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.