Untitled Film Still #48
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.A lone woman on an empty highway peers around the corner of a rocky outcrop. She waits and waits below the dramatic sky. Is it fear or self-reliance that challenges the unnamed traveler? Does she dread the future, the past, or just the present? So thorough and sophisticated is Cindy Sherman’s capacity for filmic detail and nuance that many viewers (encouraged by the titles) mistakenly believe that the photographs in the series are reenactments of films. Rather, they are an unsettling yet deeply satisfying synthesis of film and narrative painting, a shrewdly composed remaking not of the "real" world but of the mediated landscape.
Artwork Details
- Title: Untitled Film Still #48
- Artist: Cindy Sherman (American, born Glen Ridge, New Jersey, 1954)
- Date: 1979
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: Image: 6 15/16 × 9 3/8 in. (17.6 × 23.8 cm)
Sheet: 8 × 10 in. (20.3 × 25.4 cm)
Framed: 14 5/16 × 16 5/8 × 1 1/2 in. (36.4 × 42.2 × 3.8 cm) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Promised Gift of Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary
- Curatorial Department: Photographs