ers." In the Baroque, "levels of reality are challenged, divisions between materials are breached, and the viewer is engaged with the object" (Cole and Gealt 165).
Sherman's photographs reflect Baroque features, but in what appears to be a grotesque presentation. In her History Portraits, she aims to critique the works of the Baroque style. Her perspective in these photographs is intended to shock the viewer with its sense of horror, humor, and the grotesque. (In fact, there is little or no sense of true horror in this particular series from Sherman. Perhaps a deep and disturbing realization of human suffering might more accurately and meaningfully name the third of the three emotions applicable to this series.)
However, this study will argue that Sherman has a deeper, more important, and more crucially human intention in mind than mere shock. The flamboyant elements of the Baroque are tailor-made for such a critique, and Sherman's art is tailor-made to provide such a critique. She is noted for using herself as the subject of her photographs, often in costumes, wigs, disguises. etc., and often in poses which comment on the role of gender in personal and social identity. However, despite her general focus on the female, the argument here is that Sherman transcends gender in order to comment on the suffering of all of humanity. The fact that she uses herself, a fully modern woman, to portray characters from four hundred years ago, demonstrates that her work also transcends the limitations of time. Sherman takes the elements of the Baroque to an extreme which mirrors and distorts those elements for ultimately humanist purposes.
Cruz's text in regard to Sherman's History Portraits Series is shallow and brief, but straightforward, descriptive rather than analytical:
She returns as a sitter in this series, using props and wearing lush costumes, wigs, and fake appendages to assume the character of the various nobles, mythol...