The artist as archivist

Sherrie Levine

Levine documented the “materiality of photography” Cotton, C (2011:221) using well known images from Walker Evans, Elliott Porter and Edward Weston, which she re-photographed from exhibition catalogues and hung in contemporary art galleries.

Levine was interested in exploring Walker Evans subject of poverty in the Great Depression, and how the emotions are conveyed to the viewers. These images were available in art catalogues and books and so her role could be seen as that of curator of Walker Evan’s image to the public in the exhibition at the ICP (International Centre of Photography) New York. The work is not vernacular, it is already in the public eye, and this is perhaps where the idea became controversial. Walker Evans had set out his authorship, which Levine over-wrote as her own by giving his work a female narrative.  

Levine as the author changes the intent of the original image. Evans contributed to art history with his oeuvre, gaining recognition and becoming a household name. Levine challenged this, encouraging the viewer to question the meaning and history of the image. Walker Evans’ photographs of the Burroughs family, sharecroppers in the Depression era were published in a book that became the archetypal record of the rural American poor. In 1979 Levine re-photographed Evans' photographs and without any manipulation of the images. Her work was exhibited in 1981 (entitled After Walker Evans) in New York, and was both a scandal and a success. Labelled as feminist and post-modernist, her exhibition exhibited a “critique in the commodification of art…Levine prefers to view her work as a regenerative act of collaboration, transforming the considered extraordinary masterpiece into something organic and continually renewable.” (Leeuwen, n.d.)

Figure 1 Walker Evans 1936, After Walker Evans 1981

Levine showed that once the image becomes commodified, the original photographer is forgotten although by re-presenting images to contemporary audiences allow different meanings to be gleaned from them. In Fountain (Buddha) takes Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) urinal and turned it back into a photograph, which she considered to be an art object. Instead of a white porcelain urinal, Levine photographed a gilded bronze one and re-contextualised it portraying it as art which is valued higher. In this she demonstrated the distance between “objective document and subjective desire.” Eklund, 2004)

Figure 2 (2010) Marcel Duchamp's Fountain and Sherrie Levine's Fountain (Buddha) during the opening of The Corporeal, Whitechapel Gallery

Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince worked with Levine in the 1970s and 1980s and were labelled the "Pictures" generation in which the concerns of photography facilitated the viewers’ understanding of art. Levine’s copies of photographs questioned the principles of originality and examined strategies and codes of representation, drawing attention to the diminished possibilities for originality in our image-saturated world. Their work included reshooting Marlboro advertisements in which they assumed the roles of director and observer. “In their manipulated appropriations, these artists were not only exposing and dissembling mass-media fictions, but enacting more complicated scenarios of desire, identification, and loss…Levine’s works from this series tell the story of our perpetually dashed hopes to create meaning, the inability to recapture the past, and our own lost illusions.” The Met (2000-2017)

References

Cotton, C (2011) The photograph as contemporary art. London: Thames and Hudson.

Leeuwen, R (n.d.) International Centre of Photography: Sherrie Levine: Biography. Available at: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/sherrie-levine?all/all/all/all/0 last accessed 7/5/17

Eklund, D (2004) The Met. The pictures generation. Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pcgn/hd_pcgn.htm last accessed 7/5/17

The Met (2000-2017) The Met: After Walker Evans: 4. Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/267214 last accessed 7/5/17

Bibliography

Cotton, C (2011) The photograph as contemporary art. London: Thames and Hudson.

Lee, S. (2007) Sherrie Levine. Available at: http://www.simonleegallery.com/exhibitions/sherrie-levine-june-2007 last accessed 7/5/17

Leeuwen, R (n.d.) International Centre of Photography: Sherrie Levine: Biography. Available at: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/sherrie-levine?all/all/all/all/0 last accessed 7/5/17

Eklund, D (2004) The Met. The pictures generation. Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pcgn/hd_pcgn.htm last accessed 7/5/17

The Art Story (2017) The Pictures Generation: After walker Evans (1981) Sherrie Levine. Available at: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-the-pictures-generation-artworks.htm last accessed 7/5/17

The Broad (2017) Sherrie Levine. Fountain. Buddha (1996). Available at: http://www.thebroad.org/art/sherrie-levine/fountain-buddha last accessed 7/5/17

The Met (2000-2017) The Met: After Walker Evans: 4. Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/267214 last accessed 7/5/17

Lens Culture (n.d.) Book Review: A lifetime of shooting self portraits at a shooting gallery. Collected and edited by Eric Kessels. Available at: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/erik-kesselskramer-a-lifetime-of-self-portraits-at-a-shooting-gallery last accessed 1/5/17
Time (2013)The Vanishing Art of the Photo Album: Tim Clark. Available at: http://time.com/3801986/the-vanishing-art-of-the-family-photo-album/#22 last accessed 1/5/2017
https://www.icp.org/exhibitions/archive-fever-uses-of-the-document-in-contemporary-art

List of Illustrations
Figure 1. Pinterest (n.d.)Walker Evans 1936 and After Walker Evans 1981. [Photograph]  Available at: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/530087818625349999/ last accessed 7/5/17
Figure 2. Docklands and East London Advertiser (2010) Marcel Duchamp's Fountain and Sherrie Levine's Fountain (Buddha) during the opening of The Corporeal, Whitechapel Gallery [Photograph;Marcel Duchamp's Fountain and Sherrie Levine's Fountain (Buddha) during the opening of The Corporeal, Whitechapel Gallery] At: http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/entertainment/arts/duchamp-s-fountain-takes-centre-stage-at-whitechapel-gallery-1-672292 last accessed 7/5/2017