If everything in Sturtevant’s show looks familiar, there’s a reason for that: you’ve seen it all before. Elaine Sturtevant (1924-2014) was a conceptual American artist who spent her career reproducing famous works of art, but always making them somehow off and imprecise. Walking through this show you’ll see works you know and love by Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Paul McCarthy, Joseph Beuys and Marcel Duchamp – but their hands came nowhere near these canvases.
If you’re sat there shaking your head and saying ‘how is this even art?’ – good. That means it’s working. Because you know that sense of cynicism you get when you see someone taking art way too seriously? That sneer you feel rising up through you when faced with the pomposity and pretentiousness of the art world? Well condense every one of those snarky emotions down into one artist and you get Sturtevant.
Through reproducing the art of others, Sturtevant poses countless questions: who, how, why and why not. She’s asking why it’s less valid as art when she copies Warhol than when Warhol steals a photo and reprints it? Why is it only art if Jasper Johns did it first? What happens to the art – as a concept – when it’s being reproduced? At what point does it stop being art? When does it become art again? It’s every question you’ve ever had about modern art – about its purpose, needs and authenticity – turned into action. It’s brilliant and terrible, reassuring but terrifying.
@eddyfrankel
