Sherrie Levine

1947–

To make After Walker Evans: 4, one of her best-known works and a key example of what is termed Postmodern art, Sherrie Levine rephotographed one of Evans’s most iconic Depression-era pictures from a reproduction in an exhibition catalogue, presenting the image as her own. This work, from the series After Walker Evans— along with copies of images by other established masters of photography such as Edward Weston and Eliot Porter that she executed in the 1980s—exemplified the artistic strategy of appropriation, in which existing images, including those by other artists, are employed as the basis of one’s own production. Appropriation challenged values enshrined in the practice and theory of modern art: namely, the imperatives that an artwork be authentic, unique, and original. It also subverted the authority of a patriarchal canon of art history and underscored the centrality of authorship and historical context in our understanding of artworks.

Levine took the subject of La Fortune (After Man Ray): 4 from a 1938 Man Ray painting titled La Fortune, also in the Whitney’s collection, which features a pool table set beneath a sky filled with brightly colored clouds. By producing a three-dimensional object based on a two-dimensional representation made decades earlier, and by giving physical reality to something that in Man Ray’s painting is shown in a Surrealist manner at an impossibly oblique angle and with seemingly attenuated proportions, Levine again demonstrates that the same subject, re-created in a different medium and era, assumes new meaning for new audiences. Her longstanding sensitivity to the contexts of image production and circulation has taken on even greater relevance in our increasingly digital age.

Wikipedia entry

Introduction

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.

Wikidata identifier

Q319569

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Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 2, 2025.

Getty record

Introduction

Levine's work deals with notions of artistic originality, the authenticity and autonomy of the art object and its status as a commodity. Some of her paintings mimic the grain and knots of plywood.

Country of birth

United States

Roles

Artist, conceptual artist, painter, photographer, sculptor

ULAN identifier

500118782

Names

Sherrie Levine

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Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 2, 2025.

Not on view

First acquired
1988

Date of birth
April 17, 1947

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artists/2978