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Analyzing Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills

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Analyzing Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills
In the 1970, many groups were fighting for social and political rights in America, and the Equal Rights Amendment was added to the constitution in 1972. Around this time, Cindy Sherman created her first work of art called Untitled; it has twenty three individual portraits revealing her gradual change from a spectacled student into a lustful party girl. Cindy Sherman used her photography to express feminist, postmodernist, and post culturalist movements. This essay will analyze Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills, her mural in the Musuem of Modern Art, and her influence on the generation now. Untitled Film Stills is a series of 70 black and white photographs in which Sherman dresse a various female film characters. In the picture the artists …show more content…
The mural consists of 25 individual panels that portray flattened and redoubled backgrounds while various human creatures are dressed in strange costumes taking up opp poses. According to the book Cindy Sherman, the mural was Sherman’s first foray into transforming space, and represent a huge artistic step. To transform space, the 18 feet tall mural stretches over walls like wallpaper and position characters to float in space, so they can surround and appear to hover over the viewer. The backgrounds of the mural are shots taken at Central Park and Spain that are mirrored and manipulated in Photoshop to make them appear more drawn. Each character in the mural has a different costume and face. To make the characters look like they are family members or one in the same person, she transformed her face using Photoshop to elongate her nose, narrow her eyes, and make her lips smaller. The costumes of the characters include a juggler's outfit, a nude suit, and a feathered leotard. The mural is regressive and abstract because it shows a mature woman in unusual costumes and various human traits that make a formalized
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