Cindy Sherman’s Clown Portraits

At the end of the 1990’s, a prominent art magazine chose photographer Cindy Sherman as one of the twenty-five most influential artists of the twentieth century.
Cindy has photographed a number of subjects, using a “Role portrait” approach to astonish and amaze her audiences.

Starting somewhere in 2002, she started photographing the subject of this blog: clowns. ‘I came to clowns,’ she says, ‘to show the complex emotional abysses of a painted smile.’

Sherman seems to be going for extremes, either very sad, very happy, or a little scary. Nevertheless, these clown portraits (with digitally manipulated backgrounds) have become “fine art” and have been exhibited at galleries around the world.

I don’t recognize any of the clowns, and am not sure if she used models or actual clowns to do her work. Probably Pat Cashin will come by (or somebody else) and identify anybody that they know.

Metro Pictures Gallery has an excellent online exhibition of the photos. To view more of the photos, visit their website listed below:

METRO PICTURES ONLINE EXHIBITION: Cindy Sherman’s Clowns

AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: Courtesy of findarticles.com

edited to add:  An interview with Cindy Sherman about her clown portraits