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Lot Essay
"A work of art. Something you experience in a visceral sense, because I believe that intellectual experiences are stronger when related to sensual experiences, a sense of the world. I sometimes paraphrase Lawrence Weiner on this; he said that he wanted to make art that throws you back on the physical world, that makes you think about your relationship to the physical world. I think that's a wonderful way to think about artmaking." (S. Levine, quoted in 'Sherrie Levine', Journal of Contemporary Art, reproduced at: https://www.jcaonline.com/slevine.html)
Antelope (Mule Deer) Skull, 2006, belongs to a series of works by Sherrie Levine that invoke an engagement with the natural world. In 1997 Levine began to divide her time between New York and Santa Fe, the home of renowned artist, Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived there from 1949 until her death in 1986. In New Mexico, Levine became inspired by the spirit of the American South West, as well as O’Keeffe’s paintings of wild animal skulls, such as Summer Days, 1936 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). In response, Levine produced a group of works based around the skulls of cattle, caribou and antelope, amongst which is Antelope (Mule Deer) Skull, a gleaming bronze, sculptural still life reminiscent of a wall-mounted hunting trophy. With its gilded surface, the animal’s skeletal head conjures up associations with excess and luxury, its currency made material in a world hinged upon consumer impulse. Yet preserved and displayed, it also evokes the aesthetics of specimen collection, projecting an air of cultivation and prompting an investigation into the categorization of seemingly distinct genres. In honor of the artist that inspired it, Antelope (Mule Deer) Skull was exhibited in 2007 at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, in “Living Artists of Distinction: Sherrie Levine: Abstraction”.
Renowned for an oeuvre concerned with notions of appropriation, authorship and codes of representation, Levine rose to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside such artists as Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman and Louise Lawler. As a group, they became known as the Pictures Generation, sharing a common interest in the deconstruction of narratives of originality in popular culture and the mass media. Levine’s artistic career began with a focus on photography, reinterpreting bookplate reproductions of images by some of the most esteemed photographers of the 20th century, including Alexander Rodchenko, Eliot Porter, and Walker Evans. Since the late 1980s Levine has expanded her practice to include sculpture, using materials such as bronze, more often associated with classical than contemporary art. Influenced by key figures of Dada, the Pictures Generation went a step further, challenging concepts of authorship by re-interpreting existing art objects, such as the pre-fabricated, mass-produced readymades invented by Marcel Duchamp in the early 20th century. Levine notes, “I am interested in making a work that has as much aura as its reference. For me the tension between the reference and the new work doesn’t really exist unless the new work has an artistic presence of its own. Otherwise, it just becomes a copy, which is not that interesting” (S. Levine in Journal of Contemporary Art, Vol. 6, 1993, p. 62). Her sculptural oeuvre has interrogated landmark Modernist works, including Fountain (after Marcel Duchamp), 1991, and La Fortune (After Man Ray), 1990, which reconstructed Man Ray’s two-dimensional painting into a three-dimensional replica of its subject: a billiard table in felt and mahogany.
Works from Levine’s animal skull series operate within this milieu, treading the line between readymade and still life, making particular reference to the tradition of 17th century, Dutch vanitas painting. Emblematic of the inevitability of death, the symbol of the skull has a long history in the annals of art history. Cast in resilient, shining bronze, Antelope (Mule Deer) Skull both halts and eternalizes the organic progress of decay. While the vanitas traditionally functions as a metaphor for transience, in Levine’s hands it is translated into a three-dimensional artifact or curiosity, as an object of desire capable of re-framing its exhibition space. “I’m interested in representing two opposing, idealized notions of nature”, writes Levine, “one that nature is ordered and the other that it is chaotic. I’m always trying to collapse the utopian and dystopian” (S. Levine in J. Burton, E. Sussman, Sherrie Levine: Mayhem, New York, 2012, p. 181). In Antelope (Mule Deer) Skull, Levine rematerializes the transience of organic forms, and disrupts the natural order by transforming carcass into specimen, and specimen into art object.
Antelope (Mule Deer) Skull, 2006, belongs to a series of works by Sherrie Levine that invoke an engagement with the natural world. In 1997 Levine began to divide her time between New York and Santa Fe, the home of renowned artist, Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived there from 1949 until her death in 1986. In New Mexico, Levine became inspired by the spirit of the American South West, as well as O’Keeffe’s paintings of wild animal skulls, such as Summer Days, 1936 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). In response, Levine produced a group of works based around the skulls of cattle, caribou and antelope, amongst which is Antelope (Mule Deer) Skull, a gleaming bronze, sculptural still life reminiscent of a wall-mounted hunting trophy. With its gilded surface, the animal’s skeletal head conjures up associations with excess and luxury, its currency made material in a world hinged upon consumer impulse. Yet preserved and displayed, it also evokes the aesthetics of specimen collection, projecting an air of cultivation and prompting an investigation into the categorization of seemingly distinct genres. In honor of the artist that inspired it, Antelope (Mule Deer) Skull was exhibited in 2007 at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, in “Living Artists of Distinction: Sherrie Levine: Abstraction”.
Renowned for an oeuvre concerned with notions of appropriation, authorship and codes of representation, Levine rose to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside such artists as Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman and Louise Lawler. As a group, they became known as the Pictures Generation, sharing a common interest in the deconstruction of narratives of originality in popular culture and the mass media. Levine’s artistic career began with a focus on photography, reinterpreting bookplate reproductions of images by some of the most esteemed photographers of the 20th century, including Alexander Rodchenko, Eliot Porter, and Walker Evans. Since the late 1980s Levine has expanded her practice to include sculpture, using materials such as bronze, more often associated with classical than contemporary art. Influenced by key figures of Dada, the Pictures Generation went a step further, challenging concepts of authorship by re-interpreting existing art objects, such as the pre-fabricated, mass-produced readymades invented by Marcel Duchamp in the early 20th century. Levine notes, “I am interested in making a work that has as much aura as its reference. For me the tension between the reference and the new work doesn’t really exist unless the new work has an artistic presence of its own. Otherwise, it just becomes a copy, which is not that interesting” (S. Levine in Journal of Contemporary Art, Vol. 6, 1993, p. 62). Her sculptural oeuvre has interrogated landmark Modernist works, including Fountain (after Marcel Duchamp), 1991, and La Fortune (After Man Ray), 1990, which reconstructed Man Ray’s two-dimensional painting into a three-dimensional replica of its subject: a billiard table in felt and mahogany.
Works from Levine’s animal skull series operate within this milieu, treading the line between readymade and still life, making particular reference to the tradition of 17th century, Dutch vanitas painting. Emblematic of the inevitability of death, the symbol of the skull has a long history in the annals of art history. Cast in resilient, shining bronze, Antelope (Mule Deer) Skull both halts and eternalizes the organic progress of decay. While the vanitas traditionally functions as a metaphor for transience, in Levine’s hands it is translated into a three-dimensional artifact or curiosity, as an object of desire capable of re-framing its exhibition space. “I’m interested in representing two opposing, idealized notions of nature”, writes Levine, “one that nature is ordered and the other that it is chaotic. I’m always trying to collapse the utopian and dystopian” (S. Levine in J. Burton, E. Sussman, Sherrie Levine: Mayhem, New York, 2012, p. 181). In Antelope (Mule Deer) Skull, Levine rematerializes the transience of organic forms, and disrupts the natural order by transforming carcass into specimen, and specimen into art object.