Cindy Sherman: History Portraits

Cindy Sherman’s work is structured into series, the best known of which are History Portraits and Untitled Film Stills (1977–1980), which led to Cindy Sherman’s artistic breakthrough. In History Portraits, the artist carries out radical transformations of Old Master paintings. Using make-up, cloth drapes, and prostheses, she photographs herself in the poses in which the Old Masters portrayed women.
Christa Schneider presents an art-historical analysis of the History Portraits. Identifying a clear model for every single portrait (e.g. Botticelli and Rubens, François Boucher and Jacques-Louis David), she reveals Sherman’s extremely precise and enigmatic method of working in which the artistic media employed by Sherman—photography and acting—are surprisingly compatible with painting.