Sherrie Levine facts for kids

Sherrie Levine (born in 1947) is an American artist. She is known for her photography, painting, and a style called conceptual art. She often makes art by taking exact photos of other famous artworks. This includes photos by artists like Walker Evans, Eliot Porter, and Edward Weston.

Early Life and Learning

Sherrie Levine was born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania in 1947. Even though she was born in Pennsylvania, she grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. This area shaped who she became. Her mother loved to paint and took Sherrie to the St. Louis Art Museum. This sparked Sherrie's interest in art when she was eight. Her mother also took her to special movie theaters to see art films. These movies later inspired Sherrie's art.

After finishing high school in 1965, she spent eight years in Wisconsin. She earned her first degree (B.A.) from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1969. In 1973, she earned her master's degree (M.F.A.) from the same school. After working different jobs in art and teaching, Levine moved to New York City in 1975 to focus on her art career.

What is Appropriation Art?

Sherrie Levine is famous for using a style called appropriation art. This means she takes existing images or artworks and uses them in her own art. It's like taking a famous song and making a new version of it. Appropriation art became well-known in the late 1970s. However, artists had been doing similar things for a long time, especially with collage.

Other artists who used appropriation art in the 1980s include Barbara Kruger and Mike Bidlo. This type of art helps us think about how we see images in our culture. It also makes us wonder about what makes art "original." Levine once said her copied works were "no less products of mass culture" than famous images of Elvis.

Sherrie Levine's Artworks

This artwork is a tribute to Marcel Duchamp’s famous "readymade" art. Levine makes it an "art object" by focusing on its look and feel. As a feminist artist, Levine often re-creates works by male artists. She believes these artists showed male power in art history.

Many of Levine's artworks are direct copies of famous modern art pieces. She has copied works by artists like Walker Evans, Edgar Degas, Marcel Duchamp, and Constantin Brâncuși.

In 1977, Levine was part of an art show called Pictures in New York. This show was important because it helped define a group of artists. This group, called the "Pictures Generation," moved away from simple, minimalist art. They started making art that focused on images and how we see them.

After Walker Evans: 4 (1981) at the National Gallery of Art in 2022

Levine is most famous for her photo series called After Walker Evans. She showed these photos in her own exhibition in New York in 1981. For this series, Levine took well-known photos by Walker Evans. She re-photographed them directly from an Evans exhibition catalog. Then, she presented them as her own art. She did not change the images at all.

Walker Evans's photos became famous from his book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. These photos are seen as important records of poor rural Americans during the Great Depression. Evans's family thought Levine's series was a copyright problem. They bought Levine's works to stop them from being sold. Later, Levine gave the whole series to the Evans family. Now, all of these works are owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Levine's use of Evans's images is a key example of the postmodern art movement. By re-photographing these images, Levine wanted to make their message clearer. She also wanted to make people think about who "owns" an artwork.

Levine has also re-photographed works by other artists, including Eliot Porter and Edward Weston. Other examples of her art include:

• Photos of Van Gogh paintings taken from a book.
• Watercolor paintings that look exactly like works by Fernand Léger.
• Pieces of plywood with their natural knots painted in bright colors.

Her 1991 sculpture Fountain is a bronze urinal. It is modeled after Marcel Duchamp's famous 1917 artwork, also called Fountain. This work makes us think about what "originality" means. Levine purposefully chose a shiny bronze finish for her Fountain. This made it look like sculptures by Brancusi. By doing this, Levine connected the two artists' works. She also raised questions about what is original and what is a copy.

Levine also copied Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even. She did this in her 1989 series, The Bachelors (After Marcel Duchamp). This series has six sculptures made of frosted glass. Each one follows the design of a different part from Duchamp's original work. The sculptures are shown in separate glass cases. This changes the power structure that Duchamp showed in his original piece. It allowed Levine to make a bigger social comment with her series.

In 1993, Levine made glass copies of sculptures by Constantin Brâncuși. These sculptures are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She made these for an exhibition called Museum Studies. In 2009, the Metropolitan Museum of Art held an exhibition called The Pictures Generation. This show included Levine's works.

In November 2011, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York had a big show of Levine's career. It was called Mayhem. This show included her most famous photos and newer works. These included her Crystal Skull series from 2010. In 2016, she showed new monochrome paintings paired with refrigerators. In 2016-2017, she had an exhibition called After All in Germany.

In 2010, the artist created a series of eighteen monochrome paintings. They were titled "Gray and Blue Monochromes." These were based on Alfred Stieglitz's Equivalents. That was a series of abstract photos of the sky.

Art and Feminism

Large Check: 3, 5, 6 -10, and 12 (1987) at the Museum of Modern Art in 2022

Levine's art is often connected to feminist ideas from the 1980s. She often copies famous works by male artists. By doing this, she draws attention to how women are shown in art. She also highlights how men have often dominated the art world. Levine has said that "the art world is so much an arena for the celebration of male desire." Her work challenges this idea.

Exhibitions

• Sherrie Levine: La Fortune (After Man Ray), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1991)
• Sherrie Levine: Newborn, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; The Menil Collection, Houston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1993-1995)
• Inviter 5/ Sherrie Levine, Casino Luxembourg - Forum d'art contemporain, Luxembourg (1997)
• Taking Pictures: Sherrie Levine after Walker Evans, Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville (1998)
• New Sculpture, 1996-1999, with Joost van Oss, Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva (two-person exhibition) (1999)
• Abstraction, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago (then traveled to Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe (2006)
• Pairs and Posses, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld (2010)
• Mayhem, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2011)
• Sherrie Levine, Portland Art Museum, Oregon (2013)
• After All, Neues Museum, State Museum for Art and Design in Nuremberg, Germany (2016)

Where to See Her Art

Sherrie Levine's art can be found in many public museums and collections around the world. Some of these include:

• Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
• Art Institute of Chicago
• Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland
• The Broad, Los Angeles
• Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
• Dallas Museum of Art
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Museum of Modern Art
• Philadelphia Museum of Art
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
• Tate Gallery, London
• Whitney Museum of American Art
• Walker Art Center

See also

In Spanish: Sherrie Levine para niños

• Appropriation art
• Neo-conceptual art
• The Pictures Generation