Sherrie Levine - New Now New York Wednesday, September 27, 2023 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • The transformation of ready-made objects is a long-standing fascination of the artist Sherrie Levine – perhaps for the auratic quality which she sees as being built into these art objects. “There's a level of seduction in the work that keeps you,” she says. "It's a visceral, sensual seduction that always draws you back.”i

     

    Sherrie Levine's The Cradle, 2009, explores one such object in particular, the cradle – and in doing so, makes a formal and conceptual reference to works such as Van Gogh’s La Berceuse from 1889. La Berceuse, a French word which can mean a lullaby, or woman who rocks a cradle, is indicated in Van Gogh’s composition by the rope held in the sitter’s hand, which is attached to the unseen cradle.ii Fascinatingly, Van Gogh only alludes to the cradle itself rather than depicting it, choosing instead to focus on the tender, maternal scene at hand. Levine subverts this canonical image by not only centering the cradle as her subject matter, but casting it in bronze, giving it visual and material weight. While there is a lack of physical human presence in The Cradle, the structure is still evocative of humanity; of the child who may have inhabited the cradle, and the figure who may have watched over it.

     

    Divorced from their actual function, Levine’s bronze objects open themselves to a myriad of other readings.iii Levine first began casting bronze sculptures in 1991, beginning with Fountain (After Marcel Duchamp). Levine stated that when she first cast the urinal in bronze, she “really didn’t know what to expect. When I got the first one back, I was totally amazed at the reference to Brancusi and Arp.”iv This ability of her works to forge art historical connections across time and material is present in The Cradle as well, in the invocation of Van Gogh. At once melancholy and dazzling, The Cradle is, as Adam Weinberg writes of Levine’s work, a “visually and emotionally complex” work, evoking “a profound sense of pathos.”v

     

     

    i Constance Lewallen, “Interview with Sherrie Levine,” Journal of Contemporary Art, 1993, online.

    ii “La Berceuse (Woman Rocking a Cradle; Augustine-Alix Pellicot Roulin, 1851–1930),” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, online.

    iii “Press Release: Sherry Levine,” Simon Lee Gallery, 2009, online.

    iv Lewallen.

    v Adam D. Weinberg, Sherrie Levine: Mayhem, exh. cat., The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2012, p. 8.

    • Provenance

      Simon Lee Gallery, London
      Private Collection (acquired from the above in 2010)
      Phillips, New York, May 15, 2019, lot 358
      Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      London, Simon Lee Gallery, Sherrie Levine, May 29 –July 31, 2009 (another example exhibited)
      New York, Paula Cooper Gallery, Sherrie Levine, November 6–December 15, 2010 (another example exhibited)
      South Hadley, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Conversations (works from the Permanent Collection), August 30, 2013–June 1, 2014 (another example exhibited)
      London, Simon Lee Gallery, Elective Affinities, July 11–August 27, 2014 (another example exhibited)
      South Hadley, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Unlimited: Recent Acquisitions in Honor of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum’s 140th Anniversary, September 6, 2016–May 28, 2017 (another example exhibited)

    • Literature

      Mark Durden, “Sherrie Levine,” Frieze, Issue 125, September 1, 2009, online (another example illustrated)

148

The Cradle

incised with the artist's monogram and numbered "LV 5/5" on the underside
cast bronze
17 7/8 x 37 7/8 x 23 1/8 in. (45.4 x 96.2 x 58.7 cm)
Executed in 2009, this work is number 5 from an edition of 6 plus 2 artist's proofs.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$150,000 - 200,000 

Sold for $139,700

Contact Specialist

Avery Semjen
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now Sale 
T +1 212 940 1207
asemjen@phillips.com

New Now

New York Auction 27 September 2023