Cindy Sherman (born 1954) Untitled #100

Cindy Sherman (born 1954)
Untitled #100, 1982
Chromogenic print; signed, dated, and numbered '6/10' in ink on the reverse, framed, a Tony Shafrazi Gallery label and a St. Louis Museum of Art exhibition label on the reverse.
45 5/8 x 29 7/8 in. (115.9 x 75.9 cm.)
sheet 49 3/4 x 29 7/8 in. (126.4 x 75.9 cm.)
Provenance
Frederik Roos, Zug
Christie's New York, 16 November 2001, Sale 9784, Lot 492
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exhibited
St. Louis Art Museum, Currents 20: Cindy Sherman, March-April 1983

Literature
Peter Schjeldahl and Michael Danoff, Cindy Sherman (New York, 1984), pl. 65
Rosalind Krauss, Cindy Sherman 1975-1993 (New York, 1993), p. 98
Cindy Sherman Photoarbeiten 1975-1995 (Hamburg, 1995), pl. 45.
Cindy Sherman (Shiga, 1996), p. 99, pl. 42.

Note
In 1982, Cindy Sherman made a series of four large-format portraits in which she wears a pink chenille robe and minimal make-up (Untitled #97, #98, #99, and #100). Each image is oriented vertically, in contrast to the horizontal compositions of her 1981 Centerfolds series, commissioned by Artforum magazine. In the 'Pink Robe' series, each image morphs into a progressively darker composition and culminates with Untitled #100: Here, the extreme close-up view of Sherman's crouching body is bathed in shadow, with only a few highlights on her face, hands, and left knee. This series ushered in a new era of Sherman's career, in which she would predominantly work in a vertical format for the next three decades.

Sherman has acknowledged that her work dramatically changed with this series: 'I think [my photographs] are more psychological now, more emotional than theatrical ... I'm not working with environment behind me, I'm concentrating on the face really, so it all comes out through expressing some kind of inner emotion.' (Quoted in 'A Conversation with Cindy Sherman,' Succès du Bédac, Galerie Déjà Vu, Dijon, 1982, p. 20).

Sherman has also noted that the 'Pink Robe' portraits veered in a different direction than her landmark Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980), in which each black-and-white photograph presents a highly stylized, staged scenario: '[In the 'Pink Robe' images] I was thinking of the idea of a centerfold model. The pictures were meant to look like a model just after she'd been photographed for a centerfold. They aren't cropped, and I thought that I wouldn't bother with make-up and wigs and just change the lighting and experiment with using the same means in each.' (Quoted in Paul Taylor, 'Cindy Sherman,' Flash Art, no. 125, Oct.-Nov. 1985, pp. 78-9.)

Critic Peter Schjeldahl also underscores the decidedly new approach that Sherman took in these four images, as discussed in his essay for Sherman's 1984 exhibition at The Whitney Museum of American Art: 'They are, to put it mildly, her least ingratiating pictures, as if to say, "You think you want me? Okay, here I am, Mac." They convey a state of loveless intimacy, intimacy without understanding or personal tenderness, exactly the unadmitted condition of fan/star symbiosis.'

Other prints from the edition of ten are in the collections of The Broad, Los Angeles (B-SHER-2F82.20) and Tate, London (P77731).