Framing the artist: Cultural analysis and the myths of Cindy Sherman

This dissertation examines the multiple and contradictory discourses that have circulated around and through the body of work produced by the New York based photographer Cindy Sherman since 1977. The dissertation attends primarily to the processes by which Sherman's work has been framed by the modernist rules of art, by the insistences of postmodernism, by narratives of feminism, and by prevailing assumptions about self-portraiture, subjectivity, and embodiment. Following the methods for art analysis outlined by Pierre Bourdieu and the methods of cultural analysis advocated by Roland Barthes and Mieke Bal, this dissertation engages in critical deconstructive analysis of the myths of Cindy Sherman. Exposing the myths of Cindy Sherman is accomplished by historicizing and contextualizing claims about Sherman's work. It also involves attending to the ways that works of art, as cultural objects, are incorporated into economies, made to fulfill human needs and desires, and framed by narratives and discourses.; "Framing the Artist" is broadly conceived as a set of interventions into the discourses that normally circulate around Sherman's work. These interventions are enabled by the interdisciplinary approaches advocated by feminist theory and cultural studies. Influenced by interventions in conventional art historical knowledge, chapter one insists that much of the significance of any work of art has to do with its capacity to serve as a manifestation of contemporary discourses. In other words, this chapter maintains that the meaning and value of art is never discovered objectively but always produced in and around objects. Chapters two and three attend to the ways that Sherman's work has been framed by the rules of art, which are shaped by modernist discourses of influence, greatness, and authorship. Chapters four and five expose the contradictory positionings of Sherman within the overlapping discourses of postmodernism and feminism. Chapters six and seven offer new models for thinking about Sherman's work, models that invoke Lacanian theories of intersubjectivity and self-representation and feminist theories of embodied subjectivity. Finally, the Conclusion links the interventions together in order to lay the groundwork for an ethics of looking that demands attention be paid to the goals, desires, and positions of those who look at, talk about, and produce art.