Untitled #470

Cindy Sherman’s photographs explore the potential of the image to create myths, and how identity is constructed. Her photos seem to be immediately accessible, and they quickly appealed to both critics and a broad public, but they are nevertheless underpinned by paradoxes. The artist is both model and photographer, but the pictures are not portraits. The works borrow from an image repertoire that is familiar to us from movies, art and media, but nevertheless remain enigmatic. They suggest stories without revealing anything about themselves, not even a title.

In Untitled #470 we meet the eye of a socialite with the air of a renaissance prince, at once both grotesque and regal. Following her controversial, powerful images referencing art history and mythology in the 1990s, Sherman here portrays a group that rarely has access to the public image flow, regardless of social status – her own generation of aging women. The picture is not aiming for illusion but, as always, leaves obvious chinks in the enactment for the viewer to fill in.