Sherrie Levine

born 1947 in Hazletown / Pennsylvania; lives and works in New York. Sherrie Levine made her first public appearance on the occasion of a 1977 exhibition organized by Douglas Crimp for the alternative «Artists Space» in New York (Pictures, with Robert Longo, Jack Goldstein, and other artists), marking the beginning of the discursive as well as artistic confrontation with a modernistic understanding of art in the context of the postmodern debate. Levine is a central figure of Appropriation Art. Alongside her ‹rephotographs› of icons from the history of photography («After Walker Evans,» «After Alexander Rodtschenko,» and «After Karl Blossfeldt»), she also refers to great Avant-garde artists in her mixed media and sculptural works: the gold-painted urinals of her series «fountain» quote those of Marcel Duchamp, and her «bachelors» made of glass the bachelors from his «Big Glass». Levine’s concept of appropriation allows itself to be understood as a feminist strategy: values such as expressiveness, originality and creativity, traditionally ascribed to male artists, are deconstructed at the same time as their great authors are ‹used›.