The Groove 189 - When Repetition Becomes Unique
WHEN REPETITION BECOMES UNIQUE
Isn't imitation a constant in our lives? Whether it’s media or influential figures, we're consistently shaped by external influences. While it's true that much has already been created, genuine innovators still manage to offer something truly unique. Sometimes progress involves replicating and reinterpreting what's come before, but with our own twist.
It requires enormous courage, conviction and determination to do what Elaine Sturtevant did during her 60-year career. Elaine Frances Horan was born in Lakewood, Ohio, near Cleveland. She studied psychology at The University of Iowa, then earned a master's in the field from Teachers College of Columbia University and she also attended the Art Students League. She married Ira Sturtevant, a Madison Avenue advertising executive, and when she did so she took his last name and dropped her first name, so everyone knew her as Sturtevant.
She approached art as a form of performance, temporarily adopting the personas of established artists and producing versions of their works that were sometimes very close but always deliberately inexact. Through this process, she crafted a complex identity of her own. Her practice of repetition served as a provocative commentary on the nature of authorship, authenticity, and artistic innovation.
If You Are Ruffling Feathers, You May Be Doing Something Right
Sturtevant at her version of The Store of Claes Oldenburg, 1967.
Ruffling feathers in a smart, well-reasoned manner can indeed be a sign that you're challenging the status quo and pushing boundaries. It often indicates that you're addressing important issues or advocating for change, which can provoke discomfort or resistance in those who are invested in maintaining the current state of affairs.
In the early 60s, when Abstract Expressionism dominated the New York art scene and young artists were seeking alternatives, Sturtevant’s path as an artist was paved by deep questions about what she wanted to do and who she wanted to be. “First, let's talk about Abstract Expressionism, because that was the first step to the surface, to the outside, because that was all about emotion, okay. And then Pop was also the outside, so that, of course, was a very big trigger in terms of thinking.”
Sturtevant was in New York surrounded by artists like Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, and all of them were, in turn, influenced by Marcel Duchamp: the pioneer of creative appropriation who told us that art can be anything. Being immersed in the worlds of these young artists and having absorbed the concepts of Duchamp, Sturtevant came up with the idea for her first solo show.
Sturtevant’s exhibition at Bianchini Gallery, New York, 1965, showing 7th Avenue Garment Rack and Warhol Flowers. Courtesy Semiotext(e).
In 1965 at the Bianchini Gallery, what appeared to be a collective exhibition featuring "hot" artists like Warhol, Johns, Lichtenstein, Segal, and Rosenquist was, in fact, Sturtevant's inaugural solo exhibition, with every piece crafted by her own hand. The show was met with ridicule, as few recognized the profound implications of her work regarding surface, product, copyright, and artistic autonomy. Moreover, the significance of a female artist repeating the works of her male counterparts went largely unnoticed.
But Sturtevant wasn’t copying. When she did something very near in appearance to an original, she left a distinguishing signature of some kind. More often her work was a variation on a theme: a meditation, not an imitation. Illusion wasn't the point; action was, the gesture of shaping something new but different and related from something else.
This approach didn’t sit well with the art market at the time. It also created enemies, including former pal Claes Oldenburg, who was deeply offended by Sturtevant’s replication of the installation of Oldenburg’s “The Store” and didn’t talk to her again after that. Legend has it that Oldenburg's dealer, the fabled Leo Castelli, felt so unsettled by Sturtevant's pieces that he purchased some of them with the intention of destroying them.
I am not advocating for acts of belligerence or blatantly copying others, but when a profound and reasoned argument, an act, a movie, a piece of art or a writing ruffles feathers, it can be a necessary step towards progress and innovation. It signifies that you're not afraid to speak up, take risks, and stand up for what you believe in, even if it means facing opposition. Ultimately, if you're ruffling feathers, you may be doing something right by sparking dialogue, inspiring critical thinking, and driving positive change.
Dive into the Understructure
Sturtevant’s retrospective at MoMA in 2014 was aptly named '“Double Trouble”.
One of the reasons why I’m passionate about the topic of entrepreneurship and decided 15 years ago to open my own business is because I love to delve into the intricacies of how things operate from within. This has led me to explore algorithms, computer coding, and manufacturing processes firsthand, and of course, I’ve also immersed myself in so many artists' studios to gain insight into their thought processes and creative methodologies.
To get into the understructure of things was a very important process for Sturtevant. It meant delving beneath the surface or superficial aspects and exploring the fundamental or hidden elements that formed the basis of those paintings, sculptures or videos that she then recreated as her own.
“A question I asked myself was what the interior of art was, and I became concerned with its understructure. And I realized that, to my astonishment, if you took an original source work and repeated it, you would not only be throwing out resemblance, but you would be dealing with the understructure of painting.”
Brilliantly, Sturtevant honed her skills in painting, sculpture, photography, and film to meticulously recreate a comprehensive array of works by her selected artists. In this phase of her career, she painted and created objects by memory, as she had to see the artworks in person before even attempting to recreate them.
Moreover, Sturtevant’s decision to replicate these artists' works often preceded their widespread recognition. Years later, many of the artists she chose to emulate became celebrated as icons of their era or style. This has sparked debates among art critics, questioning how Sturtevant had the foresight to identify these artists at such an early stage of their careers. When asked the question, she simply answered that she was guided by her intuition.
When confronted with a piece resembling another artist that is known not to be genuine, Sturtevant explained, "one of two things happens. Your head either goes forward or it goes backward. If it goes backward, you dismiss the piece as a mere copy. Forward is, 'Oh, my God, what is that? How does that work?'
Although her work evolved to include video and other media over the decades, Sturtevant's core aim remained focused on provoking viewers into questioning what they see. Getting into the understructure of things the way she did, entails a thorough analysis and understanding of the underlying mechanisms, dynamics, and relationships that shape the surface appearance or behavior of something. It involves examining the foundational principles, profound meanings, and structural components that give rise to a particular phenomenon, idea, or system.
Style as a Medium
Sturtevant, Elastic Tango, 2010, a video installation. Courtesy of Moderna Museet / Asa LundEn
Visual artists, designers, musicians, and anyone else who wants to get noticed for their creations are always being taught that they have to find their own style. But Sturtevant decided to forsake everything conventionally regarded as crucial for an artist's acclaim. Effectively, she utilized style as a canvas, embodying the personas of the artists in her orbit. This approach was both immensely potent and unnervingly disruptive.
Sturtevant's artistic practice revolved around the exploration and manipulation of artistic styles themselves. Rather than focusing solely on specific mediums like painting or sculpture, her work entailed the deliberate adoption and reinterpretation of the styles and techniques employed by other artists. In essence, she used style as her primary tool for creative expression.
But by the 1970s Sturtevant was so fed up with the art world not understanding her work that she took a 10-year hiatus, in which she said she only focused on playing tennis. When she returned in the 1980s, the art world began to appreciate the conceptual rationale behind Sturtevant's replication of iconic works: to critique the lofty modernist ideals of creativity and the artist as a solitary genius. By centering her practice on Pop Art, which inherently questions mass production and the dubious concept of authenticity, Sturtevant was pushing the genre to its logical conclusion.
While some dubbed her the “mother of appropriation art,” a movement that thrived in the 1980s and beyond and is characterized by the creation of new artworks through the reproduction of old ones, Sturtevant herself rejected the label with her trademark frankness. The appropriationists were really about the loss of originality,” she said. “And I was about the power of thought.” Instead, she favored the term “repetition” to describe her working method. When asked to encapsulate her artistic quest, Sturtevant famously responded, “I create vertigo.”
Her work has been acknowledged for its foresight in anticipating the digital age, where reproduction and replication have become ubiquitous. In an era dominated by the internet and digital media, her explorations are more relevant than ever. She helped pave the way for discussions about intellectual property, the circulation of images, and the impact of technology on art.
Sturtevant never produced exact replicas. Her rendition of Lichtenstein's “Crying Girl”, for example, was a painting rather than a print. This is a detail of importance when the maximum that Lichtenstein’s print has been sold at auction in 2021 was $139,000, while Sturtevant’s “Lichtenstein, Frighten Girl”, sold in 2014 for $3,413,000. “Firstly, a copy must be absolutely of the same intention as the original, whereas my work deals with an interior movement, and repetition as difference.”
At the turn of the millennium, Sturtevant ventured into video installations, amalgamating mass media imagery with her original footage in a collage-style format. These creations underscored her expansive repertoire, transcending the insular confines of the art world. Sturtevant's incisive and critical perspective took aim at a complacent society increasingly defined by superficiality and the commodification of experiences.
"What is currently compelling is our pervasive cybernetic mode, which plunks copyright into mythology, makes origins a romantic notion, and pushes creativity outside the self. Remake, reuse, reassemble, recombine — that's the way to go."