The Art of the Impersonator by Sanford Schwartz

The Art of the Impersonator

Cindy Sherman
an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, February 26–June 11, 2012
Catalog of the exhibition by Eva Respini, with contributions by Johanna Burton and John Waters
Museum of Modern Art, 264 pp., $60.00; $40.00 (paper)

The end result of Cindy Sherman’s many approaches is a roller coaster of discontent, at times recalling Otto Dix, at other moments Carol Burnett. Sherman can be reproachful and quietly barbed, or merely leaden and gloomy, or showily horrifying, or buoyantly nasty. The works that held me longest were of her strivers and her patronesses. They bring together the poles of Sherman’s thinking: her feeling for contemporary life and for the monstrous.

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