Sherrie Levine, Crystal Skull 1–12, 2010

Narrator: The Crystal Skulls respond to the European still life tradition. Howard Singerman.

Howard Singerman: The skull, which since the Renaissance, if not before, has long been an image of the vanitas, of the presence of death. Here it's presented, one after another, in vitrine, the crystal skulls, without perhaps the affect or the setting, the place that it would have within a still life. It's as though a kind of still life supply store, where one might come and get a skull or just simply set out as sculpture.

Narrator: There are twelve skulls, so repetition is an important part of the work.

Howard Singerman:A repetition that, since Warhol if not before, has been about a kind of cooling off of hot objects, a cooling off of emotional objects, at the same time, creating that coldness, too, as a different kind of emotional feeling.