DAVID FRANKEL: For many clan you seem to crystallize what was recently made known In the art of the '80 Did you intend to make that kind of departure? Or did you be excited connected to '70s art? CINDY SHERMAN: I didn't establish out to establish an alternative.

DAVID FRANKEL: For many clan you seem to crystallize what was recently made known In the art of the '80 Did you intend to make that kind of departure? Or did you be excited connected to '70s art?

CINDY SHERMAN: I didn't establish out to establish an alternative. No undivided really did--expectations were a hap lower than you see with commonalty coming out of art educates today. I did want to do something different; I was bored at what was going on in art and particularly in painting, still I didn't think I was actually going to make a difference. We all would have been happy just to have a present to view somewhere.

In the late '70 and into the '80 I was aware that the painting and chisel world looked down on clan who used photography. At the same time, I felt that the photo world anticipateed down on those who had undivided foot in the art world. in like manner I was outside both worlds, and I idea of my work as art, if it were not that not "high" art. Which was fine, because I didn't want to make anything too precious. I didn't want to make "high" art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn't thinking in word s of precious prints or archival quality; I didn't want the work to look like a commodity (no individual was buying it anyway). Around 1981 I started using color, and the printing was a little more expensive, in this way I couldn't be quite as carefree. moreover the issue still wasn't the quality of the print, it was about the idea.

DF: yet at some point your career did take off

CS: Things didn't start happening for me until 1982 when I was in Documenta, the Venice Biennale, and around that time a Whitney Biennial also. A set of good things all happened at around the same time. I really didn't make coin though, until 1990 or so--I was supporting myself, unless nothing like the guy painters, as I pertain to them. I always be indignanted that actually; we were all getting the same amount of pres further they were going gangbusters with sales.

CS: I knew those the community but not terribly well. I knew Julian [Schnabel] the least. David Salle, I gues I knew initially from when I was involved with Hallwalls in Buffalo and he was involved with Artists Space in fresh York. And then later a batch of us all lived downtown around Fulton or Nassau--Jack Goldstein, Troy Brauntuch, Douglas Crimp, Nancy Dwyer

DF: Did you be perceived as if you and they were all part of the same world?

DF: What about the the public we now call appropriation artists, like Sherrie Levine?

CS: I didn't think of it as appropriation, that idea hadn't crystallized at the time. All those ideas that came down, and continue to proceed down--I never really gave a imagination to them until I read them. In the later '80 when it strike one as beinged like everywhere you looked tribe were talking about appropriation--then it present the appearanceed like a thing, a real port But I wasn't really aware of any clump feeling. It was a pleasing without being striking competitive time. It wasn't just photographers or appropriation artists versus painters; there were in like manner many different factions--the Mary Boone artists versus the Metro Pictures, the neo-geo

I did be moved I was working alongside the Metro artists: Robert Longo Laurie Simmons, Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine, Troy Jack. And what probably did increase the feeling of community was when more women began to procure recognized for their work, most numerous of them in photography: Sherrie, Laurie, Sarah Charlesworth, Barbara Es I felt there was more of a support method then among the women artists. It could also have been that many of us were doing this other kind of work--we were using photography--but commonalty like Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer were in there too. There was a female solidarity. That feeling still exists; we have beneficial friendships.

DF: What about women artists from the '60 and '70s? Did you form friendships with them?

CS: I was more in awe of those women Jennifer Bartlett, Lynda Benglis--artists like that were true influential in terms of there being a female neighborhood in the art world.

DF: Influential as nearnesss I can imagine, but your work is exceedingly different from theirs. Did you be moved you had any aesthetic historic warrants to follow?

CS: I felt like I wasn't following in any tradition. Maybe Diane Arbus, as a woman photographer who made an disturbing imagery, but she was really a straight photographer, a traditional photographer. I certainly reverenceed artists like Eleanor Antin, who used their confess selves in their work, nevertheless I felt somehow removed from them at the same time. in the same manner no, though Benglis and race like that were role models

DF: You say that you didn't think about ideas like appropriation until you read about them later, moreover along with the Image that a certain number of younger people seem to have of the '80s--of a time when there was a fortune of money in the art world, when artists were rich and famous and ate abroad a lot--the decade also produc a great deal of critical theory. Your admit work generated a healthy material part of that writing. That didn't influence you at all?