Sherrie Levine

Biography

I try to make art which celebrates doubt and uncertainty. Which provokes answers but doesn't give them. Which withholds absolute meaning by incorporating parasite meanings. Which suspends meaning while perpetually dispatching you toward interpretation, urging you beyond dogmatism, beyond doctrine, beyond ideology, beyond authority.

Appropriation artist Sherrie Levine, a founding member of The Pictures Generation, is well known for her collections of photographs lifted directly from the work of mostly male modern masters, such as After Walker Evans (1981), After Cézanne (2007) and After August Sander (2012). Raising questions about originality and authenticity, Levine re-photographs, abstracts or digitizes these images, making them “ghosts” of the original images. “I want to put a picture on top of a picture,” Levine says. “This makes for times when both disappear and other times when they’re both visible.” Her sculptures and paintings examine similar concerns, as in polished...