Sherrie Levine (born 1947) is an American

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs. Duties and types of photograp ...

, painter, and conceptual artist. Some of her work consists of exact photographic reproductions of the work of other photographers such as

Walker Evans Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great ...

, 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 St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...

. 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 Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

, 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 Edgar Degas (, ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 183427 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints, and drawings. Degas is e ...

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...

, and

Constantin Brâncuși Constantin Brâncuși (; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter, and photographer who made his career in France. Considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century and a pioneer of modernism ...

. 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,

' 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 Andy Warhol (;''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''"Warhol" born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, 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

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 James Rufus Agee ( ; November 27, 1909 – May 16, 1955) was an American novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, writing for ''Time'', he was one of the most influential film critics in the United States. His autob ...

— are widely considered to be the quintessential photographic record of rural American poor during the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

. The Estate of Walker Evans saw the series as a copyright infringement, and acquired Levine's works to prohibit their sale. Levine later donated the whole series to the estate. All of it is now owned by the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, New York.Dan Duray (March 3, 2016)
Is now the time for Sherrie Levine’s market to take off?
''

The Art Newspaper ''The Art Newspaper'' is a monthly print publication, with daily updates online, founded in 1990 and based in London and New York City. It covers news of the visual arts as they are affected by international politics and economics, developments i ...

''. Levine's appropriation of Evans's images has since become a hallmark of the postmodern movement. 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 Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artwork ...

paintings from a book of his work; watercolor paintings based directly on work by

Fernand Léger Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painting, painter, sculpture, sculptor, and film director, filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually ...

; pieces of plywood with their knotholes painted bright solid colors; and her 1991 sculpture ''Fountain'', a bronze urinal modeled after

'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

, held in the permanent collection of the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is an List of art museums#North America, art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at ...

, for an exhibition titled ''Museum Studies''. In 2009, the

held an exhibition titled '' The Pictures Generation'', which featured Levine's works. In November 2011, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York mounted a survey exhibition of Levine's career titled ''Mayhem''. ''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 Alfred Stieglitz (; January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was k ...

'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) *''Taking Pictures: Sherrie Levine after Walker Evans'', Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville (1998) *''New Sculpture, 1996-1999, with Joost van Oss'', Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva (two-person exhibition) (1999) *''Abstraction'', The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago (then traveled to Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe (2006) *''Pairs and Posses'', Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld (2010) *''Mayhem'', Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2011) *''Sherrie Levine'', Portland Art Museum, Oregon (2013) *''After All'', Neues Museum, State Museum for Art and Design in Nuremberg, Germany (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 The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, is an art museum located adjacent to Delaware Park, Buffalo, New York, United States. The museum shows modern art and contemporary art. It is directly opposite Buff ...

, Buffalo, New York *

Allen Memorial Art Museum The Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) is an art museum located in Oberlin, Ohio, and it is run by Oberlin College. Founded in 1917, the collection contains over 15,000 works of art. Overview The AMAM is primarily a teaching museum and is aimed at ...

, Oberlin College, Ohio *

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...

* Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo *

Baltimore Museum of Art The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of modern art, ...

, Maryland *

The Broad The Broad () is a contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue (Los Angeles), Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. The museum is named for philanthropists Eli Broad, Eli and Edythe Broad, who financed the $140 million building that houses the Broad ...

, Los Angeles *CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York *

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

, Paris *CAPC Musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, France *

Colby College Museum of Art The Colby College Museum of Art is an art museum on the campus of Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Founded in 1959 and now comprising five wings, nearly 8,000 works and more than 38,000 square feet of exhibition space, the Colby College Museu ...

, 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 The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed ...

, Washington * Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston *

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, also known as the Louisiana, is an art museum located north of Copenhagen, Denmark. Attracting over 700,000 guests annually, the Louisiana is Scandinavia's most visited museum for Modern art, modern and contempor ...

, Humlebæk, Denmark * Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva * The Menil Collection, Houston *

The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the third-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million v ...

, New York * Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago *

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

* The National Museum of Art, Osaka *

*Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, Providence * Sammlung Goetz, Munich *

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

Smith College Museum of Art The Smith College Museum of Art, abbreviated SCMA, is the art museum of Smith College, located in Northampton, Massachusetts, Northampton, Massachusetts. First established in 1870, the museum is part of the American Alliance of Museums, Five Coll ...

, Northampton, Massachusetts *

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Street (Manhattan), 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent coll ...

, New York *

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

, London * Tacoma Art Museum, Washington *

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

* Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts *

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...

References

Bibliography

*Juan Martín Prada, ''La Apropiación Posmoderna'', Fundamentos, Madrid, 2001,

External links

After SherrieLevine.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Levine, Sherrie 1947 births Living people Jewish American artists Artists from Pennsylvania University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Franklin Furnace artists 20th-century American women photographers 20th-century American photographers 21st-century American Jews 21st-century American women