Elaine Sturtevant was ahead of her time, to say the least. With the Internet facilitating most, if not all, of today’s appropriation-based art, it’s almost inconceivable that the artist rose to such prominence all the way back in the mid-'60s. In 2014, Richard Prince posts a comment on an Instagram photo, prints a screenshot of it on a canvas, and boom: appropriation art. In 1969, Sturtevant mastered an endless list of techniques and mediums, such as sculpture, photography, film, and painting, to reproduce artistic works, a majority of the time recreating them from memory alone. Boom: appropriation art.
That’s all without mentioning her sixth sense for future artistic success. Walking through the artist’s sprawling 50-year career survey at the Museum of Modern Art, her recreations of pieces from Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Keith Haring could be seen as parodies of iconic images, but at the time of the pieces’ creations, the original versions had a lot less cultural clout. In a pre-Internet age, Sturtevant had her finger on the pulse of the art world so much that she was able to rip off some of the biggest artists in history before they became some of the biggest artists in history. Sturtevant’s mastery of being ahead of the curve make her recreations feel incredibly modern even today; the transgressive nature of her work still as intense as it was at the birth of each individual piece.
A facet of appropriation art that hasn’t seemed to have changed since Sturtevant’s beginnings is the divisiveness of the genre. Artists, critics, and the overall public are still divided to this day over the ethics and overall artistic merit of recreation-based art. Sturtevant’s career was filled with controversy, from Claes Oldenberg’s art dealer buying her recreations of Oldenberg’s pieces only to destroy them, to a series of 12 shows in Paris of Sturtevant’s recreations of Warhol’s Flowers that resulted in the sale of exactly zero paintings. Curator of Sturtevant’s MoMA exhibition Peter Eleey spoke to W magazine in a profile on the artist posted just after her death and explained that the artist expected the negative reactions from the start. “She’s somebody who basically adopts style as a medium, and in order to do that she assumed the guise of the artists around her. This is an incredibly powerful and threatening thing to take on.”
In the previously mentioned magazine profile, Sturtevant explains there are two paths her artwork can lead you down. "Your head either goes forward or it goes backward," she says. "If it goes backward, you dismiss the work as a worthless copy. Forward is, ‘Oh, my God, what is that? How does that work?’ ” Walking through the exhibition, the latter is most definitely your reaction; so much so that the exhibition itself is almost unnerving. Walls lined with pieces of iconic artwork that look so much like their originals that it is hard to believe you are looking at an imposter. “Forward.” Into society, into the art world, into your mind. Sturtevant did it all.
Sturtevant: Double Trouble is on display at the Museum of Modern Art until February 22nd![]()
Installation view of Sturtevant: Double Trouble, The Museum of Modern Art, November 9, 2014–February 22, 2015. © 2014 The Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Thomas Griesel. All works by Sturtevant © Estate Sturtevant, Paris ![]()
Sturtevant. Elastic Tango. 2010. Nine-cha
That’s all without mentioning her sixth sense for future artistic success. Walking through the artist’s sprawling 50-year career survey at the Museum of Modern Art, her recreations of pieces from Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Keith Haring could be seen as parodies of iconic images, but at the time of the pieces’ creations, the original versions had a lot less cultural clout. In a pre-Internet age, Sturtevant had her finger on the pulse of the art world so much that she was able to rip off some of the biggest artists in history before they became some of the biggest artists in history. Sturtevant’s mastery of being ahead of the curve make her recreations feel incredibly modern even today; the transgressive nature of her work still as intense as it was at the birth of each individual piece.
A facet of appropriation art that hasn’t seemed to have changed since Sturtevant’s beginnings is the divisiveness of the genre. Artists, critics, and the overall public are still divided to this day over the ethics and overall artistic merit of recreation-based art. Sturtevant’s career was filled with controversy, from Claes Oldenberg’s art dealer buying her recreations of Oldenberg’s pieces only to destroy them, to a series of 12 shows in Paris of Sturtevant’s recreations of Warhol’s Flowers that resulted in the sale of exactly zero paintings. Curator of Sturtevant’s MoMA exhibition Peter Eleey spoke to W magazine in a profile on the artist posted just after her death and explained that the artist expected the negative reactions from the start. “She’s somebody who basically adopts style as a medium, and in order to do that she assumed the guise of the artists around her. This is an incredibly powerful and threatening thing to take on.”
In the previously mentioned magazine profile, Sturtevant explains there are two paths her artwork can lead you down. "Your head either goes forward or it goes backward," she says. "If it goes backward, you dismiss the work as a worthless copy. Forward is, ‘Oh, my God, what is that? How does that work?’ ” Walking through the exhibition, the latter is most definitely your reaction; so much so that the exhibition itself is almost unnerving. Walls lined with pieces of iconic artwork that look so much like their originals that it is hard to believe you are looking at an imposter. “Forward.” Into society, into the art world, into your mind. Sturtevant did it all.
Sturtevant: Double Trouble is on display at the Museum of Modern Art until February 22nd
Installation view of Sturtevant: Double Trouble, The Museum of Modern Art, November 9, 2014–February 22, 2015. © 2014 The Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Thomas Griesel. All works by Sturtevant © Estate Sturtevant, Paris 
Sturtevant. Elastic Tango. 2010. Nine-cha