After Russell Lee: 1-60

Sixty framed photographs hang in a strict sequence on the wall; the title of the work informs us of its materiality: so many images produced “after Russell Lee,” a photographer involved in the photographic campaigns set up by the American government in the wake of the Great Depression. His work is appropriated here by the artist Sherrie Levine. She entitles these photographs After Russell Lee: 1-60, faithfully reproducing the original photographs.

The viewer is then confronted with a work that blurs the notions of originality and reproduction, and questions the construction of the art historical narrative. More broadly, this work also relates to the Pictures Generation (a group of artists active in the 1970s and 1980s) to which Levine belonged, and whose concerns are still as relevant today. Sherrie Levine continues to question the production of images, and invites the viewer to re-evaluate the notions of authorship, authenticity, and the—generally male-dominated—construction of art history.

This series is presented for the first time by the Pinault Collection in the "Ouverture" exhibition at the Bourse de Commerce in 2021.