Analysing a (self-) portrait

Medium (Oil, watercolour, gouache, photograph, etc)
Size, colours, shapes, texture, light + shade
Style ("school") : cubist, expressionist, surrealist, dadaist, impressionist...
How is the subject treated ? (the "atmosphere")
What do you think the artist tried to say ?
About himself ? What do we learn about his personnality ?
What have others said about the portrait ?
When the artist did the portrait, how old was he, what was his situation ? Are his circumstances revealed in the portrait ?
For whom was the portrait intended ?
What are your thoughts, memories, emotions (association of ideas) when looking at the portrait ?

Cindy Sherman's biography

Hello ! Today, I will talk about Cindy Sherman, a famous photographer.

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director of "Office Killer", who was born on the 19th January in 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. She is well known for her conceptual portraits.

She became interested in the visual arts at Buffalo State College, where she began painting. Then she abandoned her painting study and took up photography. She spent the rest of her college career focused on photography. It's at Buffalo State College that she met Robert Longo and they created together Hallwalls, an arts centre.


Her photographic career.


Sherman works in series, typically photographing herself in a range of costumes. For example a series, dated 2003, features her as clowns. Although Sherman doesn't consider her work feminist, many of her photo-series call attention to the stereotyping of women in films, television and magazines.

Sherman produced the Sex series in 1989. She used bare models for this work. Like much of her work, many critics find the series both disturbing and funny.

In 1990 she explained to the New York Times : "I feel I'm anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren't self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear." It's very strange because she is both hidden and revealed.
In 2006, The Jeu de Paume museum in Paris hosted an exhibition of Sherman's works, “Cindy Sherman: A Retrospective.” It included works spanning 30 years from 1975 to 2005.

Cindy Sherman did a lot of type of photography : fashion photograph, historical portrait, soft-core sex image...

I think she is a very good photographer and I love her personnality. She is provocating, her photos show the society and although she says that she is not feminist, she always show us the place of women and she caricatures them.

Cindy Sherman's self-portrait

This photo shows Cindy Sherman when she took herself (in 1979) for her Untitled Film Stills, who made the object of a new exhibition in 1997 in MoMA. (Museum of Modern Art)
It is in black and white (she didn't take photos in colour at this periode). Its size is 24 x 16.2 cm.

We can see her like a housewife. The photography has taken from below, so she seems to be tall. Behind her, the walls, the door and the floor are old, damaged and dirty. In all of her photos she calls attention to the stereotyping of women in films, television and magazines. And in this photo she shows the stereotype of housewives.
She doesn't look the objective. She seems to be very provocating. It's strange but I have the impression that she is independent, not subjected to the men.

I think this photo is very interesting. Although she doesn't consider her like a feminist, this photography shows her wish to change the place of the women in the society (not just a housewife). She is very critical.

It's for all of this reasons I presented you this work of art.

Artists write about painting portraits.

The distance from the chin to the nostrils makes up a third of the face. It is the same from the nostrils to the eyebrows, and again from the eyebrows to the hairline. From one ear to the other, the distance is the same as from the eyebrows to the chin. The width of the mouth is the same as that from the middle of the lips to the chin.

Leonardo da Vinci

To displace. Put the eyes where the legs are, the genitals where the face is. To contradict. To do an eye face on and one sideways. Nature does many things like me, but she hides them.

Pablo Picasso

The way the nose is rooted in the face, the way the ear is screwed into the skull, the way the lower jaw is hung, the intensity of the gaze…

Henri Matisse

By the way, I am not a prince, but someone who makes his living from his handicraft.

Peter Paul Rubens

I have finished the portrait of me that you wanted… You will not be disappointed; I have kept my promise, since I have chosen the best and most lifelike for you: you will see the difference for yourself.

Nicolas Poussin

In a head, the first thing for an artist to do is to make the eyes speak…then you move on to how the nose sticks out. The sloping nostril is a good means of expression: it indicates a peaceful character.

Dominique Ingres

I am getting really old, I am covered in wrinkles, and you would not even recognize me apart from my puggish nose and my sunken eyes… What is certain is that I look my age: forty-one…Francisco Goya

The flesh only has its true colour in the open air, especially in the sunlight. The local complexion must be transparent; though if halftoned it gives the illusion, in principle, of the blood under the skin.

Eugène Delacroix

I have bought for the purpose a fairly good mirror in order to work using myself as a model, as I do not have a real model, because if I manage to paint the colouring of my own head, which is a bit of a challenge, I could then just as easily paint the faces of other good men and women.
Vincent van Gogh

Ten questions about the exposition.

1°) Why the artist has drown in green all of the room where the Mrs is ? (in the painting : "Germs everywhere")

2°) Why an artist choose to became photographer and not painter ?

3°) Why the photographer take a photo of this 4 italians ?
4°) For show what ?

5°) Why the photographer made assemblages of rather similar photographs with his colour films ?

6°) Why the photographer took the same photos (just there aggrandissant a little) ?
7°) What's his wish ?

8°) Why the photographer has taken a photo of girl who is like a ghost ?
9°) What did he want to show ?

10°) Why the photographer has taken photos of some old peoples ? Why do they have this discontented air, rather untenable ?