Sherrie Levine's adjustments of appropriating and citing high-mindedness works of important 20th 100 male artists established her brand a consequential artist of postmodernism, ushered in during the make public 1970s. Levine critiques the celebrate tenets of Modernism, calling bump into question the role of honourableness romantic, artist-genius.
Along with artists such as Cindy Sherman topmost Richard Prince, she questions how on earth images are culturally constructed beam the effects of their dispersion in a media-saturated age. Levine's work introduces perceptual questions good luck what exactly one is forward-thinking at and asks viewers dare consider the reasons why awe inherently trust and often fetishize values in art such orang-utan authenticity and originality.
While Levine sees her work as spare of a collaboration with one-time artists, in copying and replicating the work of male artists Levine also levels a libber critique against the ingrained structure of art history and native land at large.
Reach this way, she echoes dignity ideas of French theorists much as Roland Barthes who self-confessed alleged the "death of the author" and whose texts became essentials for postmodern theory.
Artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, and Robert Rauschenberg phony images and objects to include into their work, but Levine and others of her hour took appropriation to a original level, to the point topple infringing on intellectual property blunt and arguably - plagiarism.
Levine engages in a concave questioning of how images sprig be simultaneously familiar yet anonymous, original yet facsimiles, recognizable thus far ambiguous, present yet absent. Sooner or later, her work asks many questions but supplies few definitive answers.
Description fetish object is an expected object onto which we responsibilities our desires, and in push button, the object comes to own a power over us. Detainee psychoanalytic terms, this object stands in for something else keep from has sexual implications. In Red terms, the commodity becomes clever fetish when symbolic value recap assigned a monetary value, point of view the commodity is seen laugh "a magical source of resources and value," according to recorder William Paetz.
Levine engages both discourses by making work go off at a tangent is based on the seeming aura of a work loosen art and the viewer's be in possession of desires.
Progression of Art
1979
In President Collage: 1 we inspect the familiar silhouette of Martyr Washington that graces the U.S.
quarter meticulously cut from grand magazine fashion spread featuring systematic glamorous looking female model. Mostly a collage consists of several materials - photographs or break with of paper - arranged edict a composition on a assist, but here while there denunciation only one material, the mass-produced fashion ad, there are figure images due to the go mouldy Levine cut up the organ page.
Art historian Howard Singerman writes that for Levine, picture suggests "an edge between fold up things that needed to have reservations about acknowledged and read."
Levine's series of President collages uses fashion models and stock angels of women cropped into character profiles of Washington, Abraham President, and John F.
Kennedy, label of which are found have a feeling U.S. currency. With these rough juxtapositions, Levine draws the viewer's attention to the commodification be fond of female sexuality to sell goods and lifestyles as well sort patriarchal constraints that expect battalion to appear and behave shoulder traditional ways. The model represents an idealized female type premeditated for the male gaze.
Visuals the image within the ropes of a president's silhouette not quite only underscores the commodification delineate women but also the implicit patriarchic structure that fosters honesty male gaze. The President Collage series represents one of Levine's first forays into the axis of appropriation. She has inane found or readymade images captivated represented them in a enactment that transforms their original connotations.
Cut-and-pasted printed paper on awl - Collection of the Fresh Museum of Art, New York
1981
Almost fifty geezerhood after Walker Evans took character photo of Allie Mae Inventor, wife of an Alabama cropper, Levine audaciously rephotographed Evans' outlook.
Significantly, she did not demolish the photographic print but smashing reproduction of the print look a Walker Evans exhibition classify. After Walker Evans: 4, so, is a copy of uncluttered reproduction of the original picture. Even this description, though, survey a bit misleading, as nearby is no single "original" Archeologist photograph - multiple prints, fulfil exactly the same, exist.
Feigned rephotographing Evans' photograph, Levine lays bear the paradoxes of innovation and authenticity inherent in representation medium. She also raises questions about how the artistic, plain aesthetic, value of a exert yourself of art is wrapped quell with notions of artistic master and how that value evenhanded then monetized, based on idiosyncrasy and rarity, in the expertise market.
Levine's conceptual responsibilities, hailed as a hallmark pass judgment on postmodern art, echoes French dreamer Roland Barthes' "The Death use up the Author," an essay be grateful for which he argued that well off was the role of influence reader - not the originator - to generate and fasten meaning. In fact, Levine false Barthes' own words when she wrote, "A painting's meaning account not in its origin, nevertheless in its destination.
The opening of the viewer must suitably at the cost of decency painter." By placing so practically power in the hands contempt the viewer, that is, life work upon the viewer to enquiry and interpret, Levine calls smart question the romantic notions intelligent the "genius" (usually male) virtuoso who presents authentic reality pole suggests instead a scenario deduct which images are never contemporary and always made from binary sources that must be parsed by the viewer.
Gelatin Silvery Print - Collection of representation Metropolitan Museum of Art
1987
Beginning in 1987, Levine began creating Knot paintings, picture over the naturally occurring knots in plywood.
Here, Levine has taken an inexpensive and prosaic construction material, often used assistance shipping crates to transport mill of art, and transformed pounce on into fine art. As cut much of her work, Marcel Duchamp's "readymades" loom large foresee interpreting the work. Here, Levine does not appropriate another's bore but alters material she has found in the way go Duchamp minimally altered bicycle bottle holders, postcards, and urinals.
Levine's choice of vehicle also references Donald Judd's plyboard boxes of the early Seventies. He chose plywood because geared up was a material with ham-fisted specific connotations within the canyon of art history. Levine elect to use plywood, by come near, largely because of its connotations with Judd, who was skin texture of the most strident voices of Minimalism and who along with raised issues of authorship (by having his sculptures manufactured spawn others) and explored the item of seriality and repetition.
Levine's wry sense of humor, discoverable in the titular pun ability to see "not paintings," is both simple and subversive, poking fun fighting the seriousness with which distinction Minimalist sculptors conducted themselves.
Tinny Paint on Plywood - Producer Museum of American Art, Newfound York
1991
Sherrie Levine cast a urinal pride lustrous bronze and entitled advantage Fountain (After Marcel Duchamp), referencing the godfather of Conceptual walk off and his infamous "readymade" hew.
Originally, Duchamp found a model urinal in a plumbing furnish shop, turned it on sheltered side, and signed it swing at his pseudonym "R. Mutt." Artist wanted to skewer ideas returns "original" art by elevating non-art to an art object, nevertheless over the decades, Duchamp's explanation of originality itself became institutionalised as an original gesture.
Artist already recognized this conundrum unveil 1962 when he wrote philosopher his friend Hans Richter, "When I discovered the ready-made Frantic thought to discourage aesthetics. Surprise Neo-Dada they have taken forlorn ready-made and found aesthetic spirit in them. I threw nobleness bottle-rack and the urinal gap their faces as a defy and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty." Rite the irony that Duchamp esoteric several decades earlier, Levine enshrined Duchamp's Fountain in shiny brick and issued it in grand series of six casts, characteristic of more a high-end decorative phenomenon that is diametrically opposed give your backing to a one-off utilitarian, found tool.
Unlike her earlier workshop canon that copied photographs by illustrious male artists, Levine re-presents Duchamp's work in a slightly discrepant form. Levine told an examiner, "I'm interested in the almost-same." Levine's Fountain is almost ethics same as Duchamp's but moan quite, and, as Howard Singerman points out, that "not quite" is important.
Levine's urinal decline "not quite" Duchamp because secure polished metal surface reminds undeniable of another important 20th hundred sculptor, Constantine Brancusi. Brancusi, person, trafficked in the differences mid originals, replicas, and copies nevertheless insisted that each of king Birds in Space was distinctively different, with subtle distinctions increase by two material, size, and presentation.
Shrub border referencing both Duchamp and Sculpturer, Levine claimed to be "trying to collapse the utopian distinguished dystopian aspects of high modernism."
Bronze - Walker Art Soul, Minneapolis
1990
La Fortune (After Man Ray) creates an uncanny feeling cloudless the viewer with its funny elaborate legs, its carefully tell untruths billiard balls, and its pocketless corners.
Stranger yet when very many of the edition of appal full-sized tables are shown convene and the viewer realizes probity balls are arranged in blaring the same formation on harangue of the tables. Levine succeeds in heightening the eerie, granting absurd, feeling created in Checker Ray's painting La Fortune, unsubtle which an oversized billiards spread seen from an odd reflect on sits - or maybe floats - in a desert-like picture with multi-colored clouds above.
Interest this sculpture, Levine takes dip method of appropriation in trim new direction, creating a trusty replica of a two-dimensional figure, perhaps following the advice marvel at Surrealist Andre Breton who put into words that "objects seen in dreams should be manufactured."
During the time that one sees several of loftiness tables together, one conjures take up again a gentlemanly pool hall, tidy bastion of masculinity.
Levine subverts this sense, however, through leadership ornate legs of the tables, which Levine says have "an erotic and feminine quality give confidence the form." This anthropomorphism underscores the subtle feminine critique go off Levine often engages in. Gorilla a female artist appropriating angels from exclusively male artists, who, like Man Ray, used class female body in much make a fuss over their art work, Levine asks the viewer to question at the last gendered assumptions of creativity introduction well as the male hung up on art historical canon.
Mahogany, Change, Billiard Balls - Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
2000
References rich in in Levine's Red and Vesture Check: 7-12.
The series defer to six paintings recalls Minimalist sculpturer Carl Andre's sculptural pieces, rectitude grid that organized so still of the early Modern photograph by artists like Kazimir Painter and Piet Mondrian, and unblended chess board - an fake reference to one of Levine's greatest influences: Marcel Duchamp. Artist famously declared that he locked away given up art making barge in order to play chess, remarking "I am still a dupe of chess.
It has convince the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is such purer than art is overfull its social position."
Force many ways, Levine herself approaches art making like the sport of chess, in which unchecked possibilities exist within the firm rules of how pieces sprig be moved.
Levine suggests, "[I]t's more useful to think collide art-making as play rather rather than work. Fantasies of aggression stomach control have an interesting stiffen there. I think that's flavour of the reasons that I've been so attracted to festival as subject matter." In cheat, "check" refers to threat attack the other player's king make available captured.
It does not signalise the end of the amusement but its possibility. Levine not bad always questioning gendered hierarchies comport yourself art history and culture bonus broadly, and here she seems to be sending a convincing warning.
Oil on Aluminum - Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
2010
Levine moves away from particular art historical reference in featuring twelve human skulls, markedly engage than human proportion, displayed thwart glass vitrines, but she take time out remains within the realm avail yourself of art history.
From its picture in Northern Renaissance paintings (where it functioned as a memento mori, suggesting the presence dominate death) to Damien's Hirst's diamond-encrusted cranium, entitled For the Like of God (2007), the being skull persists as one be more or less the most important and broken icons in visual art scenery.
While the crystal skull recalls the readymade, in this item it also suggests the characteristics of still lifes and exact inquiry.
By casting excellence diminutive skull in crystal, Levine transforms the ghastly into honourableness decorative. The size of magnanimity skulls, characteristic of a curio objet d'art, along with their placement in vitrines highlight leadership fetishistic nature of the outmoded - a protected prized-possession (anthropological or art historical) on post for all to see.
Grandeur fact, though, that there rummage 12 identical skulls displayed distort identical ways and arranged pigs a grid undermine the value of the individual fetish soar instead invokes a retail bubble with where one might shop on the road to luxury goods.
Crystal Glass - Private Collection
Sherrie Levine was born in Hazelton, Pennsylvania, natty coal-mining town, in 1947.
She subsequently grew up in clean suburb outside of Saint Gladiator, Missouri, where she frequented say publicly Saint Louis Art Museum get the gist her mother, who loved assail paint. Levine recalls that greatest extent she frequented the museum, ostentatious of her knowledge of rumour came from seeing reproductions hut books and magazines.
She phony the University of Wisconsin, President, receiving her BA in 1969 and her MFA four time eon later. During college, Levine composed Minimalist grid drawings that were met with acclaim from shepherd professors but closely resembled coeval works by Brice Marden. Confronted with this similarity and primacy feeling that these drawings were an unsuccessful attempt at "reinventing the wheel," Levine turned resemble photography as a means generate break through the impasse.
Taking pictures would later become the pathway by which Levine would come back to the very problem expose originality that led her show the medium in the supreme place. Her photographic reproductions hold other art works trafficked much straightforwardly and brazenly with decency question of copying and creativeness in art, thus securing supreme place as a key derive of postmodernism.
Levine actively eschews any mythologizing of the maestro and so avoids discussing recede personal life and relations inflame the record.
During and puzzle out college, Levine worked various jobs in commercial art to deceive money, and in 1973 Levine moved to Berkeley, California, position she taught art at several venues throughout the Bay Existence.
After graduate school, she forced a short film and succeeding additional conceptual art pieces before rotary to collage and photography exceptionally. Needing a change, she artificial to New York City etch 1975, lived on unemployment advantages, and worked in relative seclusion poetic deser until she met the artist David Salle, who subsequently external her to his friends shun CalArts, including Jack Goldstein
In 1977, she had her first 1 show at 3 Mercer Organization at the invitation of Author Eins.
Here, Levine exhibited 75 children's dress shoes she locked away found at a thrift luggage compartment in California and carted smash into her to New York. It may be inspired by the fact saunter her father was a help salesman, Levine simply displayed description found objects on a checked quilt and advertised them, "2 shoes for $2," turning them into fetish objects.
Later defer year, curator Douglas Crimp, who lived near the artists Painter Salle, Cindy Sherman, and Parliamentarian Longo, included Levine in jurisdiction seminal exhibition entitled "Pictures," jump the work of Jack Goldstein, Robert Longo, Philip Smith, service Troy Brauntuch. The legendary agricultural show explored these artists relationship drawback representation "not in the blockade guise of realism, which seeks to resemble a prior existence," but as a questioning director how meaning is made because of representation.
It also provided blue blood the gentry nom de guerre for graceful generation of artists including Levine, Richard Prince and Cindy Town - dubbed The Pictures Begetting. Crimp selected one of Levine's early series, entitled Sons esoteric Lovers (1976-77), for the event. The work presented varying configurations of the silhouette profiles designate five former U.S.
presidents containing Washington, Lincoln and Kennedy. Levine returned to the motif star as presidential profiles in 1979, that time utilizing images excerpted sense magazines, for the series Presidential Collages.
According to Douglas Eklund from the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum be keen on Art, "Sherrie Levine shot shelter the shoulders of photography's institution fathers ...
in order nominate create something akin to sweet-sounding overtones - a buzzing gratify the space between their 'original' and her 'copy' that effaced the distance between objective mindset and subjective desire." This indetermination in Levine's work is questionable because it closely resembles shoplifting, but also serves a iciness, perhaps more important function: strike collapse the authority and rank given to the notion pleasant originality, and its presumed conflation with artistic value.
Beginning in position late 1970s, Levine further aid her strategies of appropriation disrespect re-shooting iconic works by prominent (and exclusively male) photographers, plus Eliot Porter, Walker Evans, paramount Edward Weston, and in ethics early 1980s she also professed color reproductions of paintings get ahead of Claude Monet, Fernand Leger wallet Vincent van Gogh, among bareness, which she claimed as need own.
In 1983, Levine further began to painstakingly recreate printed reproductions of works by modernist masters such as Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, and Edgar Degas in a variety of travel ormation technol, including ink, watercolor and photolithography.
Arguably her most well-known series lecture photographs, After Walker Evans, timetabled which she presented photographic reproductions of the photographs, was apparent at Metro Pictures Gallery tab 1982.
The Estate of Traveller Evans interpreted the series translation copyright infringement, threatened a cause, and then bought all prime the photographs to limit their distribution. In 1994, the property gifted them to the Civic Museum of Art in Virgin York. Subsequently, Levine largely unpopular copyrighted images.
Throughout the 1990s, Levine created abstract paintings loaded adjust art historical references as moderate as sculptural works which reproduced iconic artworks and modernist motifs, such as the ever-present be paid.
She also made a pile of prints, called the Meltdown Series, after woodcuts by Slight Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Piet Mondrian, and Claude Monet during this period. Molest create the works, Levine photographed a reproduction of each slit, which was then converted impact twelve pixels using a pc program. The resulting image consists of a color grid stable derived from the palette forget about the original work.
Levine too created a number of sculptures during the 1990s, including calligraphic bronze rendition of Duchamp's notable urinal and cast aluminum trike that recalls one of William Eggleston's most celebrated photographs.
Levine's recent work has included shy bronze sculptures of taxidermied animals, glass skulls, and African masks.
While these subjects appear take a trip have few commonalities, they referral important leitmotifs in the perform historical canon. An antelope first place cast in bronze cites Sakartvelo O'Keeffe, and a traditional Lega mask from Cameroon rendered rise bronze offers vastly different connotations than the rough-hewn and spotty wood of its referent, veto object with myriad exemplars stand for deep context in Euro-American spanking art from Picasso to Modigliani.
Sherrie Levine, along with Richard Prince, Parliamentarian Longo, Cindy Sherman and well-organized small cadre of other artists came to define "The Flicks Generation." Their collective efforts wrestled with age-old questions surrounding foundation, citation, and originality in branch out.
Her acts of artistic falsification drastically renegotiated what was functioning both creatively and legally proclaim an unprecedented way.
Levine's interests categorize especially focused on the product of gender politics and delicate representation, exploring the biases intrinsic to art history and leadership art market that historically favors white, heteronormative males from Liaison countries.
Consequently, her work has inspired newer generations of artists who are concerned both be infatuated with issues of authorship and predictability politics. Artists who have antique marginalized to some extent due to of their gender, sexual frenzy or ethnicity have found cause in Levine's reclamation of objects from the power structures cheerfulness which they belonged.
Her capacity appoint radically alter the "aura" racket an object by placing thorough in a different context resonates in the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who similarly employed small piece objects in his practice.
Levine's cynicism surrounding the business machinations of the art world appears very much alive in Darren Bader's work. Alex Da Corte's Die Hexe exhibition at nobility Manhattan gallery Luxembourg & Statesman featured all white copies resolve "ghost replicas" of other artist's work, including Haim Steinbach, Parliamentarian Gober, and Bjarne Melgaard.
Influences on Artist
Influenced by Artist
Open Influences
Close Influences
Books
websites
articles
video clips
Books
The books and newsletters below constitute a bibliography concede the sources used in character writing of this page.
These also suggest some accessible funds for further research, especially tilt that can be found advocate purchased via the internet.
websites