Sherrie Levine

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Sherrie Levine (born April 17, 1947 in Hazleton , Pennsylvania ) is an American photographer and conceptual artist who is part of the appropriation art movement. There is comparatively little biographical data on her person, as Levine does not want to participate in the "myth-making" in the art world.

Life

Levine grew up in St. Louis and attended the University of Wisconsin , Madison . There she completed her BA in 1969 and her MFA in 1973 . As far as is known, she then worked for a long time as a photographer and photo designer in the advertising industry. In 1975 she moved to New York City . At the end of the 1970s she made her first artistic work, including a. with collages that, according to Levine, were in the context of correctness and a feminist art strategy at the time. In 1981 she had her first highly acclaimed exhibition with other artists: she showed photographs of Walker Evans ' well-known depression period , taken directly from art catalogs.

Work and effect

Critics already made a comment on the demise of modern art , a questioning of the autonomy and authenticity of the work of art in Levine's picture series “After Walker Evans” . Various post-structuralist explanations about the work were submitted later, sometimes by the artist herself. The work of art had now also explicitly arrived in the “ age of its technical reproducibility ” ( Walter Benjamin ) in the galleries ; Buccaneering just a few years after the art market accepted original prints by great photographers as commodities? Was it about a negation of the character of goods in the art world and the rest of the world? Levine in retrospect: “My work should never be anything other than goods”. On the one hand, this is reassuring and is also true: the works of Appropriation Art themselves have long been hanging in museums. On the other hand, one has to ask critically: isn't such an open reference to the commodification of art offensive and self-destructive?

Levine: “Often works of art are reified through reproduction and reverence in such a way that their meaning is drowned out in the swell. In works that originally came across as particularly light-footed and rebellious, such phenomena turn into complete irony. "

Little wonder that Sherrie Levine later devoted himself to other previously provocative moments of modern art, such as Duchamp's cheeky gesture of the urinal presented in the art temple. Levine showed a reproduction of this "fountain" in the form of a highly polished bronze.

Levine: "It was always my intention to emphasize the aspect of exaggerated attribution of meaning in works of art."

In the following years the artist presented a. a. Drawings after de Kooning , Schiele and Malewitsch , as well as watercolors after Mondrian , Matisse and El Lissitzky , all works by male avant-gardists , ie “heroic modernists”.

Levine: "Like most women, I'm tired of being portrayed and represented by men."

The post-structuralist phrases related to appropriation art are scattered more sparingly today than they were in the 1980s , Levine now also comments on her works more simply: “Any halfway intelligent viewer understands that the image of a picture is a very strange thing. Of course, not everyone likes that ... I don't do my art to prove something or to demonstrate a theory. "

Levine no longer wants - if she planned to do so than ever - to abolish the idea of ​​the original artistic work, but rather to expand the concepts of authenticity and originality that have been narrowed thanks to " Classical Modernism " and put them up for discussion.

Levine: “I try not to be bullied by the original. What really interests me is how I relate to the image. "

This means the historicity of art, also the personal history of reception and appropriation (in other words: “appropriation”), and also the layers of its mediation: Art reaches us today by postcard , calendar print, in art books, television or the Internet . Even people who would never enter a museum come into secondary or tertiary contact with artistic originals via commercials and video clips . Appropriation Art aims to address this complex reception across several levels of meaning and mediation. Levine describes very vividly how she appropriated works of art through reproductions as a teenager in the American provinces. The works of the minimalists, already designed to erase personal handwriting, e . B. were even flatter, even more anonymous and therefore even more perfect in the catalog.

Another aspect of the historicity of the work of art is its emergence through various (also external) influences, which artists, stimulated by precursors and the environment, give shape. “What would our culture be without borrowings, adaptations and imitations?” (Christopher Hitchens). Incidentally, such a view also shakes current notions of authorship and copyright law .

Levine: "I see my work as a frontal attack on the fear of the epigone / on the fear of influence ."

Quotes

  • "Appropriation is a label that makes me shudder."
  • "People get restless when asked what I'll do next, and that alone gives me a lot of ideas."
  • " Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp practiced a kind of infantilism that is extremely charming."
  • "I want my art to be fun, but that doesn't mean that I'm not serious."

Exhibitions (selection)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pictures. Retrieved October 13, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Internet page for the exhibition. Retrieved January 6, 2017 (German).
  3. ^ Website of the museum on the exhibition. Retrieved January 6, 2017 (German).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Levine, Sherrie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer and concept artist
DATE OF BIRTH April 17, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Hazleton , Pennsylvania