Elaine Sturtevant: queen of copycats

Since the 1960s, Elaine Sturtevant has been meticulously remaking works by everyone from Andy Warhol to Jasper Johns. Why do they rarely mind? And what's a sex doll army doing in her new show?

 

A crowd of naked people watch as you walk past the Serpentine Gallery. They ogle you through the windows, boggle-eyed and open-mouthed. They're inflatable sex dolls, all but two of them male, with cartoonish printed chest hair and blank bulges between their legs. According to Elaine Sturtevant, you can't get female ones any more. Her two are scrunched down and wilting, leaking silently beside the pumped-up men. You do wonder who, aside from Sturtevant, buys these things and what squeaky, weightless pleasures are to be had with them. Please do not write in.

Now in her 80s, Sturtevant has been dealing with simulacra throughout her career. Most famously, or infamously, she has been remaking the works of other artists since the 1960s. She has copied Andy Warhol's flowers and Marilyns, and even his "unwatchable" eight-hour black-and-white film of the Empire State Building. She has remade works by Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, Jasper Johns and a host of other artists, mostly male.

Her meticulous versions are neither forgeries nor fakes. Nor are they homages, the Paris-based American artist insists, much less parodies. Although Sturtevant never asks permission, Warhol did give her his silk screens, so she could redo his flowers. When asked what his work meant, he is said to have quipped: "Ask Elaine Sturtevant." Warhol himself derived his flower images from images he found in Modern Photography magazine. Nothing comes from nothing.