Untitled (You Must Be Born Again)

Reverend Benjamin Franklin Perkins

Before 1987

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Untitled, from the series "Baseball" [Sammy Sosa], David Levinthal, Polaroid (Polacolor ER Land Film print)
Wind Eroded Volcanic Ash --Kleifarvatn, Eliot Porter, dye-transfer print
Triptych of unstretched canvases. The first is painted in brown and shows a sink with a pipe at the bottom. The second is green and shows side-by-side sinks rendered in a reddish-brown and overlaid with a picture of a faucet. There’s a sphere in the background. The third is white with brown stairs.
A large-scale color photograph from a series commonly referred to as the "History Pictures," in which the artist created numerous images modeled on Renaissance-era European portrait painting. Sherman uses herself as the model in these pictures. Instead of directly quoting any one work or artist, in the "History Pictures" Sherman recreates the historical postures, types and trappings of the genre. "Untitled #213" is particularly reminiscent of the work of German painter Hans Holbein; there are marked similarities between "Untitled #213" and Holbein's portrait of Thomas More. Sherman achieves her imitations of these earlier portraits through playacting, costume, make-up, prosthetics, set decorations and lighting. The overall effect of "Untitled #213" is "realistic," except that Sherman has accentuated the fakeness of the figure's false scalp with attached hair and eyebrows. The work is in an original frame created to the artist's specifications.