Recoding painting? Repeated use of artwork in Cindy Sherman and Sam Taylor Wood

Abstract

Taking a cue form theoretical studies on adaptation, we propose to draw a relationship with similar insights emerged in some recent art historical studies.Through a theoretical analysis of two contemporary artworks by Cindy Sherman and Sam Taylor Wood, both based on earlier visual tradition, we will consider the effects of re-production of images as the re-production of deferred meaning. The intersystemic quotation such as painting - tableau vivant – coding by photographic and video technologies, works at different levels and creates high degree of ambiguity between the media and the images involved. This mediation produces disturbing effects on the viewer who has to recognize in the artwork an contaminated and elusive visual tradition, which displays a latent meanings and (re)activates memory images. In order to understand these complex layers it is necessary to consider the work and its subtext in terms of a shared temporality in which images, media and extratextual memories, interact.