Sherrie levine artist photo i john
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While relatively discrete about her personal life, Sherrie Levine has approached her work through a radical form of appropriation. This artistic gesture, which consists of identically remaking or transforming works of art, past actions or artefacts with only slight modifications, amounts to a rejection of the virtuosic aspect of painting that she practiced in art school in the 1970s. Examining the effects of decontextualization and questioning notions of authenticity and originality, she has since 1978 explored various modes of appropriation. First by employing cut-outs and then photography, she returned to painting in 1984, creating stripe paintings (1985), which were characterized by large stripes of colour, and “generic” paintings, which reference a certain type of modernist painting. Her most-commented-upon creation is a series of rephotographs (1980–1981), for which she took photographs of the works of famous photographers such as Edward Weston and Walker Evans. This series, like her work in general, is often associated with feminist critique. Revisiting the works of male artists is often seen as a commentary on the male domination that exists within the art world. Each of her photographs is given its title using the same naming convention: Sherrie Levine afterx, with x indicating the name of the artist upon whose works the photograph is, in one way or another, based, but also noting – more significantly – that the photograph is chronologically “after” the artist’s work. Thus, a work without any perceptible difference from its model can be a different work simply because it was produced afterward and because the story of its creation is not the same. However, recognizing an afterx is recognizing that this x has changed the scope of art in a fundamental way. As such, Levine’s appropriations are always tributes.
Her second area of interest is the circulation of images in society and the interferences between different modes of r
SHERRIE LEVINE “PRESIDENT PROFILE” 1979
Sherrie Levine (b. 1947) is a celebrated American conceptual artist, whose vast body of work includes photography, painting, and sculpture. In the 1980s, Levine emerged as a part of the Pictures Generation alongside prominent contemporaries such as Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, and Barbara Kruger.
Levine is widely recognized for her appropriative style, explicitly reproducing works and imagery by prominent male artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Edgar Degas. In most cases, Levine’s recreations are nearly identical to the original, raising the question of authorship and originality in art, which was famously, and successfully, challenged by Walker Evans’ estate.
“President Profile” features the image of a glamorous woman from a magazine editorial, the perimeter of which has been cut to resemble George Washington’s silhouette. “President Profile” is part of a larger series of similar works featuring the silhouettes of equally recognizable presidents, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.
“President Profile” along with the other works in this series, are unmistakably Levine. Each president represented in this series is also featured on U.S. currency, in Washington’s case, the quarter. The combination of the two images re-contextualizes the magazine editorial, this time highlighting the woman as the commodity.
On a broader scale, it can be interpreted that the woman restricted to the confines of Washington’s silhouette, is symbolic of America's oppressive patriarchal history that stems back to the Founding Fathers.
Sherrie Levine has exhibited internationally at prominent art institutions including Neues Museum, State Museum for Art and Design in Nuremberg, Portland Art Museum, Oregon, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.
This limited edition print was included in a 1993 portfolio by October Magazine alongside works by Richard Prince, Laurie Simmons, Cindy Sherman and more.
Questions about this pi
Sherrie Levine
Sherrie Levine
Photo: Stephen BarkerSherrie Levine
Sherrie Levine (born in 1947 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania) is an American photographer, painter, and conceptual artist. She is best known for her reproductions of significant male artists' works through the medium of photography and sculpture, so as to discuss notions of authenticity and originality. "After Walker Evans" (1981) by photographer Sherrie Levine was an exhibition featuring images taken from the book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" (1941), by author James Agee alongside photos by Walker Evans. Intending to critique originality in art, Levine faced legal threats from Evans' Estate for Copyright infringement. She ceased using Evans' work and the lawsuit was dropped, after, the Estate ended up purchasing the images. This analysis will examine Levine's work in the context of John Oswald's concept of Plunderphonics, exploring piracy, plagiarism, and the appropriation of existing art to question originality and challenge copyright. Oswald proposes that any body of work should be open for appropriation, regardless of authorization or payment of rights, but always citing the original creator, as quotation does in literature. This paper employs a case study methodology centered around Sherrie Levine's exhibition as a pivotal illustration. Drawing on John Oswald's concept, the paper argues that Levine's actions could be considered a plunderphonic work. Ultimately, this analysis will delve into the technological aspect of piracy and plagiarism in art, also covered in Oswald’s Plunderphonics, engaging with current discussions in STS on technoscientific governance, by examining the ways in which science and technology intersect with governance structures, and assessing the implications of interference of the State in artistic contexts. Therefore, in analyzing Levine's work through the relation between Oswald's Plunderphonics and STS studies, discussions about plagiarism and arti
In particular, Levine's reproductions focus upon idolized male artists in order to critique limiting ideas of 'Artist Genius' in which Art History has traditionally undervalued the role of female artists. Through appropriation and recreation of certain modern artworks, Levine adds a more feminine interpretation to readymade art. She is often discussed in conjunction with 1980's feminist art.
Sherrie Levine received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1969. In 1973, she earned her M.F.A. from the same institution.
Much of Levine's work is explicitly appropriated from recognizable modernist artworks by artists such as Walker Evans, Edgar Degas, Marcel Duchamp, and Constantin Brancusi. Appropriation art became popular 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.
In 1977, Levine participated in the exhibition Pictures at Artists Space in New York, curated by Douglas Crimp. 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 toward Short abstract:
This paper will present a case study of Sherrie Levine’s “After Walkers Evans” (1981), seen through the concept of Plunderphonics by Jhon Oswald, aiming to discuss the relations of plagiarism and piracy in art works, and the role of technology and technoscientific governanceover art.
Long abstract: