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Sherman's Shadows:
Pictures of Corporeality and Religion

 

Dit artikel is gepubliceerd in: Begin with the body. Corporeality Religion and Gender. Eds. Jonneke Bekkenkamp and Maaike de Haardt. Leuven: Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000, Leuven, 1998, p. 111-134. ISBN 90-6831-997-3

Foto's:

Untitled Film Still # 15, 1978, 24,4 x 20,3

Untitled History Portraits # 228, 1990, 208,3 x 121,9

Untitled # 307, 1994 200,7 x 125,7

Untitled # 316, 1995, 122 x 81,3

Uit: Cindy Sherman. Photoarbeiten 1975-1995. Herausgegeben von Zdenek Felix und Martin Schwander mit Teksten von Elisabeth Bronfen und Erdman Ziegler. München, Paris, London: Schirmer/Mosel, 1995. Tent. Hamburg, Malmö en Luzern.

Cindy Sherman. Rotterdam, Museum Boymans Van Beuningen 10.3-19.5.1996. Deze tenttonstelling is ook in Madrid, Bilbao en Baden-Baden te zien geweest en het boek is ook in die talen uitgegeven.

 

 

 

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1013 LE Amsterdam,
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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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