Coinciding with Frieze Masters, Skarstedt’s new exhibition aims to provide a renewed perspective on the significance of the artists’ earlier works and their influence on subsequent generations of photographers.
Dominant figures in contemporary art-photography, both Cindy Sherman and David Salle were part of ‘Pictures Generation’ art movement of the mid 1970s and 80s in New York, which drew upon existing imagery as inspiration.
First exhibited in London at Waddington Galleries in 1989 and Gagosian Gallery, New York, in 1991, David Salle’s Tapestry Paintings are a pastiche on sixteenth and seventeenth-century Italian and Dutch genre styles.
The background imagery is drawn from narrative scenes from historical tapestries, some of which are reproductions of famous works, others by an anonymous Russian tapestry-maker which Salle found reproduced in a magazine and copied onto canvas.
A select number of Tapestry Paintings were included in the touring retrospective of Salle’s work, which originated at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1999, though paintings from this pivotal series have not been exhibited since.
Inspired directly by painted portraits by Raphael, Caravaggio, Ingres and Rubens among others, Sherman uses a range of props and costumes in her classically composed images to play up to the clichés of subjective portraiture.
Throughout her extensive body of work, Sherman has assumed the role of both model and creator of her images. Through her use of props and obvious prosthetic body parts, she plays upon the stereotypes of women as portrayed in art and propagated in the media.
Invited to collaborate with the French porcelain house Limoges, Sherman made several images, notably Untitled #183, 1988, loosely based on Madame de Pompadour.
Continuing with her research of characters, Sherman created the Citoyennes, Citoyens series, exhibited in Paris in 1989 for the anniversary of the French Revolution.
Expanding this theme during a prolonged stay in Rome, Sherman made thirteen portraits based on Renaissance paintings which were exhibited alongside the French series at Metro Pictures, New York in 1990. Sherman eventually made a third series of history portraits drawing inspiration largely from the Renaissance and the seventeenth century.
In the History Portraits, Sherman explores the traditional genre of painting with a multi-layered approach both physically and conceptually. The heavy draped fabrics that form the backdrops of the portraits and the rich, dense coloration of the photographic surface give physical form to her appropriation of this historical genre.
Designed by Thomas Croft Architects, the new gallery, titled Skarstedt, will show this and more exhibitions over 4,000 square feet of exhibition space.
Cindy Sherman and David Salle: History Portraits and Tapestry Paintings is at Skarstedt, London, from 1st October – 26th November 2016 For more information see here.
