Sturtevant Lichtenstein Final Study for Landscape with Figures, 1988

Sturtevant has been acknowledged as one of the most important artists of the 21st century, having presaged the endlessly repeating, unattributed imagery that characterises the digital world of today. Through the lens of her investigation into notions of authorship and aesthetics, she examined the relation between original and origins. Her Lichtenstein Final Study for Landscape with Figures (1988) references Roy Lichtenstein’s major 1977 painting Landscape with Figures, itself an exhilarating compendium of art historical references and a self-reflective tour de force of his own practice. By ‘pushing the limits of resemblance’, Sturtevant’s repetitions of works by other artists articulate a tension between the source image and the resulting artwork, which she created from memory.