Artworks Much of Levine's work is explicitly appropriated from recognizable modernist artworks by artists such as Walker Evans,
Edgar Degas,
Marcel Duchamp, and
Constantin Brâncuși.
Appropriation art gained notoriety in the late 1970s, although it can be traced to early modernist works, specifically those using collage. Other appropriation artists such as
Louise Lawler,
Vikky Alexander,
Barbara Kruger, and
Mike Bidlo came into prominence in New York’s East Village in the 1980s. The importance of appropriation art in contemporary culture lies in its ability to fuse broad cultural images as a whole and direct them towards narrower contexts of interpretation. When coming under criticism with her appropriated works, most notably,
Walker Evans' depression-era images, the role of appropriation within
Levine's work also helped her to link the 'rarefied art object' and 'mass-produced' works to the extent that she perceived her appropriated works to be 'no less products of mass culture than the images of Elvis or Liz Taylor appropriated and reproduced by
Andy Warhol.' 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 in 2022 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." ==Exhibitions==