專家說明
“Resemblance is no longer an important issue, and instead, it’s more about image over image. So it’s moved from an object over image, which is imitation, to an image over image... And it’s still moving!” (E. Sturtevant quoted in H. E. Obrist “STURTEVANT”, 032c Magazine, 1 December 2008)
Sturtevant’s paintings question and challenge the nature of art like no one else before her. The artist’s facsimiles of major from Pop and other postwar art movements have firmly cemented her as the absolute figure in Appropriation art. Painted in 1990, Warhol Flowers is a prime example of her attention to detail, not only in process but also in who she chose to mimic. This version stems from a 1966 solo exhibition of her one-to-one reproductions of Andy Warhol’s striking floral arrangements. These paintings were a shocking departure Sturtevant, but were highly praised by critics, “[The Flowers] are so goddamn beautiful and so simple. And their glamour was so intense … That’s why we reach for the word ‘genius’” (P. Schjeldahl, quoted in T. Scherman and D. Dalton, Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol, New York, 2009, pp. 236-237). By meticulously replicating these iconic flower paintings, Sturtevant was able to harness the magnetic effect of these images and further question of authorship and the discourse surrounding artistic genius in the late twentieth Century.
At the crux of Sturtevant’s oeuvre is a biting treatise on ideas of authorship and originality. So important to the Modernist reading of art which shaped critical discourse for decades, notions of what is and is not a copy have remained central to the Western ideas of artistic production. Though working with appropriation as a defining point in her work, Sturtevant did not use reproductive methods that would change the outcome of her process. Instead, she meticulously recreated the subjects, materials, and means of each work she made to further blur the line between two seemingly identical works. “The brutal truth of the work is that it is not a copy,” she once noted about this dichotomy. “The push and shove of the work is the leap from image to concept. The dynamics of the work is that it throws out representation” (E. Sturtevant, quoted in The Brutal Truth, exh. cat., Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, 2004, p. 19). Under her careful eye, canvases like Warhol Flowers become introspective objects that ask for a more studied appreciation of what, if anything, separates the minds of two artists ostensibly creating the same work.
Sturtevant was shrewd in her selection of subjects and only chose to appropriate male artists with strong conceptual backgrounds. Warhol was a perfect subject with his enticing combination of glitz and the macabre wrapped up in the trappings of Pop. The Flowers series is a prudent choice as it represents a dynamic turn within Warhol’s oeuvre. Shifting from the death and gloom of the Electric Chairs (1964) and their ilk, the artist worked to reinvigorate an innocuous image through artistic means. Sturtevant’s work in turn questioned this idea, noting that if she made the work with her own intentions behind it, it would become a unique work. By foregrounding the original mode of production and her own painstaking reproduction of the original artist’s process, she “correctly and repeatedly points out that a ‘copy’ is something bereft of energy, something that is anaemic [sic] and has nothing in common with what she does” (G. de Vries and L. Maculan, “Interview,” in Sturtevant: Catalogue Raisonné 1964–2004, Painting Sculpture Film and Video, Frankfurt, 2004, p. 35). Far from being a counterfeit, Sturtevant’s Warhol Flowers asks us to question the romantic ideal of the genius artist and in doing so further emphasize and highlight the very tenets of Pop.
Sturtevant’s paintings question and challenge the nature of art like no one else before her. The artist’s facsimiles of major from Pop and other postwar art movements have firmly cemented her as the absolute figure in Appropriation art. Painted in 1990, Warhol Flowers is a prime example of her attention to detail, not only in process but also in who she chose to mimic. This version stems from a 1966 solo exhibition of her one-to-one reproductions of Andy Warhol’s striking floral arrangements. These paintings were a shocking departure Sturtevant, but were highly praised by critics, “[The Flowers] are so goddamn beautiful and so simple. And their glamour was so intense … That’s why we reach for the word ‘genius’” (P. Schjeldahl, quoted in T. Scherman and D. Dalton, Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol, New York, 2009, pp. 236-237). By meticulously replicating these iconic flower paintings, Sturtevant was able to harness the magnetic effect of these images and further question of authorship and the discourse surrounding artistic genius in the late twentieth Century.
At the crux of Sturtevant’s oeuvre is a biting treatise on ideas of authorship and originality. So important to the Modernist reading of art which shaped critical discourse for decades, notions of what is and is not a copy have remained central to the Western ideas of artistic production. Though working with appropriation as a defining point in her work, Sturtevant did not use reproductive methods that would change the outcome of her process. Instead, she meticulously recreated the subjects, materials, and means of each work she made to further blur the line between two seemingly identical works. “The brutal truth of the work is that it is not a copy,” she once noted about this dichotomy. “The push and shove of the work is the leap from image to concept. The dynamics of the work is that it throws out representation” (E. Sturtevant, quoted in The Brutal Truth, exh. cat., Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, 2004, p. 19). Under her careful eye, canvases like Warhol Flowers become introspective objects that ask for a more studied appreciation of what, if anything, separates the minds of two artists ostensibly creating the same work.
Sturtevant was shrewd in her selection of subjects and only chose to appropriate male artists with strong conceptual backgrounds. Warhol was a perfect subject with his enticing combination of glitz and the macabre wrapped up in the trappings of Pop. The Flowers series is a prudent choice as it represents a dynamic turn within Warhol’s oeuvre. Shifting from the death and gloom of the Electric Chairs (1964) and their ilk, the artist worked to reinvigorate an innocuous image through artistic means. Sturtevant’s work in turn questioned this idea, noting that if she made the work with her own intentions behind it, it would become a unique work. By foregrounding the original mode of production and her own painstaking reproduction of the original artist’s process, she “correctly and repeatedly points out that a ‘copy’ is something bereft of energy, something that is anaemic [sic] and has nothing in common with what she does” (G. de Vries and L. Maculan, “Interview,” in Sturtevant: Catalogue Raisonné 1964–2004, Painting Sculpture Film and Video, Frankfurt, 2004, p. 35). Far from being a counterfeit, Sturtevant’s Warhol Flowers asks us to question the romantic ideal of the genius artist and in doing so further emphasize and highlight the very tenets of Pop.