Lucic, Karen, Charles Sheeler, and Henry Ford. ‘‘A Craft
Heritage for the Machine Age.’’Bulletin of the Detroit
Institute of Arts65 (1989): 37–47.
———.Charles Sheeler and The Cult of the Machine. Lon-
don: Reaktion Books, 1991.
———.Charles Sheeler in Doylestown: American Modern-
ism and the Pennsylvania Tradition. Pennsylvania:
Allenstown Art Museum, 1997.
Rourke, Constance.Charles Sheeler: Artist in the American
Tradition. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1938.
Smith, Terry.Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design
in America. Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1993.
Stebbins, Jr., Theodore E., and Norman Keyes, Jr.Charles
Sheeler: The Photographs. Boston: Museum of Fine
Arts, 1987.
Stebbins, Jr. Theodore, Gilles Mora, and Karen E. Haas.
The Photography of Charles Sheeler: American Modern-
ist. Boston, New York, London: Bulfinch Press, 2002.
Troyen, Carol, and Erica E. Hirshler.Charles Sheeler:
Paintings and Drawings. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts,
1987.
Yeh, Susan Fillin. ‘‘Charles Sheeler’s 1923Self-Portrait.’’
Arts Magazine52 (January 1978):.
———.Charles Sheeler: American Interiors. Connecticut:
Yale University Art Gallery, 1987.
———. ‘‘Charles Sheeler’sRolling Power.’’ In Danly, Susan,
and Leo Marx, eds.TheRailroadinAmericanArt:Repre-
sentations of Technological Change, 1988. 106–109.
Zayas, Marius de.How, When, and Why Modern Art Came
to New York. Ed. Francis M. Naumann. Cambridge,
Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996.CINDY SHERMAN
American
Cindy Sherman’s photographs present ever-chang-
ing constellations of costumes, mannequins, body
parts, and theatrical sets in scenes that are abso-
lutely artificial or evoke cultural practices, such as
film and fashion that specialize in the creation of
artificial worlds and appearances. Born in Glen
Ridge, New Jersey in 1954, she attended the State
University of New York, Buffalo, receiving her
Bachelor of Arts in 1976. The utilitarian approach
to the photograph found in conceptual art deeply
influenced her as an art student. Sherman moved to
New York City in 1977. Her first major series, the
Untitled Film Stillsof 1977–1980, began to stretch
the boundaries of what photography could repre-
sent. This group of 69 photographs combines her
interest in using the photograph as a medium to
convey a particular idea (here examining the stereo-
typical roles women inhabited in films and other
elements of visual popular culture in the 1950s and
1960s) with a singular style and visual appeal more
characteristic of traditional art photography.
As her career progressed, Sherman increasingly
turned to theatrical lighting, props, and costumes,
with the scenes becoming ever more elaborate and
complex. She appears in various outfits and dis-
guises in both her works from the late 1970s to the
mid-1980s and in the seriesHistory Portraitsfrom
1989 to 1990. Yet, despite her physical presence in
the photographs, the work is never autobiographi-
cal. The theme of self-transformation, however,
runs throughout much of her work. Her early se-
ries about the mass media’s stereotypical presen-
tation of women—theUntitled Film Stills,Rear
Screen Projection,andCenterfold photographs,
in particular—also address the issue of women’s
identification with these stereotypes and their own
‘‘self-transformation’’ through adopting the styles
and characteristics of the figures. Sherman’sFash-
ionseries deals most explicitly with this issue,
focusing on how changes in one’s appearance
affect the ways that we see ourselves and are in
turn seen by others. Some of theHistory Portraits
pictures, especially those that lampoon the desire
of wealthy patrons in past centuries to immor-
talize themselves with portraits created by great
artists, also deal with this issue of self-transforma-
tion. Sherman’s obvious use of makeup and false
body parts suggests the awkward and flawed phy-
sical characteristics of these vainglorious figures
from the past, who attempted to transform them-
selves through the mirror of art.
Sherman uses herself as a medium through which
she can express ideas about visual representation
and other cultural and societal phenomena such as
fashion, feminism, and popular culture. This aspect
of her work was influenced by the work of artistsSHERMAN, CINDY