Cindy Sherman

I haven’t had as much leisure time as I want these days. The new gym is not recreation, nor are L.A. freeways. I have to determine how to use my work time to prepare to make the most of my leisure time.

Something that I have been enjoying in my leisure time is the Cindy Sherman book that I just got. I am a fan of deferred gratification and I have been delaying purchasing this book for too long.

I have been waiting for years for a good collection of Cindy Sherman “Untitled Film Stills” to come out. Sometime in the early 1990s, before I knew what these pictures were, I bought a postcard of the “girl in the library” picture. I thought it really was an “untitled film still” because that’s what it said on the back. For years I’ve looked through Cindy Sherman books searching for “Untitled Film Stills” and I’m always disappointed with the small sizes or with the other photos in the book.

Sometime after the 2003 release of The Complete Untitled Film Stills, I became aware it existed. Last winter on a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago I saw the book and almost bought it. However since I hadn’t read five books since the last time I’d bought a book, I wasn’t eligible to buy a new book (yes, even if it’s a book of pictures).

However, this month the time was ripe. This book is perfect; it’s exactly what I wanted. It’s heavy with high quality paper and it has big pictures. This book is as essential to my bookcase as my Patrick Nagel book (yes, I have a Patrick Nagel book and I’m not ashamed; I like it and I look at it all the time). Cindy Sherman writes the text at the beginning. She explains how she made the pictures and what she was up to at the time. The text is very accessible and down to earth; she sounds like an even more normal person than I am.