For those of you who have seen my work, it will come as no surprise that I rather like Cindy Sherman’s work. So it was with great excitement that I find out she has created some new portraits as a result of a new collaboration with MAC:
No stranger to fashion, Sherman collaborated with Balenciaga last year, producing a similarly bold and provocative collection of photos that appear to both mock and court the fashion world. A brave and comforting decision from both Balenciaga and MAC, afterall everyone loves to laugh at themselves, don’t we?
And MAC has a habit of picking out diverse muses from across the creative industries to help promote their collection – recently Nicky Minaj, Wonder Woman, Gareth Pugh, Barbie, Dame Edna Everage, Marcel Wanders, Lady Gaga, Disney, to name a few, and now of course Cindy Sherman.
From reading press release extracts and if we were to crassly categorise this campaign as a big advert for MAC, the art/commerce exploitation condundrum that Fashion Popcorn seems unable to avoid in its salon discussions, rears its little head once more – “In the campaign we’ve longed forever to conceive, Cindy Sherman for MAC created three characters using three different colour stories. We’re living in a time when people of all persuasions have become bolder than ever about the ways they choose to express themselves: with a colourful palette of possibilities, You are the Artist, You are your own Subject, and no matter how fearfully you begin, you become fearless in the process.”
So then who is the artist? - the creator, the promoter or the consumer? Where does the “artist” sit in the value chain for brands? Who is gaining what from who? Just where does art and commerce begin? Is the collaboration between brand and artist equal? If not, does that devalue the creativity of the artist?
Despite these questions playing on me, I love the fact that MAC are engaging non-fashion industry fashion-orientated people and allowing those people to keep some artistic integrity (whatever that is…). Although this approach is not necessarily an innovative brand building tactic, their clever trust of Sherman shows they are willing to innovate their brand representation within an self-image savvy world AND playfully pay appropriate homage to their creative heritage as the makeup choice for professional makeup artists. Its not all about fashion y’know.
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