Sherrie Levine Essay

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Sherrie Levine, Untitled (After Walker Evans), 1981

Throughout this essay I am going to discuss the work of Sherrie Levine, in particular the 1981 piece entitled, Untitled (After Walker Evans). I will examine the physical, technical and formal characteristics of the work and their effect on a viewer, including my own interpretation as well as the views of others, and explore any aspects of Levine’s life that may have influenced the artwork before identifying whether the piece is defined as modern or postmodern according to Clement Greenberg’s ideas on modernism.

1.
After Walker Evans is a common black and white 12.8 x 9.8 cm gelatine silver print. This may lead the viewer to believe that the photo of the woman was actually taken by Levine …show more content…

There is very little information regarding her personal life and she has taken part in very few interviews. In interviews that Levine has taken part in, she talks in abundance about her artwork but when asked about any aspect of her personal life becomes very closed off:
‘PT: Since 1984. What were you doing before that?
SL: A lot of waitressing, commercial art… Teaching.’
The decision to keep her personal life separate is clear in Levine’s work which tends to be about larger issues of appropriation and feminism. Not only does Levine choose not to produce work based on her own personal life, she takes it one step further by pushing the viewers focus onto the work of other artists.
What I assume to be the largest influence on Levine’s artwork was her involvement with a group of artists identified as the Pictures Generation, made up of postmodern appropriation artists such as Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman amongst others.
The Pictures Generation took influence from philosophers like Roland Barthes and his ideas on originality and authenticity, namely the ideas discussed in his manifesto, The Death of the Author. The artists involved tended to appropriate images found within mass media and although their ideas were very similar, they worked in a variety of media including film, photography and performance

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