
Cindy Sherman’s ground-breaking series Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980) needs no introduction: comprised of 70 images of the artist dressed in various female guises, these black-and-white photographs are Sherman’s most well-known, celebrated body of work. The project solidified her artistic practice of using her own body as the main element in the expanding repertoire of portraits that she continues to make. The provocative moment captured in each Untitled Film Still suggests a rich story, but Sherman never divulges the heroine’s circumstances. Likewise, Sherman did not title the Film Stills so that each one remains ambiguous and open-ended.

This large-format print of Untitled Film Still #37 comes from the personal collection of curator, professor, and art historian Douglas Crimp (1944-2019), known for his ground-breaking exhibition Pictures mounted at Artists Space in New York in 1977. Both the exhibition title as well as its thesis set the stage for what would become known as the Pictures Generation, a group of contemporary American artists who appropriated mass media imagery or pointed to the broader image culture through their own photographs, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations. Along with Sherman, artists of the Pictures Generation include Louise Lawler, Sherry Levine, Richard Prince, Robert Longo, and Sarah Charlesworth, among others.
In the late 1970s, both Crimp and Sherman had significant personal and professional ties to Artists Space, its then director Helene Winer, and curator Janelle Reiring (the pair subsequently founded the gallery Metro Pictures in 1980). Sherman recounts her own start at Artists Space:
‘. . . Helene Winer invited me to be the part-time receptionist at Artists Space, where she was the director. Artists Space was great for getting a feeling for what was going on in the New York art world. I got to know who everyone was, even if I didn’t always get to meet them. The cross-section of art, music, film, the mix-up of all of that . . . the alternative gallery scene—it was a perfect way for me to get into the art world. It forced me to get out and about, to stop being so neurotic. It must have helped me focus my thoughts, too, because it was in the fall that I shot the first roll of Film Stills.’
Just a year after Crimp’s Pictures exhibition, Sherman exhibited her film stills at Artists Space in autumn 1978:

‘Then I was in a show at Artists Space that Janelle [Reiring] curated while I was working there. It was the first time I showed what there was of the Film Stills as a larger group. Most were in a plastic flip book that was on the reception desk, but four of them had been blown up to poster size. We’d also agreed that I would occasionally come to work in character.’
Crimp’s career was fueled by his curation of Pictures, which subsequently established the groundwork for Reiring’s 1978 exhibition ________, Louise Lawler, Adrian Piper and Cindy Sherman are participating in an exhibition organized by Janelle Reiring at Artists Space, September 23 to October 28, 1978. Crimp recalled Reiring’s installation in his memoir:
‘Sherman showed her earliest Untitled Film Stills; four of them appeared in the catalogue. Unlike Pictures, Reiring’s exhibition is little known today, even though it was groundbreaking in so many ways – a group show in which women artists predominate, one of the earliest exhibitions of Louise’s work, the first show of Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills, the first show to foreground women artists involved in institutional critique. . .’

That Crimp chose to acquire Untitled Film Still #37 in 1980 from Metro Pictures – Sherman’s long-standing gallery whose name deliberately points to the Pictures Generation – for his personal collection anoints this work as decidedly special. It also exemplifies Crimp’s direct support of artists and friends through the purchase of their work.
Large-format Untitled Film Stills, such as the present photograph, were printed in a limited edition of 3. At the time of this writing, it is believed that Untitled Film Still #37 has appeared at auction only once before when edition 2/3 sold at Sotheby’s New York in May 2018.
Complete sets of the 8-by-10-inch Untitled Film Stills are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York. A print of this image is also in the collection of The Broad, Los Angeles.