Untitled

A seated woman in three-quarter view looks out into the distance, dressed in a charming old-fashioned outfit combining a bell-shaped hat, fur boa, satin dress and elbow-length gloves, identifying her with the Roaring Twenties. The artificial alpine landscape in the background dispels the historicist simulacrum.

This large-format photograph belongs to a 2016 series in which Cindy Sherman dresses up as a flapper, the young American women who in the 1920s freed themselves from conventions by their appearance and behaviour, which was itself codified. However, the figure’s emancipated, transgressive nature seems to have left this disembodied portrait, as if frozen by the artificial rigorous staging and, metaphorically, by the social construction of a certain kind of femininity.

Untitled, 2016 was first presented by the Pinault Collection at the 2018 "Dancing with Myself" show at the Punta della Dogana in Venice.