Through interviews old and new, we were offered a revealing picture of one of the world’s most important artists. But did we really need the Instagram influencers?
Cindy Sherman does not want to appear on camera. “Why not?” asks the director, Clare Beavan. “People,” says Sherman, “are just so curious to see what I really look like. So there is this intrigue.” Can you make a film about someone without seeing their face as they talk about their life and work? I’m one of those desperate to see Sherman, to reconcile the person with the roles she creates for her art, but perhaps I’m just prying. In the Arena documentary Cindy Sherman #untitled (BBC Four), we get her voice in a new interview, and Beavan has filleted previous filmed interviews, the last from 2009. Peel away the layers in her portraits and you can see the traces of Sherman’s eyebrows and the wrinkles in her skin. “You can see the cracks in the armour,” says her old photography teacher. She’s in there somewhere, despite her best efforts to vanish.
This film is a great look at one of the most important artists working today, told through the interviews with Sherman and through insightful offerings from those who have known and worked with her. I could have done without the inclusion of a group of Instagram influencers – used to make the point about how relevant Sherman’s work is in our selfie-obsessed, digitally artificial world – and had more from Sherman on the big issues: love, death, ageing and parrot-keeping. Her parrot, Mister Frieda, is the only being allowed in the studio with Sherman while she works – it’s a pity he only says “hello”.
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