Cindy Sherman

 

I have looked at Cindy Shermans Horror pictures which are grotesque representations of metamorphoses and dislocations of the human body. The horrifying theatrical masks have a surrealist quality. And These set of images are so different from her other works but she still draws me in; I’m intrigued to the thoughts that go on in her head when she’s coming up with her ideas.

‘There’s a shift in conception from the real understood in post structuralist terms as an effect of representation, to the real understood in psychoanalytic terms as an event of trauma.’

It was once said that the eye takes a photo at the moment of death, preserving on its retina the deceased’s final instant vision. Efforts have been made to recover these images which if possible would be perfect to catch killers. Maybe this is why victim’s eyeballs are destroyed or killed from behind, in darkness or while wearing a mask. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho the camera focuses on the woman’s eye as she lies on the bathroom floor.

Cindy Sherman says that the close ups of masked faces are run up to the film. She uses fanciful characters with ambiguous identity. She also says that horror movies are like rehearsals or preparations for the worst that can happen. It allows us to experience an ultimate moment of vision.

http://themorbidimagination.com/art/cindy-shermans-smiling-horrors/