Untitled Film Still #31
Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Still #31, 1979
Gelatin silver print
70.2 x 89.8 cm unframed
96.1 x 115.8 x 3 cm (framed)
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Photo: Courtesy the artist | Metro Pictures, New York, 2007 | © VEGAP, Madrid, 2026
- Date
- 2002
- Medium
- Black and white photograph
- Dimension
- 70.2 x 89.8 cm, 96.1 x 115.8 x 3 cm (framed)
- Credit
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
- This artwork is part of the donation and long-term loan from TBA21 to the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Details
Artist Cindy Sherman is known for her investigation of cultural stereotypes associated with female gender roles in 20th-century American mass culture, as well as the role played by photography and film in this construct.
In her celebrated series Untitled Stills (1977-80) the artist explores these identities through characters—or caricatures—that seem to be taken from Hollywood B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s. These black and white photographs are stills from a film that was never made, whose ambiguous, solitary and introspective protagonists are suspended in an undefined spatial and temporal framework. In Untitled Film Still #31, for example, Sherman uses disguise to create a vision of fictionalized femininity, anticipating today's obsession with performative selfies while simultaneously stressing the voyeurism of the viewer's gaze.
(Text written by TBA21 and used as wall label in the exhibition "Encounters", MNTB, Madrid, 2023)