Sherrie Levine (born 1947) is an American photographer, painter, and conceptual artist. Some of her work consists of exact photographic reproductions of the work of other photographers such as Walker Evans, Eliot Porter and Edward Weston.
Early life and education
Sherrie Levine was born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania in 1947. The Midwest, however, shaped her identity, as she spent most of her childhood and adolescence in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. Levine recalled her mother—who enjoyed painting—sparking her interest in art at eight years old, as she would take Levine to the St. Louis Art Museum. Levine's mother would also take her to see art house films on a regular basis, which later influenced her work. After graduating high school in 1965, she spent eight years in Wisconsin, receiving her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1969."Sherrie Levine" , Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Retrieved 17 November 2014. In 1973, she earned her M.F.A. from the same institution. After working odd jobs in commercial art and teaching, Levine then moved to New York City in 1975 to pursue her art career.
Work
Artworks
Much of Levine's work is explicitly appropriated from recognizable modernist artworks by artists such as Walker Evans, Edgar Degas, Marcel Duchamp, and Constantin Brâncuși. Appropriation art gained notoriety in the late 1970s, although it can be traced to early modernist works, specifically those using collage. Other appropriation artists such as Louise Lawler, Vikky Alexander, Barbara Kruger, and Mike Bidlo came into prominence in New York’s East Village in the 1980s. The importance of appropriation art in contemporary culture lies in its ability to fuse broad cultural images as a whole and direct them towards narrower contexts of interpretation. When coming under criticism with her appropriated works, most notably, Walker Evans' depression-era images, the role of appropriation within Levine's work also helped her to link the 'rarefied art object' and 'mass-produced' works to the extent that she perceived her appropriated works to be 'no less products of mass culture than the images of Elvis or Liz Taylor appropriated and reproduced by Andy Warhol.'
In 1977, Levine participated in the exhibition Pictures at Artists Space in New York, curated by Douglas Crimp.Fowle, Kate. "The Pictures Generation" , Frieze Magazine, Retrieved 17 November 2014. Other artists in the exhibition included Robert Longo, Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, and Philip Smith. Crimp's term, "Pictures Generation," was later used to describe the generation of artists in the late 1970s and early 1980s who were moving away from minimalism and towards picture-making.
Levine is best known for her series of photographs, After Walker Evans, which was shown at her 1981 solo exhibition at Metro Pictures Gallery in New York.Pollack, Maika. "Will the Real Sherrie Levine Please Stand Up?, The Observer, Retrieved 17 November 2014. The works consist of well-known Walker Evans photographs, rephotographed by Levine from an Evans exhibition catalogue and then presented as Levine's own artwork without manipulation of the images. The Evans photographs — made famous by his book project Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, with writings by James Agee — are widely considered to be the quintessential photographic record of rural American poor during the Great Depression.Downes, Lawrence. "Of Poor Farmers and Famous Men", The New York Times, Retrieved 17 November 2014. The Estate of Walker Evans saw the series as a copyright infringement, and acquired Levine's works to prohibit their sale.Jana, Reena. "Is It Art, or Memorex?", Wired Magazine, Retrieved March 21, 2001. Levine later donated the whole series to the estate. All of it is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.Dan Duray (March 3, 2016), Is now the time for Sherrie Levine’s market to take off? The Art Newspaper. Levine's appropriation of Evans's images has since become a hallmark of the postmodern movement."After Walker Evans: Sheer Levine", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Retrieved 17 November 2014. By rephotographing and re-feminizing this series, Levine makes the images more transparent in their message, rather than focusing on authorship. Including herself in this series can be seen as the artist's gesture of solidarity with the subject.
Levine has rephotographed a number of works by other artists, including Eliot Porter and Edward Weston. Additional examples of Levine's works include photographs of Van Gogh paintings from a book of his work; watercolor paintings based directly on work by Fernand Léger; pieces of plywood with their knotholes painted bright solid colors; and her 1991 sculpture Fountain, a bronze urinal modeled after Marcel Duchamp's 1917 work, Fountain. This work in particular brings attention to the idea of originality and Levine's ability to remake artworks as not quite themselves. In the case of Fountain, Levine purposefully chooses a polished bronze finish to evoke works by Brancusi. By doing so, Levine likens the two artists' works, and raises the question of originality and the copy. Levine also appropriated Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, through the creation of her 1989 series, The Bachelors (After Marcel Duchamp). The series comprises six frosted-glass sculptures, each of which follows the design of a different malic-mold found in Duchamp's original. The sculptures are displayed in individual glass vitrines, separate from one another so as to upset the structure of power depicted by Duchamp originally, allowing Levine to make a greater social commentary through her series.
In 1993, Levine created cast glass copies of sculptures by Constantin Brâncuși, held in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for an exhibition titled Museum Studies."Museum Studies", Philadelphia Museum of Art, Retrieved 23 November 2014. In 2009, the Metropolitan Museum of Art held an exhibition titled The Pictures Generation, which featured Levine's works."The Pictures Generation", Retrieved 17 November 2014. In November 2011, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York mounted a survey exhibition of Levine's career titled Mayhem.Smith, Roberta. "Flattery (Sincere?) Lightly Dusted With Irony", The New York Times, Retrieved November 11, 2011. Sherrie Levine: Mayhem, mounted at the Whitney Museum of Art from November 2011 through January 2012, was a meticulously organized installation, ranging from Levine's best-known photographs to works including her more recent Crystal Skull series (2010). During the winter of 2016, Levine exhibited new work of monochrome paintings paired with refrigerators. In 2016-2017 she exhibited at Neues Museum Nürnberg: After All.
In 2010, the artist created a series of eighteen monochromes titled "Gray and Blue Monochromes" based on Alfred Stieglitz's Equivalents (a series of abstract photographs of the sky).
Feminism
Levine's art is most often associated with 1980's theoretical feminism. She was showcased in the exhibit Difference: On Representation and Sexuality in 1984 along with artists such as Barbara Kruger, Jeff Wall, and Mary Kelly. This exhibit focused on gender distortions rather than differences, and the construct of sexuality. Three paintings from Levine's series After Ernst Ludwig Kirchner were included in this exhibit. Her appropriations of male artists' famous works combined with her intentional re-feminizing brings attention to the "difference problem" which this exhibit was focused on. Levine has noted her distaste for the voyeuristic quality of media culture, aligning with Laura Mulvey's analysis of the male gaze. Her work contends with the fact that, in her words, "the art world is so much an arena for the celebration of male desire."
Exhibitions
Sherrie Levine: La Fortune (After Man Ray), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1991) Sherrie Levine: Newborn, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; The Menil Collection, Houston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1993-1995) Inviter 5/ Sherrie Levine, Casino Luxembourg - Forum d'art contemporain, Luxembourg (1997)Inviter 5/ Sherrie Levine, Casino Luxembourg, 1997 Taking Pictures: Sherrie Levine after Walker Evans, Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville (1998)Taking Pictures: Sherrie Levine after Walker Evans, Harn Museum of Art, 1998 New Sculpture, 1996-1999, with Joost van Oss, Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva (two-person exhibition) (1999)New Sculpture, MAMCO, 1999 Abstraction, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago (then traveled to Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe (2006)Abstractions, The Arts Club of Chicago, 2006 Pairs and Posses, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld (2010)Pairs and Posses, Museum Haus Lange, 2010 Mayhem, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2011)MAYHEM, Whitney Museum, 2011 Sherrie Levine, Portland Art Museum, Oregon (2013)Sherrie Levine, Portland Art Museum, 2013 After All, Neues Museum, State Museum for Art and Design in Nuremberg, Germany (2016)After All, Neues Museum, 2016 After Russell Lee: 1-60, Museum of Wisconsin Art, West Bend, WI, USA (2025)
Public collections Levine's works is held in a number of public institutions, including:
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio Art Institute of ChicagoSherrie Levine, Art Institute of Chicago Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland The Broad, Los AngelesSherrie Levine, The Broad, Los Angeles CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York Centre Georges Pompidou, ParisSherrie Levine, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris CAPC Musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, France Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine La Colección Jumex, Mexico City Dallas Museum of Art Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut Falckenberg Collection, Deichtorhallen Hamburg Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, WashingtonSherrie Levine, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington Institute of Contemporary Art, BostonSherrie Levine, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston Los Angeles County Museum of ArtSherrie Levine, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, DenmarkSherrie Levine, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO), GenevaSherrie Levine, MAMCO, Geneva The Menil Collection, Houston The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkSherrie Levine, Metropolitan Museum of Art Museum of Contemporary Art ChicagoSherrie Levine, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Museum of Modern Art"Sherrie Levine", Museum of Modern Art, Retrieved 23 November 2014. The National Museum of Art, OsakaSherrie Levine, The National Museum of Art, Osaka Philadelphia Museum of Art"Levine", Philadelphia Museum of Art, Retrieved 23 November 2014. Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, Providence Sammlung Goetz, MunichSherrie Levine, Sammlung Goetz, Munich San Francisco Museum of Modern ArtSherrie Levine, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New YorkSherrie Levine, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Tate Gallery, London"2 Shoes, Sherrie Levine", Tate, Retrieved 23 November 2014. Tacoma Art Museum, Washington Whitney Museum of American Art"Sherrie Levine", Whitney Museum of American Art, Retrieved 23 November 2014. Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts Walker Art Center
See also Appropriation art Neo-conceptual art
References
Bibliography Juan Martín Prada, La Apropiación Posmoderna, Fundamentos, Madrid, 2001,
External links After SherrieLevine.com Artcyclopedia Sherrie Levine at the Whitney Museum in The New York Times