Untitled #209, "History Portrait" Series (1989)
Artwork description & Analysis: In this three-quarter length, Italian Renaissance-style portrait, Sherman takes on the persona of the Mona Lisa. Donning a 15th-century Italianate dress, Sherman allies herself with one of art history's most famous, iconic paintings. No true replica, the photo is meant to call to mind the original, without literally copying it, the mental distance between the real and the imitation just barely apparent, yet somehow haunting. One might say that Sherman suggests that viewers rethink their familiarity with the original and question how its conventions of depiction continue to condition the way that even we, hundreds of years later, regard every representation of the "Female."
Color photograph - The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat