Elaine Sturtevant: The Razzle Dazzle of Thinking

Since the mid-1960s, American conceptualist Elaine Sturtevant (born 1930) has been using her multidisciplinary practice to mercilessly interrogate the commercial and symbolic value of art and the male-driven art world. Working predominantly from memory, she copies iconic works by male artists such as Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys and Frank Stella. Often indistinguishable from the originals, Sturtevant's painting, sculpture, video and photographic facsimiles force thorny issues of replica and simulacra, origin and difference, to a crisis point. Designed in close collaboration with the artist, The Razzle Dazzle of Thinking offers a compilation of Sturtevant's largely unpublished writings, along with a selection of essays on her life and work. Sturtevant and her rigorous, committed conceptual strategy are central to ongoing debates on the concept of originality in contemporary art and beyond.