Cindy Sherman and Cate Blanchett had only met a few times in passing. And yet there is a recognizable thread that connects the work of Sherman, the artist who appears (disappeared), disguised in character, in her own photographs, and Blanchett, the protean and Oscar-winning Australian actress. On a gray morning in late April, the women, mutual admirers, gathered at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where a collection of Sherman’s acclaimed early work opened on May 4 and they quickly forged a connection.
“I’m a huge fan,” Blanchett said, proving her admiration with detailed questions, both technical (does Sherman use a timer?) and philosophical (“where is rhythm in photography?”). Blanchett had gone to town to receive an award from Film at Lincoln Center, before returning to London, where she was filming ‘Disclaimer’, an Apple TV+ series directed by Alfonso Cuarón.
Sherman was busy overseeing the exhibition, which includes all 70 of her untitled film stills, the black-and-white photographs that put her on the map and shook up the art world beginning in the late 1970s, as well as her subsequent projection on the back screen and graphics in the center, all in color and starring her. Sherman, 68, and Blanchett, who turns 53 this month, toured the exhibit together, eagerly looking for similarities.
“She really takes on different personas,” Sherman said admiringly.
In 2015, Blanchett performed in “Manifesto”, a 13-channel video art installation by German artist Julian Rosefeldt, in which she played at least a dozen different characters, from news anchor to homeless man, and recited various artistic and political manifestos. (It was later released as a feature film.) “That was inspiring,” Sherman said, adding that she felt she had played some of those characters as well. “It was a nice confirmation of the feeling that we are somewhat on the same wavelength.”
In what was less of a conversation than a cosmic matchup, they talked about gaining character, childhood play, the value of makeup, and the horror of clowns. These are edited fragments.
How do you use each other’s work?
CATE BLANCHETT Filmmaking can be very literal. So I find everything you can do to move yourself into a more abstract space. Sometimes it is a piece of music. But it is always an object. Often I make a whole tear plate composition about the feeling around something I can’t articulate, images that on a conscious level had nothing to do with what I’m doing. Like the Clown series for example. I can’t even begin to express my disgust and fear – the visceral feeling of seeing those works [Sherman’s series of lurid clowns]† I tore it out for [the Guillermo del Toro film] “Nightmare Alley” recently.
I find that if you have something left of the field against what you have to do as an actor, it can create something more ambiguous. It doesn’t always work.
CINDY SHERMAN That way I don’t really get into the characters, but there is a big difference between what I do and acting. I just stand still, and since I also work alone, I can really mix it up, doing the opposite of what I thought the character should be doing — and sometimes that works.
Did any of you grow up thinking you had very malleable faces?
SHERMAN Not me.
BLANCHETT New. I did this thing with my sister, she got me dressed, put me in front of the mirror and gave me a name. Then I would have to find that person. My favorite – we kept saying we were going to make a movie about him – his name was Piggy Trucker. He was a little little boy, kind of like an Australian Wally Shawn [the actor and playwright Wallace Shawn]and he rode in a pig cart. [I was] probably about 7.8 years old.
SHERMAN It was dressing up. My mom went to the local thrift store and bought these old prom dresses from the 40s or 50s for 10 cents. There was also, I think it was my great-grandmother’s clothes that had been left in the basement. I discovered them, and it was like, wow. It looked like old women’s clothes, but also the kind of apron. When I was 10 or 12 I put them on, stuffed socks up to my waist to look like an old lady [breasts]and walk around the block.
BLANCHETT [laughing, pretending to be Sherman] I knew then that I wanted to be an artist!
Often these things start out as play and then the exploration becomes, I think, a seamless transition. It’s not conscious – some of these things you do without thinking.
SHERMAN Yes. When I was in college, I put on makeup and transformed myself in my bedroom when I studied painting. I think I was working out my frustration with everything that was going on in my life, and my then boyfriend finally said, you know, maybe you should take pictures of this. And that seemed like a good idea.
Sometimes I make it up right [a character] and look in the mirror as i pose, and all of a sudden i feel like i don’t recognize it [myself]† Wow, where is she from? It’s kind of spooky, pretty cool. [To Blanchett] How do you get characters? Like all the ones for Julian [Rosefeldt]†
BLANCHETT It was so fast. It was actually quite interesting to me, because you can really get stuck in your character’s backstory, especially in American acting culture. It’s all about your connection – if your mom died or dad died, use that. That’s really strange to me. I will talk to my therapist about it. What was really great about that Julian thing was that there was no psychology. It was just a series of actions. Usually we don’t think about what drives us. you are doing stuff. [To Sherman] You’ve also done a few male incarnations.
SHERMAN That was a lot harder. I just needed to become confident in a way that as a woman I may not be. Once I relaxed into the character, I [sometimes] felt, this is a very sensitive man.
Cindy, in the movie stills, you said you tried to have very little visible emotion, at least in your face. Why?
SHERMAN Obviously I didn’t want to be happy or sad, hurt or angry. I wanted it to look like the moment right before that emotion, or right after it. I realized it looked too corny if I overreacted. So it just added a more neutral mystery, because you… [wondering]what’s going on there?
BLANCHETT Often a smile is a defense. It’s actually a shutdown rather than an invitation. When you smile with your eyes, that’s where the real comes from. One of the many things that is so powerful about your job is creating that expectation [of emotion] but don’t deliver, so there’s an eerie kind of hollowness to it. It is the disconnection of what we present to who we really are, and that vacuum between the two. It is often the room where all our personal horror resides.
[To Cindy]It’s interesting, you go through this process yourself. I’m not a big fan of the monologue. I once played a play, a play by Botho Strauss, where I had a monologue for 25 minutes. It was like, wow, this is lonely. Often with movies there is no rehearsal or even a conversation about things. You are just meant to walk through and deliver. You think about the result, and I think that’s a pretty deadly way of working.
I’ve realized over the years that my relationship with the costume designer and the hair and makeup people is really deep. It’s in-depth to see what the character looks like, and thus how a character can move or project. Those departments – so-called ‘female guilds’ – are often things that male directors claim to know nothing about. “I’ll leave that bit to you.”
I played Elizabeth I years ago and the director, who I love and respect, was always, I just want the hair down, waving in the wind. I said, have you seen the photos of Elizabeth I? There weren’t that many.
But it’s because [some male directors] to feel attracted. They can’t see that there are other ways – and not even in a sexual way – that you can be attractive. You can engage an audience in a character’s experience in many different ways. I keep going back to the clown images – you can tell I’m really disturbed by it. When you take them, do you think: I want people to hate this?
SHERMAN Even the horrific things I’ve done – grotesque things with rotten food – I want people to feel a little repulsive, but attracted and laugh about it, all at the same time. I don’t want people to take it too seriously.
I’ve always been attracted to horror movies and I liken that to the feeling of being on a roller coaster. You know you won’t fall, but you can still be terrified. And then it’s all over. I think that’s how fairy tales functioned way back in the day. I tried to do that with my work, to make it look like, from a distance, beautiful colors! And up close – oh, it’s kind of awful. But then you get the joke.
In the mid-80s, this Paris company asked me if I wanted to do some ads for French Vogue. Then I started playing with fake blood and fake noses. Of course they hated it. That inspired me to make it much darker. I have fake scar tissue and fake body parts. In the end I found these prostheses — fake [breasts and butts] was the perfect way to start playing with nudity, partly because I think I was hiding in work. The idea of literally revealing a part of myself was never the point.
BLANCHETT I’m quite kinesthetic – that’s why I like being on stage, I feel like I’m always better on the move. You’re so incredible, there’s so much movement, and then it’s all captured in this trembling, still image.
It’s like when you go dancing. It’s that moment of [sharp inhale] suspension before anyone lands, that’s so exciting. And so great that [your photographs] are not titled. You are not led to get any particular meaning from it. These work, it’s like a litmus test. Thank you.