Cindy Sherman is among the most influential artists of her generation. Using herself as a model in a range of costumes in invented situations, she plays with images created and popularized by mass media, popular culture, and fine art. Television, advertising, magazines, fashion, and Old Master paintings--they are all fair game.

Whether using makeup, costumes, props, or prosthetics to manipulate her own appearance, or devising elaborate narrative tableaux, the entire body of forty years' work constitutes a distinctive response to contemporary culture.