Sherrie Levine (Born 1947 in Hazleton, PA) is known for her strategy of naked appropriation. Since 1983, she has used photography, drawing, painting, and sculpture to reproduce in full the work of canonical male modernists. A member of the so-called Pictures Generation, Levine employs what Douglas Crimp called “processes of quotation, excerptation, framing, and staging” in layered works emblematic of a critical style of postmodernism.
In After Henri Matisse, one of many similar works made from the eponymous artist’s work, Levine constructs her re-creation with ink and graphite. Here, the contours of a woman’s face, abstracted by Matisse, are copied exactly by Levine, the repetition bringing the work into a new context to illustrate how art accumulates meanings and interpretations over time.
