Cindy Sherman Print Sells For $3.9 Million At Auction, The Highest Ever For A Photogr

[Drew Wiley]

Oh don't get me wrong ... it's a pretty interesting composition considering the geometry and the way the color is used. But that seems to be the thing right now.
Gursky, Burtynsky to some extent too; sorto a two-dimensional cubism, but too lazy to
paint it. It's all interesting and creative, and I do get it; but the prices just seem ridiculous. I know a few folks out on this side of the country doing stuff way
beyond this kind of thing, but who have to market in Europe or to private commissions just to make a living. Basically, I get the impression that the NYC art scene has its head up its a.. , and just doesn't get past its own little neurotic microcosm very often. Won't change the way I photograph. Life is too short.

[paulr]

I think you need to look at this phenomenon with Warhol as a frame of reference rather than the modernists or anyone who came before them.

Cindy Sherman marked a kind of turning point in photography, a shift in what the medium could be about. And she came along at the right time. Her work wasn't about any of the traditional values of the medium (which were concerned with making objects of one sort or another) but about using it as a tool to explore identity and cultural roles, and to do so using the vocabulary and tropes of popular culture (they were all staged, pretend film stills) rather than the vocabulary of high art. It was new, and it was profoundly influential.

For better or for worse—doeesn't really matter. I'm not especially interested in her path of exploration. Neither was John Szarkowski. He dismissed it entirely as being outside the concerns of photography that matters. This was either a bold statement of tastemaking, or the career blunder of the 20th century ... he had the oportunity to acquire her work for pennies when it was new and already making a buzz. Instead Peter Galassi had to buy it for millions after Szarkowski retired.

At any rate, her work now stands as an important turning point in 20th century art history. It's old enough to have become a kind of classic, new enough to still feel relevent. And in the context of the art world at large, photography is still a bargain (notice that at the same auction a Rothko painting went for ten times as much and a giant yellow bear went for double). $3million is not that big an outlay for someone who's genuinely rich these days.

I used to get all bent out of shape about Cindy Sherman. But I read some interviews with her, and realized she was just an artist doing her thing. When the world surprised her by lionizing her and throwing all kinds of money at her bank account, she respond the way I think any of us would have: gratefully.

[Drew Wiley]

Like I said ... NYC has its head up it's ... and still thinks it's the center of the universe... And yes, Warhol was a master of redefining art as basically a bluff, but so
was the whole Pop art ethos ... the dark ages as far as I'm concerned

[Struan Gray]

There's been a lot of the usual hand-wringing all over the net about this. I just remind myself that if I was the sort of person who shared the motivations and tastes of the filthy rich, I would be filthy rich. I'm not, ergo...

But still, four hundred thousand dollars more than the manuscript of Beethoven's 9th?

[Kirk Gittings]

Like beauty and sex, there is allot of art I "recognize" as important in the history of art that I don't "like".

[paulr]

Like I said ... NYC has its head up it's ... and still thinks it's the center of the universe...

How does any of this have to do with NYC? I'm amazed that you know what a city of 8 million people from all of the world "thinks" about anything. I've lived here 16 years and I don't have the foggiest idea.

And yes, Warhol was a master of redefining art as basically a bluff, but so
was the whole Pop art ethos ... the dark ages as far as I'm concerned

I don't think Warhol believed art was a bluff. He took art and artists very seriously. He believed classical ideas about the division between high and low arts was a bluff. That's different.

[paulr]

Like beauty and sex, there is allot of art I "recognize" as important in the history of art that I don't "like".

Amen.

Cozying up to this idea makes it possible to learn from art history without throwing tantrums.

[Ivan J. Eberle]

Anybody know what Cindy Sherman was getting for a print in 1981? Or whether it was part of a limited edition?

[rdenney]

Like beauty and sex, there is allot of art I "recognize" as important in the history of art that I don't "like".

Crap. I wish I recognized its importance. What makes it more than a common snapshot? That it was staged? It's not like cubism, where we see the subject from all angles at once. (And that easily stated a point is perhaps why Paul wants us to eschew modernism with respect to this work.) Like Warhol, this seems to me famous for being famous.

Frankly, I like the photo more than any hint of importance it might impart to me. It seems likably trivial, not unlikable-but-important.

Rick "not holding anything against Cindy Sherman at all" Denney

[Drew Wiley]

I don't mind any such thing being abstractly appreciated or even being brought to attention, but with millions of folks literally losing everything in this country, where the
hell do people get the nerve to devote public funds to some relatively minor tweak in contemporary esthetics? My dig at NYC is simply the focus being placed on neurotic
subject matter, polluted landscapes etc. Equally sophisticated compositions which take
the world a little differently are apparently now irrelevant. Fads, damn fads. Reminds me of how my friend Ctein couldn't even sell at auction the last remaining dye transfer print of Hendrix first burning his guitar, and it was returned to him wrinkled ... as we
get older the superstars of our own generation will just be so much forgotten medieval ho hum to the next generation. The same will be true in photography. As I've said
before, if you really want a photograph which has social implications, the Marlboro man
on the billboards would be at the top of my list ... killed more people than two world
wars.