Sherman's
Shadows:
Pictures of Corporeality and Religion
door Freda Dröes
|
Introduction
Beginning with the body, in the
work of the North-American
photographer Cindy Sherman (born 1954), means ending at transcendence. Through
her photographs, we can arrive at an understanding of the concept of
transcendence. In her photographs, she offers now playfully, now
seriously, an image of the transgressing of frontiers. These
representations of transcendence can be connected to religion in
different ways.
The
concept of religion, therefore, has a central function.'Religion' is an
ambiguous concept that has many interpretations. It is, however, possible
to make a rough distinction between definitions that focus on content and
those that are functional. The former clearly concentrate on the content
of religion. In the Western world, that content generally refers to
Christianity: a representation is religious when it refers to a
phenomenon from the Bible or the history of Christianity. Functional
definitions focus on the function of religion and have been given by Paul
Tillich, Jonneke Bekkenkamp, and Irmgard Busch. Paul Tillich defines
religion as 'the state of being ultimately concerned,' a state of
unconditional commitment to what is truly important. The function of
religion, states Bekkenkamp, is to give form, value, and direction to
people's lives. That which gives form, value, and direction to existence
belongs to the domain of religion and is source of theology. Bekkenkamp
makes this concrete by treating the Twenty-One Love Poems of Adrienne Rich as
source of theology, regarding theology as the hermeneutics of existence.
Busch
gives an adequate description of what characterises the use of religion
today, starting from the etymology of the word 'religion' and passing
through its genealogy. According to Busch, the word 'religion' may have
been derived from the Latin verbs religare and relegere. If
it stems from religare, it has the meaning of 'bind, bind
together, connect.' This is indeed the best known meaning associated with
religion. Unusually, her explanation does not relate to the positive
alone. Busch believes that this description can be interpreted both in a
positive and in a negative sense.
Religion, therefore, is a factor that creates
cohesion and solidarity within groups and societies. Within this
solidarity, god/goddess or divine force is experienced. Religion may also
destroy or impede cohesion and solidarity. In this form of religion, a
connection comes into existence through the acceptance of absolute truths
and texts and the submission to a higher power, which is called God.
The other meaning of religion has been repressed in our
culture and is therefore less well-known.
When derived from relegere, religion takes on the meaning of
'examine again, consider repeatedly, observe.' This too may be
interpreted in a positive and negative way.
Religion therefore has the meaning of
"conscientious". In this sense, religion is to know and to
discover what is good and bad. To know what is good and not acting
accordingly leads to an uneasy conscience (religio) that incites one to
new and different ways of acting. Thinking and acting conscientiously
leads to sincerity (religio) because it has consideration for variety and
respect and veneration (religio) may be felt. Religion may also impede a
conscientious life or even defend immoral behaviour. Here, it concerns [¼ ] obeying laws and orders from
authorities or from God himself.
The first definition can be subsumed under the notion
of 'the giving of meaning.' The other interpretation can be understood as
'the developing of conscience.' Both interpretations of religion as
meaning-giving and as conscience-developing are applicable to the work
of Sherman
while she seems to react to the negative influences: the loss of meaning
and immorality.
The purpose of the present contribution is to interpret
and clarify Cindy Sherman's work through the concept of religion, and to
concretise religion through the work of Cindy Sherman. The concept of
religion will be explored as follows: religion as manifestation; religion
as history; religion as the giving of meaning; and religion as the
development of conscience. Underlying this quest is the desire to speak
of religion in a secularised manner.
Cindy Sherman and her work
Writers around the world have devoted a number of books
and several hundreds of articles to Cindy Sherman's work. She has had a
number of travelling exhibitions in Europe.
The first of her European exhibitions was organised in the Netherlands
in 1982, at the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam. Els Barents introduced her
work here.
Feminist
art critics initially attacked Sherman
because her photographs of women depicted too many passive, vulnerable,
and beautiful women that lacked militantancy. Nowadays, her work is
regarded as highly modern. Rosemarie Buikema, Maaike Meijer, and Anneke
Smelik treat her work as an example of postmodern femininity: 'Sherman exhibits an
eerie but convincing perception of the ossified codes of femininity that
circulate in our culture.'
In the eyes of Buikema et al., Sherman uses post-modern stylistic devices to put those
ossified codes into question. Rosi Braidotti also tends to interpret Sherman's work that
way. She describes it as 'a perfect example of nomadic commitment to
historical essences, directed towards a shift in normative content'.
Braidotti,
therefore, regards it as an example of nomadic commitment - 'nomadic' because different kinds of
shift are central to the work, 'commitment' because these shifts contain
a political statement. In this respect she refers especially to an
exhibition of Sherman's
photographs reproduced in an art book called History Portraits
(1991). The book brings together the three themes central to the work
that lies before you, published by the Dutch research project Women's
Studies Theology: corporeality, religion, and gender. Before proceeding
to discuss History Portraits, I will describe Sherman's oeuvre to indicate the frame
within which History Portraits came into existence.
Cindy
Sherman's work consists of series of photographs that were created around
a certain theme. None of her individual photographs carries a title. With
a few exceptions, she did not give titles to any of the series either.
The exceptions are Film Stills and History Portraits, which
have also been published separately as books. Sherman does use working titles, on
which others have based the titles by which the series are now generally
known. Rosalind Krauss described Sherman's
work in chronological order and gave titles to the series in one of the
last catalogues for the special exhibition that was organised in Europe
in 1995-6 and travelled to Hamburg, Malmö,
and Luzern. These titles are Black and White (1975-80), Rear-Screen Projections (1980), Centerfolds
(1981), Pink Robes/Color Tests (1982), Fashion (1983-4), Disasters/Fairy Tales (1983-4), History Portraits (1989-90), Civil War (1991), and Sex
Pictures (1992-3).
After
the Sex Pictures, Sherman
made Horror Pictures (1994-5),
grotesque representations of metamorphoses and dislocations of (parts of)
the human face. Her last product is a horror movie or black comedy
entitled Office Killer that was shown at the Locarno Festival in Switzerland
during the summer of 1997. With a wink to Hitchcockâs celebrated movie Psycho,
Sherman makes a spiteful little office clerk murder her colleagues
horribly and hide them in her home, while her invalid mother does not
notices anything of all that is going on around her. Sherman plays with clichés of vicious
beasts of female managers. According to Hans Beerekamp, who also wrote
the above description, this film may easily become a classic.
The 'human' body, whether in the flesh or artificial,
is central to all of her series. She has made no photographs that do not
contain a 'human figure,' something human, or something that passes for
it. The 'human' body or parts of it appear in all kinds of ways. The
photographs usually represent a woman, but sometimes also a man, later
also excreta, blood, later still a monster or an alien. Male figures are
found mainly in History Portraits, and male dummies and human
monsters make their appearance in the more recent series Sex Pictures
and Horror Pictures. The body may be young or old. Until 1992, it
is adult and alone. Only in the Sex Pictures, when Sherman starts to
work with dummies, do we see a number of figures and even children's
figures.
Glancing
through the books that give an overview of her work, we can clearly
discern an evolution. I should like to characterise that evolution as one
that proceeds from the representation of beauty to the representation of
the atrocious, from whole women that are a delight to the eye to rubber
dummies of female body parts to monsters and aliens. Content-wise, the History Portraits are
situated exactly between beauty and atrocity.
Two more remarks should be added to this rough sketch.
In Sherman's
early work, we also find photographs that depict atrocity and violence
against women. In these, however, the beautiful still predominates. The
content of the later work is characterised by the themes of atrocity,
monstrosity, and violence, but Sherman
succeeds in depicting these through aesthetically beautiful pictures that
keep appearing before the mind's eye. Looking through the eyelashes and
thereby 'ignoring' content, one sees a beautiful composition, beautiful
colours - in short, a beautiful
photograph. This is why the images continue to present themselves to the
mind's eye. But I would not bring these photographs to your attention
were I not convinced - with
Braidotti, Buikema, Meijer and Smelik -
that the work they represent is ethical from the feminist and political
point of view. Sherman herself, in an interview with Wilfried Dickhoff,
states that she has no specific intention:
My intentions are neither feminist nor political. I
try to give my photographs some double meaning or ambiguity, which might
encourage a greater variety of interpretations.
She hopes, however, that she is not blind to the
falseness of things and illusions:
I want to create grotesque images that make all
kinds of interpretations possible and snare the beholder, that in the end
undermine even that strategy and show something that may not be reduced
further. That is, I am concerned simply to make good photographs that are
not, I hope, blind to the falseness of things and illusions, which they
may even only show apparently.
'Someone may be anybody¼'
The History Portraits occupy a position in
between the early beauty and the later atrocity depicted by the
photographer. For the first time, Sherman
uses plastic body parts; these are the only images that depict both real
bodies and plastic body parts. Thus, this series plays a bridging role in
Sherman's
work.
Sherman approaches
her subjects in a light, funny, ironical manner. 'High' art is knocked
off its pedestal. It is something of the past: history. Art historian
Christa Schneider, who devoted a book to the History Portraits,
believes that Sherman
elaborates on works of the past. Schneider thinks that Sherman stands on the shoulders of her
predecessors in painting and works with their concepts. However, I
believe that this interpretation is both too historical and too weighty.
Contrary to what Schneider contends, Sherman wants to liberate herself from
the past. She shows quite honestly that she has adapted the past. The
playful treatment of the past in the History Portraits and the
ironical manner in which she appropriates art history liberate the work
from the burden of the past. This puts it into perspective and makes it
light and exciting.
Schneider
indicates that the series consists of three parts. The first is Citoyennes,
Citoyens, which Sherman
made on the occasion of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989.
The second part consists of portraits, made in Rome in 1989, that reflect Renaissance
painting. In 1990, she staged an exhibition of these two series at her
own art gallery in New York.
It was extremely successful. On the first evening of the exhibition, all
the photographs were sold. Sherman
then created a third series, again based on Renaissance painting and
paintings from the seventeenth century. In 1991, she published a book,
entitled History Portraits, which contained all thirty-five photographs united into a single
series. Though the title may suggest that we are dealing with a
traditional art-historical term,
this is not the case. In fact, the phrase 'history portraits' does not
exist. Sherman
made up the phrase by analogy with the phrase 'history paintings', which
does exist. The series shows ladies and a number of gentlemen of noble
birth, religious figures, men and women who are involved in religious
life. The photographs remind one of famous paintings like the Mona
Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, the Hélène Fourment by Rubens, the Regentesses
of Frans Hals, the Madonna de Melun by Jean Fouquet; of the
style employed by these famous painters; of famous imagery such as the
head of Bacchus, Judith with a dagger in one hand and the head of
Holofernes in the other, Mary and child, or the preacher of penitence
Savonarola.
In her
work about the History Portraits, Schneider has examined part of
the references to other painters and paintings. It is incomprehensible
that she fails to make any reference to Leonardo's Mona Lisa and
discusses only the portraits of women and of the god Bacchus without any
further explanation. She does not say a word about the portraits of a
pope, a cardinal, a priest, and Savonarola. In addition, Schneider tends
to approach the History Portraits from the point of view of the
art historian. According to her, Sherman
places herself on the shoulders of painterly predecessors in producing
high-quality art. This is part of
it, but, more importantly, Sherman
engages her own self, a woman, in the portraits and emphasises the
artificiality of the whole enterprise.
I am
not interested in unravelling the precise intertextuality of these
images, but in something else. There is something the matter with all
these representations. There is something artificial about them: the
woman is a bad copy of the real Mona Lisa; the breast of Jean Fouquet's
Mary is made of plastic; Savonarola's nose has been pasted on; the pope's
balding head has been put on as some kind of strange wig, etc. Only the
priest, who wears a stola with embroidered cross and is seated behind a
chalice, seems real. And that arouses suspicion, because the
others do not seem real. I was surprised when I heard that hidden behind
all these representations, there is just one model - and that that one model happens to be
Mrs Sherman herself. The Mona Lisa, Mary, Savonarola, the priest, and
even the models that were depicted in the earlier series: Cindy Sherman
hides her own face behind all of them. Sherman herself does not attach
any importance to this fact. She has said that she uses herself as her
own model because it is easiest to work with herself, and she finds it
most irritating that people tend to conclude that these photographs
concern herself personally because she happens to be her own model. In the
above mentioned interview with Wilfried Dickhoff, she says
No, it does not concern me personally at all. I
work with myself, that is my material, if you will, but the finished
photograph hopefully has more to offer than just a reflection of my
'personality'. [¼] My
photographs are definitely not self-portraits
or representation of my self, although this, regretfully, is what is
constantly claimed.
Her photographs are definitely not self-portraits or representations of her
self, agrees Anne Karen de Boer in her article 'Het kwadraat van de
nabootsing.' However, I think it is highly significant that she uses only
one model, because that is how she demonstrates that 'someone can be
anybody and of all times': man and woman, young and old, blond, dark, and
anything in between. It's also significant that she is her own model
because as a photographer she imposes certain limits to her behaviour
upon herself. In the same way, she tolerates certain actions from herself
as a model. She does not permit herself everything. It is noteworthy in
this respect that Cindy Sherman does not expose her nudity in any of her
photographs beyon bare arms and legs.
In the
History Portraits, she does play with nudity. Bare breasts, for
example, are covered with plastic breasts. In her later work, we do see
naked body parts, breasts, vaginas, penises, but they belong to dummies.
There is not any live Sherman
body in the picture anymore. This is exactly where the work depicts sex,
sexual violence, and erotica. Apparently, she does not want to expose her
own body to all of her fantasies. It is in this context that the covering
of the breasts should be interpreted. There are boundaries to her being a
model, and these are not far removed from prudishness. At the same time,
the boundaries she imposes upon herself emphasise the issue of nudity: we
have become so used to it that we do not even see it anymore. A Mary with
an uncovered breast is a fairly common image in Roman Catholic churches,
but the Mary with plastic breast that was exhibited in a German Roman
Catholic church caused enormous commotion. It is amusing that churchgoers
thought the Mary with 'covered' breast offensive and accused Sherman of
sacrilege. Thus, Sherman
raises the question of what is considered offensive and what is
considered sacred. It is a theme that also characterises her later work.
Two
things are intriguing in the History Portraits: the penchant for
reality/realism and, at the same time, the artificiality of that realism.
There are as many as six levels of reality:
o
the photograph in the book History
Portraits,
o
the life-sized
photograph exhibited in the gallery,
o
the tableau vivant in the studio,
o
the painting or paintings to which the tableau
vivant refers,
o
the historical man or woman to which the
painting refers, and
o
behind all this, the knowledge/the belief
that Sherman
is the model in that tableau vivant.
All these realities are characterised by artifice; only
the last one is 'really real', more than a representation, but it is
exactly this one that cannot be seen. You just have to believe it. This
collection proves that a human being, in this case Cindy Sherman, can be
'everybody.' The repetitions of the depiction of herself as someone else,
time and again, give an impression of impersonality, of looking at
pictures of a woman that is in reality absent from the many images of
women that pass under review. Norman Bryson is led to conclude that no
central identity is to be discerned behind this formation of imagery. The
beholder will not take that, because she will ask herself more fervently,
'What does she really look like?', while at the same time realising that
this question is plain nonsense if put that way. Sherman therefore shows that 'in post-modern culture, it is not so much
identity per se that has been lost, but there no longer exists a
fixed identity from the cradle to the grave.'
Religious dimensions in Cindy Sherman's work
As far as I am aware, Cindy Sherman's work has not yet
been examined from the religious point of view. At first sight, it has
little or nothing to do with religion. There are very few photographs in
her series that depict religious imagery, and these can be counted on two
hands. Still, it seems most obvious to start just there: with what is
most recognisable. I will describe how, in her work, religion is to be
found as manifestation and as history, as giving meaning to life and as
developing conscience.
Religion as manifestation
Religion as manifestation can be understood as 'the
reproduction of religious, mostly Christian signs, symbols, and/or themes
within or outside of a religious, Christian context.'
Christian families often hang a cross on the wall of
their living rooms: a Protestant family will have one without corpus,
Catholics will have one with corpus, a crucifix. The Cross, one might
say, is 'part of the family'; it is tradition. People do not seem to
realise how morbid it is to hang a man dying on the Cross on the wall
above their buffets. Very often still, we encounter remnants of the
Christian religion that no longer refer to a commitment to Christianity
or to its content.
There
are, for example, many young people who carry a small cross as a piece of
jewellery without thus indicating, or wanting to indicate, that they are
Christians. Someone may have a statue of Mary or another saint in his or
her home. People use the tray that was passed through church for
collecting churchgoers' donations as an ashtray. These objects are
commonplace. Cindy Sherman depicts religion so very rarely. I will give a
single example (see picture below).
In Untitled Film Still # 15, 1978, we see a
young woman sitting on the windowsill, one bare leg pulled up, one
hanging down. She wears white socks and black high heels, shorts, a top
with a plunging neckline, and between the breasts, sure enough, the
cross. The cross has no religious significance; it is just a piece of
jewellery. It does not refer to a Christian existence. Or is there more
to it?
Sherman gave the
image a title that refers to the world of filmmaking. It therefore
concerns a character from a film. It is a film still. Since the film
still is also entitled 'Untitled,' it is taken from a film that does not
exist. We are therefore talking about a non-existent,
fictitious character. We can discern a number of contradictions, shifts,
or rather tensions in the image of this character. The young woman sits
on the windowsill like a prostitute in the red-light district. This suggests a representation of window
prostitution. The onlooker, whore-hopper,
or voyeur, however, sees the woman in front of the window from within the
room, and not from the street. The woman is not concerned with him and
looks outside through the window. The cross and the wedding ring on her
right-hand finger are directed
towards the onlooker, whore-hopper,
or voyeur and refer to another existence. The idea of the character as a
prostitute in the red-light
district also conflicts with the fact that she is clearly looking down
into the street. The room is situated high up in the house. The street is
far below, which is not practical from the point of view of a prostitute.
There is also something odd about the room, of which we see only a
corner. It is a bare room, with a wooden floor. The walls are not
plastered. The bricks in one wall are painted white. The bricks in the
other wall are unpainted. There is one simple wooden chair in the room.
It is a very frugal environment. It might very well be a prisoner's cell
or a cell in a monastery. No, not a prisoner's
cell, for
the window is not barred. Monasteries also have these very thick walls,
like this room, creating windowsills that can serve as window-seats. The young woman, however, does
not look like a nun at all. The room suits the cross. The cross can be
worn with the wedding ring, for nuns wear wedding rings because they are
married to Christ. Is it possible that she has taken off her habit for a
while? No, she is certainly not a nun, because nuns do not wear high-heeled shoes. She is not a nun, but it
is not right to call her a prostitute either. More and more, the thought
arises that the cross belongs here, but the young woman does not. She also
looks away. Could she be a prisoner? Is she an illusionary image of the
onlooker? And the onlooker, who is he? Does he belong in the room? He is
clearly focusing his attention on the cross that appears at the centre of
the image, or on the breasts between which it is positioned. Is he a
pimp, a monk, a prison guard? And is he really a man? It might also be a
woman¼ What would that mean for
the interpretation of the image? The cross combined with the surroundings
and the onlooker cause the woman, whose face is turned away from us, to
become mysterious. Thus, I can interpret this representation in various
ways without solving the riddle. The cross is the catalyst in this story.
Religion as history
A more specialised form of religion as manifestation is
religion as history. Here, religion is seen as belonging to the past. It
does not have any current value or future. It is pure history. In Sherman's work,
religion seems to appear primarily as history. Most of the photographs
that refer to religion or religious persons are to be found in the History
Portraits. Out of thirty-five
history portraits, nine have a religious background. I will describe
these succinctly, also indicating to which paintings they are presumed to
refer:
Untitled # 207, 1989. A pope that
reminds me of a painting of Pope Leo X by Raphael (c. 1519). On that
painting, two cardinals stand behind the pope. Sherman has substituted two candles for
these men. This image also reminds me of another painting by Raphael, of
Cardinal Inghirami, because of the cord the subject wears around his
middle and his head covering.
Untitled # 210, 1989.
A priest, with stola and chalice. According to
some, it refers to a painting by Albrecht Dürer, others contend it refers
to a painting by Hans Holbein. It rather reminds me of a seventeenth-century Spanish painter.
Untitled # 215, 1989.
A cardinal with ring, rosary, and several crosses
on his robe.
Untitled # 216, 1989.
A Mary with child that refers to the Madonna de
Melun, created around 1450 by Jean Fouquet.
Untitled # 219, 1990. The preacher of penitence. I believe he must be
Savonarola, with his large nose and black head covering.
Untitled # 223, 1990.
A Mary with child that refers to the Madonna
Litta, created by one of the Leonardo school, 1490.
Untitled # 224, 1990.
A Bacchus, god of wine, which refers to two
paintings of Bacchus by Caravaggio, 1591 and 1594.
Untitled # 225, 1990.
A Mary lactans, i.e., a Mary without
child who gives milk. Schneider claims that this photograph does not
refer to Mary because there is no child, but to Simonetta Vespucci,
Giuliano de Medici's fiancée who was painted by Sandro Botticelli around
1490. It rather reminds me of the paintings in which Mary is depicted
offering milk to Bernard of Clairvaux.
Untitled # 228, 1990. Judith with the head of Holofernes, which reminds
one of the painting Judith with the head of Holofernes by Sandro
Botticelli, painted 1497-1500.
This is also the last photograph in the History
Portraits. The image has been reproduced here as an example of the History
Portraits, although it is not entirely typical because no plastic
parts have been added to the figure and Sherman does stand as a model for her
own sex. It is an interesting picture because one may link it to the Sex
Pictures.
The
subjects Sherman
has selected are mainly associated with Catholicism: three times a Mary
and four dignitaries from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, in
addiction to the Jewish woman Judith and the Greek god Bacchus. In the
interview that I mentioned before, Dickhoff asks Sherman whether she is Catholic,
because in the History Portraits she worked primarily with
Catholic images. Sherman
answered, 'No, but I know my way well in the realm of deceptions and
illusions.'
Sherman gives the
Roman Catholic church a taste of her own medicine. She too knows her way
around the realm of deceptions and illusions. Her game with the
metamorphoses proves that. In her eyes, Catholicism is about deceptions
and illusions. But her own work is also about deceptions and illusions.
I, therefore, assume that her affinity with Catholicism, which she
herself identifies, is more than just negative. The fact is that the
words 'deceptions and illusions' refer to the belief that truth and
reality do exist, for without these the designation 'deceptions
and illusions' would not make sense.
Christianity, or rather Catholicism, according to Sherman, belongs to
the past. Yet, Sherman's
photographs also offer a vision of the future: Mary, Mother of God and
the woman that refreshes spiritual men, seems to inspire her imagination.
It is not here that I discern a vision of the future, but the model,
Cindy Sherman herself, a woman, appears not just as Mary, but also as
preacher of penitence, a priest, a cardinal and a pope in the Catholic
church. She plays with the exclusion of women from these offices,
encouraging women to act with a sense of humour. On either side of these
high-churchly representations of
the authority within the Roman Catholic church, she chooses to depict a
Jewish woman and a Greek god. She has chosen to depict Judith. Judith is
a woman, a widow who murders the ruler Holofernes to save her
people. Hers is the story of an independent woman who kills an
authoritative man by deceiving him for a good purpose.
On the
other side, we find a representation of the man, Bacchus, the Greek god
of wine. Sherman
has retouched her muscles on this photograph. This is the story of a god,
a hedonist. All this is depicted through herself, a woman. Thus, women
represent authority, ethics and enjoyment, life and death.
Religion as giving meaning to life
A common description of religion is that 'Religion is
the fundamental consciousness that reality in all its diversity is
carried by some underlying unity, and that mankind is part of that unity.
To be religious, therefore, is to sense that one is connected with all
humanity and with all of history.'
This
interpretation of what religion is, in the sense of religare, is
often linked to Christianity. Sherman's
representations are far from being carried by a sense of unity; rather
they are characterised by a multitude of manifestations. Her reality is
one of depiction, of representation, the formation of images that are not
all beautiful. The only truly real thing that escapes representation is
her body - all the rest is
imagination.
Thus,
the thing that remains as reality is her body, and it has already been
noted that we are never shown it straightforwardly. The only thing that
is not artificial in her portraits, that is real, is Sherman's body. That is the
constant. But that body does not really show itself, it continuously
disappears behind the disguises she puts on. It is 'represented reality.'
After having seen all these different images in which she is the model,
one involuntarily thinks: 'But how does she really look, show me a
picture of what she really is.' So we do not really know what she
looks like, but we do 'know' -
or rather, we assume, trust, and believe -
that her body is really present in all those pictures.
The prominent
anthropologist Mircea Eliade developed an interesting theory in his
authoritative work Das Heilige und das Profane (1957). Eliade
argued that the desire of religious people to live within the sacred is,
in fact, the same as their desire to live in an objective reality. They
do not want to be absorbed in the relativity of subjective experiences.
They preeminently want to live in a real world and not in an illusion.
'The sacred is the purely real [¼ ] The desire of the religious
individual to live in the sacred is, in fact, synonymous with his desire
to place himself in objective reality, not to let himself be caught up in
the relativity of purely subjective experiences, to live in a real and
purposeful world - and not
in an illusion.'
Prior to reading Eliade, I would have thought that it
to be the other way around: the people who call themselves not religious
are the people who want to live in reality, not in an illusion like the
one constructed by religion. The religious, to them, is the unreal, the
imaginary. What Eliade contends is that the transition from religious to
nonreligious is gradual rather than sharp. An entirely profane existence,
according to Eliade, is an impossibility. He illustrates this with
uncountable examples. Even nonreligious people have a tendency to exhibit
religious behaviour. They, too, have special days, days that differ in
quality from others: their fortieth birthday, their wedding anniversary,
holidays. Such days are as special and unique to nonreligious people as
to religious people. And nonreligious people also have special places and
activities that bring variety into their lives. A nonreligious individual
is, thus, confronted with a reality that is different from what he or she
experiences in everyday life.
I will
proceed a step further on the basis of this theory. My hypothesis is that
if you know what is real, true, genuine to someone, you know what faith
or religion is to that person. That which the profane person feels to be
reality is, in fact, the religious in that person's perspective. To
Sherman that is her own body; all the rest is imagination. This means
that the religious is in the body or that the body, to her, has something
religious - it provides unity and
cohesion in her work. This hypothesis is supported by three further
aspects related to religion.
In the first place, the Sherman body is shrouded in
mysteries. So much variety and diversity exists in these portraits that
the question concerning the reality behind these pictures arises as by
itself: What does she really look like? Who is she really?
Secondly,
this Sherman body recedes under the weight of excess, dirtiness, and
gluttony. Gluttony, gula, is one of the seven cardinal sins. By
receding, I mean that the Sherman body is just visible on the photograph,
but only just. There is one photograph in which we can see the remnants
of a meal. The extinguished candles are dripping, the glasses are half-emptied and remnants of food are all
around. In the back, there is a faint figure with earring, barely discernible
against the dark background. That figure, that Sherman body recedes.
Another photograph depicts dirt covered with flies. Just at the top of
the image, a resting woman almost falls out of the picture. There are
dozens of these images depicting dirtiness in which the Sherman body
retreats and recedes under the influence of a bad or evil environment.
And
thirdly, her body sometimes disappears altogether. This occurs for the
first time in the photographic series about sex. In those pictures, we
are shown plastic, rubber, a flesh-like
substance. Not all of her sex pictures are erotic. Some of them are, but
others broach the subject of violence. The Sherman body disappears when
attacked by violence. We can see this clearly in the photograph
reproduced here, Untitled # 307, which was made in the period between the
series Sex Pictures and Horror Pictures. This image seems
to reflect rape. Women who have been raped say that they no longer feel
their body or part of their body, or that they leave their body
altogether to save themselves. Somehow, it is a strategy to be absent
from the attack upon their selves. Significantly, the body of flesh and
blood has also disappeared from this image. The female head, here and
there, reveals Sherman's features, as if she has experienced it herself.
It is realistic because of the wide-open
eyes that look into the distance and because of her recognisable traits.
The remainder of the fragmented body consists of plastic and rubber: the
breasts, the private parts and the arm; it is almost as if it were
falling apart, some of it already gone. Only the shadow remains as a
unity. The rubber, fragmented body is hollow. This suggests that the real
Sherman body has disappeared, but her head is intact, unlike Holofernes,
who clearly loses his (Cf. the picture of Judith). A comparison of these
two photographs proves revealing. The Judith character represents a woman
who withstands a man for a political purpose. The other symbolises a
woman who has been raped by a man. Annie Imbens-Fransen, who often works with victims of rape, also finds
it revealing to link the two images. They demonstrate what being raped
means to women. Judith looks into the world with a sense of wonder at her
own strength. The other photograph shows how, through rape, a woman is
robbed of her strength and the ability to experience her physical being.
The disappearance of the body, as a representation of the essence of a
woman's being is the most important strategy available to women against
the consequences of violence against their bodies, beside the impossible
resistance with horns and knife.
When
the environment is hostile, the body disappears. The body cannot exist in
such a world. It is, therefore, a bad environment that leads to
monstrosity.
My conclusion, therefore, is that, for Sherman, the
physical self takes the place of God. In the Christian tradition, it is
God who is shrouded in mysteries, recedes at excess, and disappears under
the weight of violence.
And this is something
quite different from, and much more serious than, the interpretation
offered in 1990 by Heidi Hinterthür to explain the atrocity of Sherman's
more recent work:
Whence the obligation to create something
'beautiful'? Or the other way around: is it not possible for the
expression of something 'ugly' to be a high-spirited experience? Is it possible in the art of women
to describe an (objective) standard for beauty on the level of the work
of art itself? Or is there just the beauty of the zest for work?
A similarity between God as unifying factor and the
body as connecting reality comes to the fore when Sherman's work is
interpreted from the point of view of religion.
Religion as conscience-developing
The word 'religion', as noted above, may also have been
derived from relegere, which means 'examine again, consider
repeatedly, observe.' Living religiously , according to this
etymological interpretation, means living conscientiously. To live
religiously is to live according to one's conscience, to practise
sincerity and respect the space that is essential to the existence of
diversity. In this sense, Cindy Sherman's work is an expression of a
religious life.
This
notion of religion befits the title Heidi Hinterthür gave to her article
on Sherman, 'The Art of Collecting', and with what she regards as most
typical in Sherman's work - her
passion for collecting. And 'collecting' is an excellent, secular
expression for denating religion as conscientious thinking and acting.
'Collecting' in the first place means 'gathering together.' In its reflexive
form, 'collecting' may also open a perspective to another dimension of
the word, viz., 'to consider or contemplate.' In the first sense,
the attention of the collector is directed towards the objects he or she
collects. In the second sense, his or her attention is directed towards
his or her self. While it is possible to typify Sherman as collector, she
also 'considers' and 'contemplates.' Peter Schejldahl has described her
most recent work as a case of 'delirious watching.' In other words it is
directed towards the other, towards otherness. The last photograph in the
series, reproduced here, bears witness to the fact that it is an apt
description. Sherman created the picture for Horror Pictures, and
it touches one although it is just a dummy. It is a little boy. The boy
is hurt. What has happened? Has he been wounded in a war? Or by people he
knows? We do not know, but in his vulnerability, he arouses compassion
and anger at the violence that was committed against him. Thus, he
encourages a feeling of humanity and confirms life.
Conclusion
The first two concepts of religion, religion as
manifestation and religion as history, were suitable for interpreting
part of Cindy Sherman's work. In both cases, Sherman transgressed the
boundaries of the definition of religion: the religious in her
photographs provided food for thought.
A
religious manifestation, in the photograph examined, led to a story with
numerous mysterious contradictions about the wearer of the cross, while
the riddle was not solved.
Her historical portraits were not restricted to
Christianity. Also, it proved possible to see religion as more than
history and give it an actual significance.
We
also found that the second pair of religious notions, religion as meaning-giving and religious as conscience-developing, could not only be applied
to interpret given aspects of Sherman's work in its essence, but also
made it possible to use her work as a source of a secularised language of
faith.
The
unifying factor in her work is not God, but the body. The unity of her
work resides in the centralisation of the body. The body is the most
real, and at the same time provides an image of transcendence. The living
body takes on traits of God, although it is not deified or idolised. It
is neither worshipped nor revered. Sherman seems to say, rather, that one
can play with it, that it can be hurt and that one should take care of
it.
The
fourth notion we discussed, religion as conscience-developing, fits in perfectly with Sherman's work. The
design of the series alone indicates this. But the ethical commitment
also points towards it. The body acts as an ethical instance: it has
knowledge of good and evil and in the end disappears when acted upon by
evil.
Finally,
we may conclude that with the aid of the concept religion, both with
regard to content and with regard to function, the space has been created
to discuss the work of Cindy Sherman. That would have been impossible if
Sherman's Shadows could not be interpreted, somehow, as a concretisation
of religion or of the religious.
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