In addition to being the art world’s second-greatest tureen, her Sevres porcelain soup tureen with her self-portrait on the side as Madame Pompadour (née Poisson) is Cindy Sherman’s second-greatest work. It has a perfect harmony of content, context, image, and medium that made the Untitled Film Stills so lastingly powerful.
The only thing to improve it would be setting it among the complete Limoges dinner set and the tea & breakfast set Sherman produced with Artes Magnus in 1990, in the sclerotic culture of Reagan/Bush, and then to sell it into the darkening maw of our burgeoning technomonarchist oligarchy.
I have no doubt the successful buyer will track down whoever lost the lid to the sugar bowl and have them audited, chained to the floor of a LC130, and shipped off to GTMO before the Christie’s wire transfer even clears. February 26 is coming.
Ends 26 Feb 2026, Lot 170: Cindy Sherman, Madame de Pompadour (née Poisson), 1990, est $8-12,000 [christies]
Also available retail, from Artware Editions, with $15 shipping and 10% off if you sign up for their newsletter:
Tea Service by Cindy Sherman in Green, Rose, Yellow or Cobalt, $10,000
Dinner Service by Cindy Sherman in Apple Green, Royal Blue, or Rose, $12,000
Soup Tureen by Cindy Sherman in Cobalt or Green, $42,500
Previously, Artes Mundus- and tureen-related:
Thank you for your silver service, Donald Judd X Puiforcat
Just the Tureen