Untitled #193 1988

Cindy Sherman made this photograph, Untitled #193. It could be a painting, though. The frilly dress, the pearl necklace, the powdered wig – it’s like she’s stepped straight out of a Rococo painting! But there’s something off, a certain… staging. The lighting’s too harsh, the backdrop too obviously artificial. I wonder what Cindy was thinking when she made this? Was she interested in artifice, and how it can reveal deeper truths? I'm thinking of Manet's Olympia here and the way she references Titian's Venus of Urbino. And the slightly unhinged quality of some of John Currin's paintings, too. Like any good painter, she's using what’s available - in this case a camera and costumes - to tease out a feeling, a mood, a question. And to show us that the search is endless, that the conversation never stops.