Boxchecking and Guest of Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #14, 1978.

So, I wrote a review of Guest of Cindy Sherman that turned into a broader rumination about the ways misogyny is expressed by the market. The piece was kindly picked up by Art Fag City and Jezebel and discussed at length in those comments sections. I should get a comments section!

Greg Allen, who penned a piece on gender dynamics within the market for the New York Times back when the market going was good, had some further thoughts in AFC's comments on Sherman's place in the art world:

Sherman's rise coincides with the emergence of gender equity and institutional bias as an art market issue. [The Guerrilla Girls launched in '85 and ran their $17.7 million Jasper Johns campaign in '89.] She was a good, easy buy for "solving" collections' female problem. [sic] But then it was "solved," so the imperative to buy another Woman’s Work was lessened. But that same boxchecking afflicts artists like Minimalists Who Aren’t Named Judd or Flavin, too.

That squares some circles, especially when you look at some of the relevant examples. When prodded by the Guerrilla Girls last year after opening with an inaugural exhibit featuring 97 percent male artists, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum was quick to point out to the NYT that 33 percent of the works in the show were by women. Of course, all of these were photographs by Cindy Sherman.

Posted by Kriston at April 20, 2009 3:54 PM