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Cindy Sherman

Photography

Remarkable ’80s-Era Photos of Iconic NYC Artists

By Jason Bailey on

Jeannette Montgomery Barron’s new photo book SCENE is a must-have for aficionados of the ‘80s New York art scene — for which Barron was something of an unofficial “yearbook photographer,” capturing images of legends like Cindy Sherman, Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jenny Holzer, Francesco Clemente, David Salle, Robert Mapplethorpe, Eric Fischl, and Keith Haring during their starving-artist days. The book launches with an event tonight at BookMarc; the tie-in exhibit, NYC c. 1985, opens tomorrow at Chelsea’s ClampArt. But if you’re not in Gotham, Flavorwire’s got you covered — we were lucky enough to get our hands on several gorgeous images from SCENE. … Read More

Photography

James Franco’s Cindy Sherman-Inspired Self-Portraits

By Judy Berman on

If there’s one factor that unites James Franco’s artworks across all media, it’s that he is unashamed to appropriate the work of those who inspire him — and if you particularly love or hate him, your strong response likely has something to do with that tendency. We’ve seen him re-enact some of Bruce Nauman’s performance art, and he also recently curated and contributed to a group show that riffed on Rebel Without a Cause.

So it was probably only a matter of time before he took on Cindy Sherman, the art world’s most powerful photographer and the subject of this year’s wildly successful traveling retrospective. The three images below, part of Franco’s contribution to the NEW NO DARK WAVE exhibition at CoSTUME NATIONAL’s Soho store, riff on Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills. In addition to the photos, the show features James Franco’s 40 Minutes, a film that reimagines the 40 lost minutes of the movie Cruising, as well as work by Tobias Wong, Frédéric Beigbeder, Aaron Young, and Daniel Firman. Read more about NEW NO DARK WAVE at Interview. … Read More

Art

Will the Real Andy Warhol Please Stand Up?

By Marina Galperina on

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a new exhibit opening next week, and it’s all about Andy. Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years examines Warhol’s creative oeuvre alongside the work of dozens of high-profile artists that have taken influence directly from the Pop Art-maestro. From Jeff Koons to Ai Wei Wei to Cindy Sherman, see how the artist has affected generations of giants. Watch the influence build, compound, and transform: When Warhol turned the images of the everyday commodity of Coca Cola bottles into art, he was making a statement about US commercialism, making the banal iconic. When Ai inscribed a Neolithic vase with the logo, he made an entirely different statement about his own culture, linking the inflated value of historic artifacts and the old traditions they represent to that of a commercial product, making the iconic banal. And so on. From celebrity portraits to queer identity, get a preview of the exhibit in our slideshow. … Read More

Art

15 Portraits of Famous Musicians by Famous Artists and Photographers

By Marina Galperina on

One of the benefits of being a famous, successful, admired musician — besides being famous, successful, and admired — is having your portrait made by an artist of stature. Wouldn’t you like to see how you translate into an iconic Andy Warhol or be dotingly dotted into a Chuck Close original? Well, too bad. You’re not Blondie or Philip Glass. From Basquiat’s tribute to Charlie Parker to Roger Ballen’s supreme badassiffication of Die Antwoord, here’s a slideshow of famous musicians as painted, shot, sculpted, abstracted, and silkscreened by famous artists and photographers. … Read More

Pop Culture

15 Famous Art-Influenced Album Covers

By Marina Galperina on

Is it odd when an ’80s New Wave band recreates an 1860s pre-Impressionist painting? Nah. Here you will find album covers that pay homage/allude to/imitate/rip-off famous works of art and iconic photographs, from almost near replicas to stealthy appropriations of the work’s key elements to tributes to specific artists’ very definitive styles. From the White Stripes’ very De Stijl De Stijl to Joni Mitchell in Van Gogh drag to Rembrandt à la Rammstein, see fifteen of our picks here. We’re sure there are many, many more. Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments! … Read More

Photography

Early 20th-Century Photos of the Real Paris

By Caroline Stanley on

While the massive Cindy Sherman retrospective might be getting all the buzz, the work of another incredibly talented photographer, Eugène Atget, is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art as well. Unlike Sherman, Atget rarely captured images of people in his work, which he humbly intended for other artists to use as source material. Instead, he spent his 30-year career snapping photos in the streets of Paris, focusing his lens on the architectural details of building facades, carefully-composed window displays, and abandoned parks.

Looking at these romantic images, made even dreamier thanks to his use of long exposures, you get the sense that the French photographer would have enjoyed commiserating over un café with Owen Wilson’s character in Midnight in Paris. Check out Atget’s work in person at the MoMA through April 9th; click through to preview a selection of the images on display in our slideshow, spotted thanks to PDN. … Read More

Photography

Who Is the Real Cindy Sherman?

By Marina Galperina on

For 35 years, artist Cindy Sherman has played “dress-up,” only, it’s much more than that. With an exuberant array of costumes, make-up, wigs, and giant pendulum breast prosthetics, she’s been a schoolgirl, a playboy, a partying heiress, a Leonardo da Vinci boy muse, and a tattooed seductress. “I really don’t think that they are about me,” Sherman told New York Magazine back in 2008, speaking specifically of the work in her famous Film Stills series. “It’s maybe about me maybe not wanting to be me and wanting to be all these other characters. Or at least try them on.” Sherman’s career retrospective opens this Sunday at MoMA and for the occasion, we’d like to introduce you to a few Cindy Shermans. … Read More

Photography

Behind the Curtain: Gorgeous Vintage Photo Booth Art

By Emily Temple on

Originally meant for official photographs and souvenir snapshots, the photo booth quickly became a beloved tool and source of inspiration for artists everywhere, who played with the concept of automatic portraiture and pushed the format as far as it could go. Our friends at Design Boom tipped us off to Behind the Curtain – the Aesthetics of the Photobooth, an exhibit of photo booth photography that opened yesterday at Swiss photography museum Musée de l’Elysée Lausanne. The exhibit explores photo booth photographs from artists like Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, and André Breton, representing the medium’s presence not only in the Surrealist and Fluxus movements but across the aesthetic spectrum.  Click through to see a few wonderful pieces from the exhibit, and if you find yourself in the area, be sure to check out the full show, running until May 20th. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Starchitect Rem Koolhaus has signed a deal to design and construct Marina Abramovic’s Center for the Preservation of Performance Art. The $8 million space in Hudson, New York will be devoted to showcasing performance art pieces of “six hours minimum.” [via Vulture]

2. While Whitney Houston’s funeral, which takes place this Saturday… Read More

Film

10 Artists Who Also Make Movies

By Alison Nastasi on

Fans of the “Frivolous Prince” will be happy to know that the diversely talented Jean Cocteau is the subject of a new museum, dedicated to his numerous creative pursuits. The Cocteau museum in France showcases 990 artworks from the bohemian and will also feature clips of his film works — particularly the unforgettable and gorgeously dreamy fairy tale, La belle et la bête. Cocteau defied categorization, pursuing theater, literature, cinema, and more — which is why we thought it would be appropriate to look at several other artists that wear multiple hats. We’ve chosen a variety of artist-directors, who like Cocteau had large-scale vision. Some of these filmmakers have yet to set their cinematic eye beyond a debut feature, a few have been able to successfully balance a career in both endeavors, and some are better know on the big screen. See who we chose below, and fill us in on your favorites. … Read More