Sturtevant: Drawing Double Reversal

Over the course of a half-century, Sturtevant (1924-2014) developed what is perhaps the most radical oeuvre of her generation. Concerned more with changing mental attitudes than with the reception of her art, she provoked the art world and the individual spectator by repeating the original works of contemporary artists. Astonishingly soon after the originals were made, she used them as source and catalyst, her intention being to, as she said, expand and develop our current notions of aesthetics, probe originality and investigate the relation of origins to originality and open space for new thinking. She is most famous for these repetitions, but her early drawings, particularly the so-called composite drawings of the 1960s, also provide important clues for understanding the artist’s radical conceptual work. This publication accompanies the first survey of Sturtevant’s drawings, a focused exploration of her graphic work from 1964 to 2004.