Cindy Sherman at MoMA

Last weekend, my best friend and I went to New York City to go to see the current Cindy Sherman exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. I first learned who Cindy Sherman was in undergrad at Hollins University. I became an art history minor by accident (I realized my junior year that I had just taken enough of the right classes that I just needed one more to already have the minor completed). So, being a film and photography major with a minor in art history, it seems only natural that from the moment I first laid eyes on Untitled Film Still #21, I was completely and totally hooked. Of course, I ended up doing a final project based on her work for my Modern Art class. It was a computer program/presentation where I took a selection of the Untitled Film Stills and the Centerfold series and broke them down into the archetypes they represented and compared them to specific films. It's probably the most elementary of ways you can look at Sherman's work, but I loved doing it and I'm still proud of it.

I missed out on seeing the entire Untitled Film Stills series when MoMA first exhibited it a few years ago, right after they acquired the complete set because I hadn't been exposed to Sherman's photography yet. I saw a few when I went on a trip to NYC in 2009, but I always regretted missing the entire thing. So when MoMA announced that they were doing an exhibit of Cindy Sherman's work that included the Film Stills and more pieces from her entire career, I really wanted to go. My best friend stepped up, and said we should go together and a plan was made.

The thing that I love most about Sherman's photography is that she plays with symbolism and archetypes so perfectly, and in a way that is mostly accessible to a large portion of the general public. This isn't like some artwork where you know it must mean something but you're completely lost as to what until you read a ten page artist's statement that explains what each individual piece represents to him. Sherman is using what we know, and she creates a commentary about it that is often equal parts celebration and critique.

The reason that the Film Stills series is so powerful is that we all know these pictures. We know these women, we know their histories and their stories. I would wager if you took one of them out into the streets of a city and asked people if they had seen the movie it was from, most would answer with "Yeah, I can't remember the title, but I've seen that one." Film is a visual medium, created using a short of shorthand language that we all know so that we understand things without being told. Tropes exist in film specifically so we don't have to spend a lot of time telling the audience things that we could convey with wardrobe choices, hairstyle, or even camera angle.

Sherman understands the vernacular and uses it to her advantage. There probably never has been as perfect a critique or exploration of women's film roles in that "Golden Age" of cinema. I've read entire books that were using pages upon pages of long winded sentences to try to explain what Sherman can say in a single image.

And the interesting thing is that those were some of her earliest works. She went on to examine many other types of popular culture and art, from Centerfolds to Renaissance painting to Hollywood Head Shots. And each time she's done it with the same skill and ability to speak the language of the art form and resonate with a wide audience.

If you're even remotely near NYC, you have to go check out the exhibit in the next few days while it's still up - through June 11th. MoMA is a fantastic museum anyway, and well worth a look when you're in town. But if nothing else, you should spend a few hours this week looking at the website for the exhibit or reading about Sherman, because she's an artist you really should know about.

The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones

It's hard to review a cookbook, especially one that you haven't actually cooked anything from. But what I can tell you is that this book was basically not at all what I was looking for and I was more than a little disappointed. Which isn't exactly the book's fault, because it was clear I was not at all the target for this particular cookbook. See, I mostly do single serve meals for myself because my husband and I eat such very different things. Plus, I do about half of my work from home, so I can make my own lunch if I wanted. So I've been actively looking for recipes and cookbooks that focus on small portions and cooking for one or two people. This book seemed perfect.

Only the thing is that it's written by a woman with a fantastic food pedigree (she has one recipe that she designed specifically for a meal with Julia Child when she worked for her). Meanwhile, I only own a handful of pots and pans and barely know how to do much more than brown hamburger.

Most of the time, I can find a way to take very fancy recipes and adapt some of the flavors and techniques into things I can manage. At the least, I learn a bit about what goes well together for future reference. But in the end, I don't cook with a ton of spices and ingredients because it's expensive and an indulgence I don't need. If food was important to me, the way it seems to be for Jones, then that would probably be different. I would make it a priority.

But the thing people with money never seem to realize is that every single ingredient you add to a recipe is a much larger cost than you would think. First, there's just buying the item in the first place. Then, there's the fact that unless you're using it up in this recipe, you're going to have to store it. If you don't have a large kitchen, this is a huge problem.

Lastly, there's the problem of waste. Last time I made one of my favorite recipes, I had to spend twice as much per ounce on some of the ingredients because I bought the smallest sizes possible of things like horseradish that I just don't use before it goes bad (unless I'm making the same recipes nearly every day). I still ended up throwing away half the bottle. And I don't really believe in wasting food like that, I'm trying very hard to curb my food waste.

So when a recipe calls for something like cumin, then there's really not much for me to do because there's no way that I have the money, space, or need for an entire bottle of cumin. And the majority of people that I know are the same way. This cookbook was basically for a social and economic class of people that I don't belong to. Some of the food sounded pretty great, but the only recipe I really wanted to keep was the Hollandaise for One, because I love hollandaise and the only ingredients are butter, egg, lemon juice and salt. Although the last time I bought lemon juice I had to throw out almost the entire bottle of that, so who knows.

Real Steel

Since I talked about one movie I watched on a plane, I thought I'd do another. The first film I actually watched when I settled in for my first eleven hour flight was Real Steel because I'm a sucker for Hugh Jackman. I think everybody thought that Real Steel was just a movie version of Rock'em Sock'em Robots. Even I made that joke, and I had no idea that it was actually based on a Richard Matheson story. Richard Matheson is a bit like Philip K. Dick, you probably have no idea how influential he's been over genre film and television. His stories are everywhere, including The Twilight Zone (where Steel was originally adapted). With that surprisingly pedigree for the story, it's becomes unsurprising that the movie itself is so much better than expected. Yes, there is robot boxing. That is totally a thing, and sometimes it is as ridiculous as it sounds. But at it's heart, it's a sports movie and a father/son bonding movie. It's more about family than it is about robots.

In fact, the biggest fault with the film is that it follows the tropes of the underdog sports movie a little too closely. Sure, having the underdog be a robot was different but it wasn't different enough to forgive how predictable the plot can be. Everything moves forward exactly as expected, and they're not even brave enough to go for the one plot twist I expected.*

Which makes it sound like I didn't like the movie. I actually did, I thought it was a good action story. It seemed like a good movie for kids to watch with their parents (not sure what age is appropriate for robotic carnage, but whatever). I thought the acting was well done, for the most part. The visuals were fantastic, and the special effects were a relief. I was expecting really wretched CG robots that didn't look real, but they had the sense to make everything a little grimy so that it would be realistic.

I don't know that it's a movie I'll go out and buy, but it's definitely one that I'll end up stopping on and watching every time it comes on TV.


*
SPOILERFUL FOOTNOTE


The twist I expected: that Atom was actually designed by Mashido and that he was an early design that was scrapped because he couldn't make it work quite right but the kid had figured out the way to make it perfect. Or maybe he was forced to scrap it by his sponsors at the time because it wasn't what they wanted, and he always wished he had kept this robot and wanted him back. Actually, the fact that Atom's origins weren't delved into or explored and yet he was a one of a kind robot that could learn? HUGE misstep, and the biggest glaring problem with the whole film.