Other meanings of Sherrie Levine
Visual Art
Sherrie Levine (born 1947) is an American artist associated with the Pictures Generation, a group that emerged in the late 1970s and challenged traditional notions of authorship, originality, and authenticity in art. She is best known for her appropriation art, in which she rephotographs or re-presents works by other artists, such as Walker Evans and Marcel Duchamp, raising questions about the nature of creativity and the role of the artist.
Sherrie Levine was born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the Midwest. She studied at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, earning a BFA in 1969 and an MFA in 1973. After moving to New York City in the mid-1970s, she became involved with the alternative art scene, exhibiting at galleries such as Artists Space and The Kitchen. Her early work included collages and paintings, but she soon turned to photography and appropriation as her primary mode.
Levine's breakthrough came in 1981 with a series titled After Walker Evans, in which she rephotographed Evans's Depression-era photographs from a 1973 exhibition catalogue. The work was controversial: some critics accused her of plagiarism, while others saw it as a radical critique of the myth of the solitary genius. The series was first shown at Metro Pictures in New York, a gallery that represented many Pictures Generation artists.
Levine's practice is central to the discourse of appropriation art, a strategy that gained prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s. Alongside artists such as Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and Louise Lawler, she questioned the idea of originality and the commodification of images. Her work often involves taking an existing image or object and presenting it as her own, thereby challenging the notion of authorship and the value placed on uniqueness in the art market.
One of her most famous pieces is Fountain (After Marcel Duchamp) (1991), a bronze cast of Duchamp's urinal, which she made in a limited edition. This work not only references Duchamp's readymade but also critiques the male-dominated canon of art history. Levine's approach has been influential in postmodern theory, particularly in the writings of critics such as Douglas Crimp and Rosalind Krauss, who saw her work as a deconstruction of the myth of the artist as creator.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Levine expanded her practice to include sculpture, painting, and installation. She created series based on the work of artists such as Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich, and Alexander Rodchenko, often using materials like glass, bronze, and wood. Her work continued to explore themes of reproduction, repetition, and the circulation of images in contemporary culture.
Levine has also engaged with the idea of the 'original' in relation to gender. Her work has been interpreted as a feminist critique of the patriarchal structures of art history, as she often appropriates works by male artists, thereby subverting their authority. She has exhibited widely, including at the Venice Biennale (1980, 2005) and Documenta (1982, 2007), and her work is held in major collections such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Beyond her famous appropriations, Levine has produced a body of work that includes Bachelors (1985–1990), a series of glass and lead sculptures that reference Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. She has also made works using found objects, such as La Fortune (1993), a billiard table covered with green felt, which alludes to Man Ray's painting of the same name.
Levine has been a professor at institutions such as the California Institute of the Arts and the European Graduate School. In 2013, she received the Gish Prize, a lifetime achievement award in the arts. Despite her prominence, she has often avoided the spotlight, giving few interviews and maintaining a reclusive public persona. Her work has been the subject of scholarly debate, particularly regarding the ethics of appropriation and the legal boundaries of copyright, as seen in the 1992 Supreme Court case Rogers v. Koons, which, while not directly involving Levine, set precedents for appropriation art.
Sherrie Levine's work challenges the very notion of originality, making her a pivotal figure in postmodern art.
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