CELEBRATING MONOGRAM

Posted on January 13, 2015 by Margherita Nannuzzi

Since the 1970s the photographer Cindy Sherman portrays herself in imitation of cinematographic aesthetic of the 1950s and 1960s in Untitled film still. It is not a self-portrait in the traditional sense but a representation of stereotypes handed down by american and italian cinema: the young woman who arrives in metropolis, the housewife, the unprejudiced (or rather the femme fatale), Alfred Hitchcock’s blonde and woman victim based on the famous image of Anna Magnani. Although it’s a cliché, the pictures are made by an artist and resemble an original but are also fake stereotypes, because the cinema itself produces stereotypes to whom reality tends to look like. The combination of elements like light, make-up, costumes and, especially, types of angles and shots allows us to associate those photographs to films which we have already seen, besides, we are deceived by the female glance, that is always turned elsewhere. Sherman’s photographs seem apparently kitsch, because fashion photography expresses the  concept of “inauthentic” par excellence, but instead Sherman is making us an analysis and a reflection that are typical of modernist avant-garde. The Louis Vuitton maison for its 160 years, has chosen, among various artists, Cindy Sherman for celebrating the iconic Monogram pattern, created in 1896 by Georges Vuitton to pay homage to his  father Louis. Cindy chose the trunk (that she calls “my travel office”) but this time she doesn’t make a self-representation but she uses a model as alter ego. The model takes from the trunk the cosmetics to disguise herself as a clown,  a character become very interested for Sherman in the last ten years. The trunk, a casket enclosing a traveller’s dreams, has been the inspiration for the LV 2014 Winter collection.