Neues Museum Nürnberg
2017–2018
October 28, 2017–February 12, 2018
With this largest-ever exhibition in the German-speaking world, containing over fifty works spanning thirty-five years, Neues Museum Nürnberg offers visitors an opportunity to experience and engage with the fascinating ideas and works of Sherrie Levine. Thirty-five years after her legendary first appearance on the vibrant New York art scene, Levine's works have maintained the power to surprise and polarize. The approach she radicalized then—and still pursues today—has (to varying degrees) always been practiced by artists: the appropriation, repetition, variation, and further development of iconic works from art history. Whereas in the Middle Ages, borrowing motifs was customary (in prints, for example), Levine's work appears today as a transgression and questioning of authorship.
Levine's oeuvre also takes the concept of the readymade a step further, using not everyday objects but artworks. In various media—photography, painting, sculpture—she addresses issues concerning the value and context of art, exploring the role of classical modernism in the attitudes of today. Visitors to the exhibition encounter works from art history that have achieved iconic status and that have been translated by Levine into other states. These include well-known works by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Marcel Duchamp, Walker Evans, Vincent van Gogh, Yves Klein, Man Ray, and even Albrecht Dürer's world-famous hare. Especially when seen together like this, it becomes clear that the energy of the originals still resides in Levine's works but that these are also something decidedly new with an aura all of their own.
Learn more at Neues Museum Nürnberg.