Sherrie Levine

Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2007

This work is in very good condition overall. There are scattered handling marks on the snout and teeth. There is light rubbing to the patina visible on the uppermost part of the snout.
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A master of re-contextualization, Sherrie Levine is both celebrated and censured for adopting recognizable images from art history, pop culture and everyday life in a variety of media. Best known for appropriating Walker Evans’ photographs in 1980 and Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain in 1991, Levine sought to inject her art with a wry sense of humor, a self-critical perspective and a perpetual questioning of art and art history. In the present work from 2006, Levine elevates an antelope skull, inherently banal, to a baroquely gilded, luxurious fine art object.

In 1997, Levine began to split her time between New York and Santa Fe, where she gained new inspiration from the spirit of the American Southwest. Particularly taken by Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of animal skulls and bones, such as Deer's Skull with Pedernal from 1936, Levine began to make bronze casts of steer, caribou and antelope skulls in a range of sizes. With Antelope Skull, Levine continues to borrow the imagery from her artistic forbearers and create something entirely fresh:

“I consider myself a still-life artist…and I want my pictures to have a material presence that is as interesting as, but quite different from the originals.” – Sherrie Levine

The present work is an arrestingly realistic yet elegant still-life, the gold surface conjuring up connotations of excess, wealth and opulence. Levine also creates a tangential association to the biblical Golden Calf, a holy idol to be worshipped. Straddling the line between an emblem of Southwestern American life, a sacred religious icon and a symbol of excess and luxury, Antelope Skull is a striking and powerful work encapsulating the juxtapositions and contradictions inherent in Levine’s oeuvre.