Blog #11

This blog entry will be on Art 21's segment on Cindy Sherman. The episode was entitled "Transformation" it focused on artists whose art seeks to change their identity in some way. Cindy Sherman's approach was to take on a character played by herself but in no way modeled after her. She dresses in the role of this character and takes photographs against some sort of appropriate background. Her work throughout the years has seen her taking on the identity of well thought out characters, people that fill some role in their made up lives. She creates a back story for these people, gives them motives and ideas, in a way she creates their lives and fills their role as herself in their clothing. She seeks to take her entire identity out of this character and instead become them. Many times her characters are over exaggerated and even hokey from societies standard. She creates characters that in a way are hard to believe exist in the world today, but have believable ideas behind them. Some times the over exaggeration adds to the overall composition.
    The idea of creating yourself as another person is a rather intriguing concept. Cindy Sherman's ideas are to create a character whose ideals and life are far removed from Cindy's own, but they are all played by her. Cindy's pictures seek to show this person not as her but as that person, but she always uses herself as a model, which is where the conception lies. She is creating these characters that are only ever portrayed by herself but never as herself, she seeks to remove herself completely from these people, but she always plays their part. I find the idea an interesting take on the ideas of identity, the amount of trouble one has to go through to become another person with a life separate from one's own self. The idea that she wants to show a character that is in no way related to her and should not be seen as her, but are always shown with her body creates and interesting point on the nature of the individual in our society.