In 1981 Cindy Sherman was commissioned to contribute a special project to Artforum magazine. Given a two-page spread to work with, she chose to explore the erotic centerfold—a standard feature of men’s “lifestyle” magazines ever since it was established by Playboy in the mid-1950s. Sherman created twelve large-scale horizontal photographs of herself appearing as various young (often reclining) women in private moments of melancholic reverie, longing, or waiting. “I wanted a man opening up the magazine to suddenly look at it in expectation of something lascivious,” the artist explained, “and then feel like the violator that they would be.”