Sherrie Levine
(b Hazelton, PA, 17 April 1947).
American photographer and conceptual artist. She studied at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (BA 1969, MFA 1973). Biographical information on Levine is limited, since she has refused to participate in ‘myth-making’ associated with art production. She first gained critical attention in the early 1980s, when she was associated with Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, David Salle and others known as ‘Appropriationists’ for drawing on existing imagery from ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. Her works have been interpreted as a commentary on the death of Modernism and its ideals, notions of artistic originality, the authenticity and autonomy of the art object and its status as a commodity. In Untitled (after Walker Evans) (10×8 photograph, 1981) Levine re-photographed a reproduction of a photograph by Evans. Such works articulated her fascination with the photographic process and its reproduction, while raising post-structuralist discourses on authorship, originality and history, from which they partly derive. Levine’s theoretical rigour was complemented by a delicate, timid, if not remote, handling of materials, adding a sensuous dimension to an otherwise academic pursuit.
(courtesy of the Grove Encyclopedia of Art)
THEMES
The 20th Century American Art Photographic Canon by Peter Zimmerman
Not Duchamp, Not Levine by Joan Bowlen
Inextricable Art History in Sherrie Levine’s Photography and Sculpture by Peter Zimmerman
PHOTOGRAPHIC ANALYSES
“Untitled (President: 4)” (1979) by Joan Bowlen
RESPONSES
Simulating the Death of Modernism by Joan Bowlen
Sherrie Levine: So What? by Peter Zimmerman
Robert Demachy vs. Sherrie Levine by Peter Zimmerman