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Sherrie Levine
La Fortune (After Man Ray: 1), 1990

Artwork Info

Artwork title
La Fortune (After Man Ray: 1)
Artist name
Sherrie Levine
Date created
1990
Classification
sculpture
Medium
felt, mahogany, and billiard balls
Dimensions
33 in. × 110 in. × 60 in. (83.82 cm × 279.4 cm × 152.4 cm)
Date acquired
1996
Credit
Collection SFMOMA
Gift of the Lannan Foundation in honor of John Caldwell, Curator of Painting and Sculpture (1989–93)
Copyright
© Sherrie Levine
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/96.493.A-H
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

Audio Stories

What makes this pool table a work of art?

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JANET BISHOP:  

So what we’re looking at is a sculpture by Sherrie Levine, from 1990, called La Fortune (After Man Ray). And it’s based on a painting that Man Ray made in 1938. 

 

It’s something that’s familiar to us in a certain sense, in that it looks, you know, a lot like a very sort of high-end billiard table. But what is it doing in the gallery?  

 

This piece prompts us to think about the relationship between real things and works of art: what makes this a sculptural object, what distinguishes it from a pool table, and how do we make sense of it. It’s sort of mysterious and intriguing. 

 

Sherrie Levine has built a practice on looking very carefully and riffing off the work of artists who have come before her, primarily male artists. She’s using a Man Ray painting as a point of departure, but I think what this evokes for me is, you know, a whole culture of primarily male artists and the sort of camaraderie that they had with one another coming together around a billiard table.  

 

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