Artist Comparison

Cui Xiuwen vs. Cindy Sherman vs. Frida Khalo: Female Artists

All three artists have a very unique way in portraying the woman and her body. As each lived through her life, she pulled different elements that inspired her work and made it so individualistic and unique.

Cui Xiuwen has a talent for portraying a woman in an almost robotic, inhuman way. She is the only subject she ever photographs, but that doesn't mean there is only one subject in each of her pieces. Many times, she will duplicate herself to create a crowd, adding to the lack of humanity in her work since all the people she features are exactly the same. She also portrays herself in depressed sort of longing, forever reaching forward or simply giving up entirely. The fact that she is also pregant (or at least appears to be so) adds to the mechnicnal feel, making women appear to be tools only for reproduction rather than living, feeling beings.

Cindy Sherman takes everything in a completely different direction, though. Instead she focuses on how vain women can be. Her subjects are all beautiful, affluent women with a lot of makeup and niceities. They all try to appear desiable and, in a way, like they are the best woman in the world. The interesting part of her work is that none of her subjects are ever happy. There is always a sense of seriousness or, if they even are smiling, a sense of falsities.

Frida Khalo, though, is an artist we all have known for the beginning, mostly for her infamous unibrow and mustache. She is quite different from the previous two artists because her message is that she wants to prove that woman are beautiful, even if they are ugly. She always is seen wearing nice dresses and jewlery and amongst lush jungles or gardens. While Xiuwen believed women were mechanical and Sherman believed they were vain, Khalo wanted to prove that, above all else, women were beautiful, no matter what.