History Portraits
New York: Rizzoli, 1991. 1st Edition. Folio, publisher's dove cloth, spine and upper board stamped in red, color photo label inset to upper board, photo-illustrated endpapers, original printed acetate dust jacket.
Photographer and master of disguise Cindy Sherman’s exploration of Western portrait painting. Created while living in Rome in the late 1980s, Sherman’s series is a postmodern parody of portraits produced from a broad scope of art-historical eras, including the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassical periods. Reinterpreting ostensibly untouchable canons while dismantling the tradition of the artist/model dyad, this work has become one of Sherman’s most famous and successful series. While in Rome, Sherman intentionally chose to not see the originals that inspired her work, explaining, "I… never went to the churches and museums there. I worked out of books, with reproductions. It's an aspect of photography I appreciate, conceptually: the idea that images can be reproduced and seen anytime, anywhere, by anyone." Illustrated throughout with large format color plates; with an introduction by philosopher and art critic Arthur C. Danto. Fine in unclipped acetate dust jacket. Item #7218
$125.00