Sherrie Levine

Sherrie Levine, born 1947 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania; lives and works in New York. In the 80s the New York-based conceptual artist became famous for her appropriations, art directly referencing art by other artists. Levine positions herself at the Duchampian--and, later, conceptual--task of questioning the production of art. She systematically investigates the theoretical critiques of originality and authorship theorized by postmodern philosophers such as Foucault, Barthes, and Baudrillard.
The wall work shown here is inspired by an early assisted readymade, Pharmacie, by Marcel Duchamp. Riding an evening train from Paris to Rouen, he saw in the distance a pair of lit windows. Soon afterward he bought three copies of a banal landscape at an art supply store and painted a red and green dot on each, suggesting the jars of colored liquids in the windows of French pharmacies. Levine used this minimal artistic gesture as a point of departure for the austere and poetic wall installation of the same title.