Meet Cindy Sherman

How does someone become a ground-breaking artist? Does it start when you're very little and discover that you like to play dress up? Does it happen when you're ten years old and someone gives you a Polaroid camera for Christmas? Maybe it begins in college, when you're finally on your own to discover the world as you see it for the first time. Looking at the life of legendary photographer Cindy Sherman, Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan have created an unconventional biography, that much like Cindy Sherman's famous photographs, has something a little more meaningful under the surface. Infusing the narrative with Sherman's photographs, as well as children's first impressions of the photographs, this is a biography that goes beyond birth, middle age, and later life. It's a look at how we look at art.

One of the twentieth century's most significant artists, Cindy Sherman has quietly uprooted conventional understandings of portraiture and art, questioning everything from identity to feminism. Critics around the world have taken Sherman's photographs and extensively examined what lies underneath. However, little critical ink has been spilled on Sherman's only film, Office Killer, a piece that plays a significant role both in Sherman's body of work and in American art in the late twentieth century. Dahlia Schweitzer breaks the silence with her trenchant analysis of Office Killer and explores the film on a variety of levels, combating head-on the art world's reluctance to discuss the movie and arguing instead that it is only through a close reading of the film that we can begin to appreciate the messages underlying all of Sherman's work. The first book on this neglected piece of an esteemed artist's oeuvre, Cindy Sherman's "Office Killer" rescues the film from critical oblivion and situates it next to the artist's other iconic works.

A picture book about the making of Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring, her most famous dance performance Martha Graham : trailblazing choreographer Aaron Copland : distinguished American composer Isamu Noguchi : artist, sculptor, craftsman Award-winning authors Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan tell the story behind the scenes of the collaboration that created APPALACHIAN SPRING, from its inception through the score's composition to Martha's intense rehearsal process. The authors' collaborator is two-time Sibert Honor winner Brian Floca, whose vivid watercolors bring both the process and the performance to life.

"An in-depth look at the disturbing and abject sides of the American photo artist's oeuvre. Throughout her career, Cindy Sherman (*1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey) has been interested in the derailed and deviant sides of human nature, noticeable both in her selection of subject matter (fairytales, disasters, sex, horror, and surrealism) and in her disquieting interpretations of well-established photographic genres, such as film stills, fashion photography, and society portraiture. This richly illustrated publication seeks to highlight and acknowledge these aspects of her work based on selected examples and accompanied by texts by well-known authors, filmmakers, and artists who likewise deal with the grotesque, the uncanny, and the extraordinary in their artistic practice."--Publisher's website.

Published to accompany exhibition held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2/11/97 - 1/2/98; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 28/2/98 - 31/5/98.

In this first presentation of the artist's complete work, leading contemporary art historian Rosalind Krauss reviews Cindy Sherman's remarkable series of photographic works - in which the artist has notoriously assumed various roles, from B-movie starlet to Old Master model - and the enormous influence these works have had on feminist thinking and on current dialogues about the strategies of contemporary art in general. Almost perversely, Krauss argues, Sherman's unsettling attempts to dissect the formation and perception of images have turned her artworks - and herself - into icons for feminists' and others' agendas. Krauss explores in depth the various approaches to Sherman's work taken by philosophers and art historians and asks if they have not often lost sight of the imagery itself - or, more specifically, the way the images are constructed. In a further essay, Norman Bryson, internationally known for his pioneering theories on the semiotics of looking, explores Sherman's most recent, horror-show images of mannequins (known as the Sex Pictures) and identifies their place in her continued out-of-body investigations. Along with a bibliography and chronology, more than 200 illustrations (140 in color), including numerous unpublished works, represent Sherman's complete career to date.

Artists: John Baldessari, Ericka Beckman, Dara Birnbaum, Barbara Bloom, Eric Bogosian, Glenn Branca, Tony Brauntuch, James Casebere, Sarah Charlesworth, Charles Clough, Nancy Dwyer, Jack Goldstein, Barbara Kruger, Jouise Lawler, Thomas Lawson, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo Allan McCollum, Paul McMahon, MICA-TV (Carole Ann Klonarides and Michael Owen), Matt Mullican, Tom Otterness, Richard Prince, David Salle, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Michael Smith, James Welling, Michael Zwack.

Meeting the Needs of Your Most Able Students in Art provides specific guidance on: Recognising high ability and multiple intelligences Planning, differentiation and extension/enrichment in Art Teacher questioning skills Support for more able pupils with learning difficulties Homework Recording and assessment Beyond the classroom: visits, residentials, competitions, summer schools, masterclasses, links with other institutions. The book features comprehensive appendices and an accompanying CD with: Useful contacts and resources Lesson plans Liaison sheets for Teaching Assistants Homework activities Monitoring sheets For secondary teachers, subject heads of departments, Gifted and Talented co-ordinators, SENCos and LEA advisers.