Sturtevant
1924–2014
In the mid-1960s the artist Sturtevant (born Elaine Sturtevant) began to make “repetitions” of recent paintings, sculptures, and installations by contemporaries such as Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol. Although she mimicked her fellow artists’ subjects and methods, Sturtevant was not simply cloning the work of others but rather underscoring her belief in the conceptual underpinnings of art. Indeed, her project questions how art is made, institutionally contextualized, and monetarily valued. “The brutal truth of the work,” Sturtevant has explained, “is that it is not copy”; rather, “the push and shove of the work is the leap from image to concept.”
Sturtevant has reimagined numerous works by Marcel Duchamp, an artist whose “readymade” sculptures helped to spearhead conceptually based art making. For Duchamp Man Ray Portrait, she restaged the 1924 portrait photograph Duchamp with Shaving Lather for Monte Carlo Bond, taken by the artist’s frequent collaborator Man Ray. Duchamp’s neck and face are coated in soapsuds in that image, and his lathered hair, pulled back from his forehead into two stiff spikes, resembles the winged helmet of Mercury, the Roman messenger god. Assuming the guise of Duchamp- as-Mercury, Sturtevant not only re-creates the earlier image but also echoes the fluidity of Duchamp’s ambiguously gendered self-representations, in which he frequently appeared disguised as his female alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. Although she consistently emphasized the idea over the object, Sturtevant never neglected the material basis of each work she made. As a result, her maneuvers paradoxically call upon audiences to look more closely at what they think they already know.
Introduction
Elaine Frances Sturtevant (née Horan; August 23, 1924 – May 7, 2014), also known professionally as Sturtevant, was an American artist. She achieved recognition for her carefully inexact repetitions of other artists' works.
Wikidata identifier
Q3050403
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed July 18, 2025.
Introduction
Considered a pioneer of appropriation art from the 1960s. Her birth date is either 1924 or 1929. She was briefly married to an advertising executive, Ira Sturtevant, from whom she took her professional name. She is officially known as 'Sturtevant.'
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, conceptual artist, graphic artist, painter, photographer, sculptor, video artist
ULAN identifier
500047422
Names
Sturtevant, Elaine Sturtevant, Elaine Frances Horan
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed July 18, 2025.
