Starting in 1964, Sturtevant (1924–2014) used some of the most iconic artworks of her generation as sources and catalysts to explore originality and authorship. Beginning with her versions of works by Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol, Sturtevant turned the visual logic of Pop art back on itself, probing the workings of art history in real time. Yet, as a woman making versions of works by better-known male artists, she passed almost unnoticed through the hierarchies of mid-century modernism and postmodernism, absent from these histories while nevertheless articulating their structures.
Published to accompany the first major exhibition of her work organized by a US museum, this book presents Sturtevant as an artist who adopts style as her medium to expose aspects of art’s making, circulation, and canonization. It features works from all periods of Sturtevant’s career and previously unpublished documents from her archive, linking her earliest repetitions to the video works she produced after 1998. The result is a comprehensive overview of her unique practice that is situated firmly within postwar American culture.