman, David Lynch, and Joel-Peter Witkin [!?!] -- allattempt to approach this affect of the Real. However, I would argue that
these three aestheticize and, consequently, distance the Real, rather than
encounter it. For proximity to the Real, I would suggest that Bryson sit
through a performance by the screaming Diamanda Galas, or pour through
David Wojnarowiczs torrent of words, or stare at the electronic noise that
silently engulfed TV screens as smart bombs hit their targets -- truly a
horror that resists representation. Somewhere between Galas, Wojnarowicz,
and Schwarzkopf one can imagine that the Real exists...but in a photograph
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of Cindy with a mask on?
Michael Newman argues that in this series the mimesis appears to break
down or implode, and the conditions and limits of mimetic representation
are momentarily exposed. 13This concept seems exaggerated given that
Shermans images are still allegorically laden with the mimetic signifiers of
woman, and the linguistic structures of the photograph have not been
altered.
Newmans most interesting point (also made by Mulvey) is the correlation
between these images and Julia Kristevas theory of the abject in Powers of
Horror. Simplified, the abject is that which represents a threat to the
subject's constitution in a pre-conceived (and often confining) symbolic
realm; that which threatens the concept of a clean and proper body. It is
thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs
identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions,
rules. 14 Kristeva reads the abject politically as the initial step in the
rejection of the symbolic order and the reconstitution of the subject. By
connecting Sherman to Kristeva, Newman implies that Shermans series
could be read as the first step towards political empowerment; the first step
towards constituting the self apart from the confining language of
femininity. However, Shermans explanation of her transition to grotesque
images is very disillusioning: In a way, I was freed up because I just wanted
to be shocking.15
As Peter Burger notes, nothing loses its effectiveness more quickly than
shock. The repetitive use of shock as a strategy ultimately leads to
expected or institutionalized shock.16 Shermans potentially fruitful
exploration of the issues of identity and the abject is at risk of being
sacrificed at this altar of shock. Shermans work appears to be reduced to a
desire to catch the critics off guard. She states: The criticism, even if its
really good criticism, makes me realize, 'well, if thats the way they all think
its going, then Im going to take it this way.' 17
Amidst this torpor of critical contradictions, Sherman remains silent. Critics
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protect her unwillingness to discuss the issues raised by her work,
supplanting her responsibility for the production of meaning with that
pseudo-romantic quality, 'intuitiveness.' The result is a mystification of
silence as social power. Viewers project their desires onto the images,
transforming Sherman into whoever they want her to be.
Krauss states: I would like to think of Sherman in dialogue with...I imagine
her reflecting on.... Clearly, these comments are about Krauss desire. Krauss
states that instead of speaking, Sherman has constructed the interpretive
frames in which she is producing her work. For Krauss, Sherman situates
herself in the discursive horizon that is structured by other works, by critical
interpretations, and by Shermans friends. I would argue that association
with something does not imply a discursive relationship with it. Krauss does
not consider the fact that the discursive horizon is also structured by the
space of reception -- in Shermans case, an aestheticized, high-culture space
(such as Rizzoli and Metro Pictures) that has, in effect, silenced the work.
Sherman is inextricably situated in a history of womens silence--a silence
that has denied women power. How can one distinguish between Shermans
silence as political and Shermans silence as replicating this history of
repression? Critics readings of Shermans silence as political is based on the
assumption that Sherman is fully conscious of womens historical silence, an
assumption that is not substantiated by her interviews or, I would argue, her
work.
In conclusion, postmodern theory has been crucial to problematizing the
role of art, of aesthetics, of politics, and of the modernist hangover of the
autonomous artist. These ground-breaking (and challenging) theories that
have been essential to understanding and contending with late capitalist
society are hinted at by the signs in Shermans work: identity formation, the
masquerade, the gaze, mass culture, gender and sexual transgressions, etc.
However, the signs (or cliches) in Shermans work are so vaguely grounded
that they have become floating signifiers of meaning that can be molded to
the desire of the viewer, and need not necessarily challenge the viewers
ideological or political point of view. Plagued by an intense desire to
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advance a politics of visuality, critics tend to praise (instead of questioning)
Shermans politics. Postmodern theory, still in its nascent stages and still
unable to obtain a critical distance to analyze its own contradictions, has
come dangerously close to foreclosing extended dialectic reasoning and
replacing it with the totality of theory. The Sherman Phenomena is an
alarming symbol of our current cultural and critical situation.
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