Levine, Sherrie (1947-…), is an American artist best known for her copies of original works of art by modern masters. Levine is a member of a movement often called Appropriation art. The artists in this movement copy or duplicate an existing image by another artist. They then exhibit the reproduced work as their own. Levine and other Appropriation artists attempt to question the idea of originality in art. They believe that their works present the copied art in a new context, thus altering its meaning.
Levine’s Appropriation work has a strong feminist theme. She stated that, as a woman, she had been excluded from male-dominated art of her time. She selected only images by modern male artists for her appropriations. These artists included painters Piet Mondrian and Kasimir Malevich and photographers Edward Weston and Walker Evans. She duplicated their images from reproductions, using such media as photography, water color, and graphite. Levine has also created works that reinterpret sculptures or images in pictures appropriated from such artists as Man Ray, Constantin Brancusi, and Marcel Duchamp in a three-dimensional form.
Levine was born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. She began creating her Appropriation works in the early 1980’s.
