Sherrie Levine

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.

Early life and education

Sherrie Levine was born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania in 1947. The Midwest, however, shaped her identity, as she spent most of her childhood and adolescence in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. Levine recalled her mother—who enjoyed painting—sparking her interest in art at eight years old, as she would take Levine to the St. Louis Art Museum. Levine's mother would also take her to see art house films on a regular basis, which later influenced her work. After graduating high school in 1965, she spent eight years in Wisconsin, receiving her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1969. In 1973, she earned her M.F.A. from the same institution.

In 1977, Levine participated in the exhibition Pictures at Artists Space in New York, curated by Douglas Crimp. Other artists in the exhibition included Robert Longo, Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, and Philip Smith. The works consist of well-known Walker Evans photographs, rephotographed by Levine from an Evans exhibition catalogue and then presented as Levine's own artwork without manipulation of the images. The Estate of Walker Evans saw the series as a copyright infringement, and acquired Levine's works to prohibit their sale. Levine later donated the whole series to the estate. All of it is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Levine's appropriation of Evans's images has since become a hallmark of the postmodern movement. By rephotographing and re-feminizing this series, Levine makes the images more transparent in their message, rather than focusing on authorship. Including herself in this series can be seen as the artist's gesture of solidarity with the subject.

Levine has rephotographed a number of works by other artists, including Eliot Porter and Edward Weston. Levine also appropriated Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, through the creation of her 1989 series, The Bachelors (After Marcel Duchamp). The series comprises six frosted-glass sculptures, each of which follows the design of a different malic-mold found in Duchamp's original.

In 1993, Levine created cast glass copies of sculptures by Constantin Brâncuși, held in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for an exhibition titled Museum Studies. In 2009, the Metropolitan Museum of Art held an exhibition titled The Pictures Generation, which featured Levine's works. In November 2011, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York mounted a survey exhibition of Levine's career titled Mayhem. Sherrie Levine: Mayhem, mounted at the Whitney Museum of Art from November 2011 through January 2012, was a meticulously organized installation, ranging from Levine's best-known photographs to works including her more recent Crystal Skull series (2010). During the winter of 2016, Levine exhibited new work of monochrome paintings paired with refrigerators. In 2016-2017 she exhibited at Neues Museum Nürnberg: After All.

In 2010, the artist created a series of eighteen monochromes titled "Gray and Blue Monochromes" based on Alfred Stieglitz's Equivalents (a series of abstract photographs of the sky).

Feminism

Levine's art is most often associated with 1980's theoretical feminism. She was showcased in the exhibit Difference: On Representation and Sexuality in 1984 along with artists such as Barbara Kruger, Jeff Wall, and Mary Kelly. This exhibit focused on gender distortions rather than differences, and the construct of sexuality. Three paintings from Levine's series After Ernst Ludwig Kirchner were included in this exhibit. Her appropriations of male artists' famous works combined with her intentional re-feminizing brings attention to the "difference problem" which this exhibit was focused on. Levine has noted her distaste for the voyeuristic quality of media culture, aligning with Laura Mulvey's analysis of the male gaze. Her work contends with the fact that, in her words, "the art world is so much an arena for the celebration of male desire." 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) After Russell Lee: 1-60, Museum of Wisconsin Art, West Bend, WI, USA (2025)

Public collections Levine's works is held in a number of public institutions, including:

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio Art Institute of Chicago Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland The Broad, Los Angeles CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris CAPC Musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, France Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine La Colección Jumex, Mexico City Dallas Museum of Art Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut Falckenberg Collection, Deichtorhallen Hamburg Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston Los Angeles County Museum of Art Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva The Menil Collection, Houston The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Museum of Modern Art The National Museum of Art, Osaka Philadelphia Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, Providence Sammlung Goetz, Munich San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Tate Gallery, London Tacoma Art Museum, Washington Whitney Museum of American Art Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts Walker Art Center