For the Artist’s Questionnaire series, T asks a creative person a set of questions about everything from their earliest works to their daily routine.
The artist Cindy Sherman gazes into the eyes of a mannequin head perched on a tripod. Then she takes the head into her hands like Hamlet with Yorick’s skull. She’s dressed in a loose white T-shirt, baggy gray jeans and white leather Prada sneakers, posing for the photographer Emiliano Granado in her Lower Manhattan home studio. Granado asks her if she wants to appear in the photos as “herself.” Sherman isn’t wearing any makeup or covering her silver hair with a wig. But, gazing into a mirror, she subtly shifts her expressions — raising her eyebrows theatrically or fixing her eyes on the middle distance — to try out a few roles. “It’s hard being yourself,” she says, as the lights flash across her face. “It’s much easier being someone else.”
Sherman, 71, has played hundreds of characters over her more than 50-year career, which is currently the subject of a survey at Hauser & Wirth’s gallery on the Spanish island of Minorca. She’s photographed herself in the guises of clowns, flappers, monsters and society ladies, using prosthetics, elaborate backgrounds and digital interventions that allow for her to appear multiple times in one frame. She began making experimental black-and-white self-portraits in the early 1970s, when she was an undergraduate art student at Buffalo State University (then known as Buffalo State College). In the first six photographs of her “Untitled Film Stills” series (1977-80) she posed as a blond starlet in scenes that look like publicity shots for a noirish B-movie.
When she and the artist Robert Longo, her boyfriend at the time, moved to New York, she expanded her repertoire of wigs, costumes and city backdrops, staging vignettes that were recognizable from Hollywood but curiously untethered to any specific narrative. Eventually she made 70 “Film Stills,” some of which would be included in a 1978 group exhibition at the downtown alternative gallery Artists Space, where she also worked as a receptionist. Her 8-by-10-inch prints, which Sherman has said she wanted to seem “trashy,” sold for a modest $50 apiece and at first confounded traditional photography critics. Yet the series was soon lauded as a landmark of contemporary photography, and Sherman as one of the world’s most influential artists. Coinciding with the rise of gender theory and performance art, “her work launched a thousand dissertations,” as the curator Douglas Eklund has written. In 1996, when the Museum of Modern Art acquired the series, the total price was rumored to be $1 million.
In our conversation, Sherman is precise and plain-spoken. Her studio, part of a duplex loft she purchased nearly twenty years ago, is open and bright, with tall windows, a narrow balcony and rolling chrome racks of costumes. (Sherman also has a home in East Hampton, N.Y., and a studio there, which she uses less frequently.) Her tables are covered with foam wig heads displaying assorted hairpieces and hats. Floor-to-ceiling shelves are filled with hundreds of vinyl records and books, including a compendium of wax studies of the human body and monographs on the midcentury Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti and the erotic illustrator Tom of Finland.
On her walls are snapshots of paintings she saw at museums; midcentury photographs of musclemen; a plastic package of adhesive eyebrows variously labeled Unibrow, Angry Scotsman and Grandma; a framed picture of the model and Bond girl Ursula Andress at a black-tie dinner; and a printed email from 2016 listing the New York locations of the secondhand clothing store Buffalo Exchange. (She used to source her costumes from the Salvation Army and flea markets in New York and Paris, but, she says, most of those are now “picked over.”)
High above Sherman’s desk hang what appear to be three framed 8-by-10-inch prints from the “Untitled Film Stills.” I was surprised that such valuable prints would be exposed to so much natural light. No, she corrects me with a laugh, they’re fakes made by her stepdaughter, the actress Gaby Hoffmann. She then gestures to a grid of cheerful color prints pinned to the wall opposite her. They’re conventional studio portraits of middle-aged women, each watermarked “© Cindy Sherman Photography 2010.” They were made by another Cindy Sherman, who based in Boise, Idaho. Sherman discovered the studio online and thought that Idaho Cindy’s work looked like some of her own. Sherman doesn’t have any of her own pictures on the walls. Instead, she works under the gaze of these uncanny images — fitting for an artist who’s made a career of exploring the slipperiness of selfhood.
Below, Sherman answers T’s Artist’s Questionnaire.
What’s your day like? What’s your usual work schedule?
I have to do some puzzles in the morning for about an hour before I can even get out of bed. I play Wordle. I have a lazy morning reading the paper — I like a physical paper rather than digital — and I do more puzzles in the paper. And then I usually go to the gym, at least three times a week. My workday doesn’t really start until about 2 p.m. and it ends at maybe 8 or 9 p.m. I used to work until much later. I haven’t actually shot anything in over a year and a half. I’m just dying to get back to work.
What’s the first piece of art that you ever made?
The first thing that I really felt was my art was a series of pictures I did of myself that replicated a photo booth [“Untitled #479,” 1975]. [I went from wearing] no makeup at all to gradually, in each one, adding a little makeup. At the end, I’m vamping.
How did you know that was the first?
From other people’s responses. I could tell they genuinely thought it was interesting, and I did too. Something clicked in my head; I realized, Oh, this is this is what I’m going to be doing.
What’s the worst studio you ever had?
It’s hard to say it was the worst, but the funkiest one I ever had was my college bedroom, which was just a big old room in a warehouse in Buffalo. When it wasn’t my bedroom, it was my studio. There was another little room across the hall that, when it wasn’t occupied, was also my studio, but it had no windows. No furniture.
What was the first work you ever sold?
When I had my first show at Artists Space, a group show, some uptown ladies came in and wanted to bargain me down from $50 to $45 for some “Film Stills.”
You agreed to $45?
I was like, “Sure, why not?” You know, what’s five bucks?
Did you feel exhilarated that you sold some art from the show?
It certainly wasn’t a windfall!
When you start a new piece or series, where do you begin?
I think of wigs and costumes that’ll help define the character. When I did the “Flappers” series (2016-18), those wigs had to be very specific to look like they were from that [1920s] time period.
How do you know when you’re done with a work or series?
I just feel kind of sick of it. My brain is done with it; I don’t want to go there anymore. That can be because I’ve started repeating myself with imagery.
Do you ever work with assistants?
Never. I tried a couple times, and I’ve even had a friend or a relative model for me. But I was too concerned with their time. Are you having a good time? Can I get you some water? Are you hungry? Do you want to take a break? I wasn’t being myself. I’m freer when I’m alone, and I take more chances. Living and working in the same place is convenient for that because I can go make myself a coffee or space out or look at a magazine for a while and then come back fresh.
What music do you play when you’re making art?
Alternative progressive, almost danceable music, like [the synth-pop and experimental pop bands] Hot Chip and Animal Collective and vintage stuff from [the 1980s Scottish band] Orange Juice and [the English rock group] Shriekback. Classical wouldn’t do it for me.
When did you first feel comfortable saying that you’re a professional artist? Was it when you began working at Artists Space?
Around that time. Once you start meeting other young people who are like you and calling themselves artists, it’s easier to say, “OK, then I’m an artist too.” It’s not so embarrassing, and you don’t feel like you’re faking it.
What’s the weirdest object in your studio?
Wow, it’s hard to choose. I have this old Coke bottle. It’s a sealed bottle, but it’s not Coke that’s inside. I got it at the Pasadena [Calif.] flea market 30 years ago. It used to be that when you shook it, it looked like there was mercury in it. Now if you shake it, it just looks like sludge.
I’m drawn to the set of costume eyebrows.
[They’re from] this great store in Japan called Tokyo Hands. Next to them is a scraper, to scrape the wax out of your ear. It’s a real thing, also from Japan.
What do you do when you’re procrastinating?
I’m a terrible procrastinator. When I go [to East Hampton], it’s a huge distraction. I’m hanging out in my garden, harvesting things, cutting flowers, making bouquets, hanging out with my chickens. Also, I love puzzles. If I really want to waste my whole weekend, I’ll open up a jigsaw puzzle.
I wonder if there’s a Cindy Sherman jigsaw puzzle out there somewhere.
I’ve given some [custom ones] to people as gifts through this company called Liberty Puzzles. They’re wooden and have incredibly intricate cutout pieces.
What’s the last thing that made you cry?
This video that I probably saw on Instagram of these three little boys who are dressed up as the Bee Gees, and they’re singing for some kind of “The Voice” show in Europe. They’re spot-on for the Bee Gees because they already have that falsetto voice. One of them is kind of bald. Another one has a mustache. It’s angelic.
What do you usually wear when you work?
It doesn’t really matter what I’m wearing, because I’m probably going to take it off and put on something else.
What embarrasses you?
Going to an opening makes me feel self-conscious sometimes. I do get a sense that I stand out. But that could also be because I’m usually the oldest person in the room! Everybody is so much younger these days.
What are you reading?
A book of short stories by Ottessa Moshfegh, [“Homesick for Another World” (2017)]. I’ve read her books “Lapvona” (2022) and “Eileen” (2015), and I started the one where the main character falls asleep [“My Year of Rest and Relaxation” (2018)].
What’s your favorite artwork by someone else?
Anything of [Francisco] Goya’s. He’s one of my heroes. Or [Marcel] Duchamp.
Whose work makes you most jealous?
Sometimes I get jealous of photographers that have assistants, because it’d make so much more sense if I had somebody to hold the camera. I’m also jealous of a writer who, in my mind, could write anywhere. You could take a vacation and still be working and writing. I’d love to be able to just immediately start creating things. But with photography, it’s so much more complicated. You can’t just use your fingers and make something. I’ve got to do the lights, and then I have to do the makeup.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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