One, no-one, one hundred thousand
Born in 1947, American artist Sherrie Levine uses artworks made by others to create new ones that bear her own signature. This is the main aim of Appropriation Art, the artistic current to which she belongs. In 1977, she sold 35 identical black pairs of children’s shoes all signed Levine in a shop in New York. What was she trying to say? Her work provokes us and makes us think about the value of art, which is increasingly about the exchange of goods. For this reason, she refuses to create original works, preferring to focus on acts of appropriation. She first did this in 1981, re-photographing a photograph by Walker Evans, but adopting a different viewpoint. With ‘Fountain – after Marcel Duchamp’, she reproduced Duchamp’s famous ‘Urinal’, transforming his ready-made into a new sculpture made from golden bronze. Levine’s aim with her appropriations is to overturn the meaning of the work, reinterpret it and disorientate the viewer.
One, no-one, one hundred thousand
Born in 1947, American artist Sherrie Levine uses artworks made by others to create new ones that bear her own signature. This is the main aim of Appropriation Art, the artistic current to which she belongs. In 1977, she sold 35 identical black pairs of children’s shoes all signed Levine in a shop in New York. What was she trying to say? Her work provokes us and makes us think about the value of art, which is increasingly about the exchange of goods. For this reason, she refuses to create original works, preferring to focus on acts of appropriation. She first did this in 1981, re-photographing a photograph by Walker Evans, but adopting a different viewpoint. With ‘Fountain – after Marcel Duchamp’, she reproduced Duchamp’s famous ‘Urinal’, transforming his ready-made into a new sculpture made from golden bronze. Levine’s aim with her appropriations is to overturn the meaning of the work, reinterpret it and disorientate the viewer.