Reception for the artist 21 April 2004

SHERRIE LEVINE: LOULOU “In the ideal I have of Art, I think that one must not show one’s own…….Man is nothing, the work of art everything”. Gustave Flaubert 22nd April – 8th June 2004 Reception April 21st, 6-8pm Faggionato Fine Arts is pleased to announce their forthcoming exhibition Sherrie Levine: Loulou. This will be the first UK solo show since 1996. The exhibition includes Loulou, a new work created specifically for the show in connection with Levine’s reading of Flaubert’s Un Coeur Simple. Building on her 1990 piece After Gustave Flaubert, an edition of Un Coeur Simple printed on handmade paper, Levine again crosses artistic boundaries and takes a visual idea from literature, presenting us with a parrot cast in polished bronze. In Flaubert’s story the parrot (Loulou) belongs to the leading character, Félicité. The creature becomes the final object in her chain of attachments and when he too dies, Félicité has him stuffed. She becomes so attached to the adored relic that a doctrinal confusion develops in her simple mind as she wonders whether the Holy Ghost would not be better portrayed as a parrot. This simple, moving story has prompted a variety of responses from authors and artists alike. In 1974 Hockney produced a pair of etchings: a tranquil scene of Felicite asleep with Loulou and a version of Felicite’s view of Abroad. He wrote in his autobiography “the story really affected me, and I felt it was a subject I could get into and really use”. It evidently affected Julian Barnes who in 1984 devoted an entire book, Flaubert’s Parrot, to the author and subject. What becomes interesting in this literate response is the sense of authorial absence, a theme that preoccupied Flaubert himself. By writing as the voice of Geoffrey Braithwaite, Barnes is able to explore ideas of authorship, placing himself at one remove from what he writes. Levine employs similar tactics by choosing to cast her “Loulou” from a found prototype; an electrotype model unearthed in a flea market. Thus a network of available originals is established; Flaubert’s Loulou, the flea market Loulou and finally Levine’s Loulou. She exacerbates this tension between the original and the work by duplicating the sculpture in an edition of twelve. For the forthcoming exhibition Levine presents six of these identical bronze parrots, the repetition making the “original” even less tangible. Issues of reproduction, authorship and duplication will also be explored in a number of other works included in the show. ------------------------------------------------- Gallery hours: Monday-Friday 10 am – 6 pm Saturday 12– 4 pm Closed all bank holidays For further information and images, please contact Anna Pryer or Bunny Turner at Faggionato Fine Arts, Tel: 020 7409 7979, Fax 020 7409 7879 or Email: info@faggionato.com Please click on the PDF link below for printable version