Under the Sign of [sic]

Asked to sum up her artistic pursuit, the American artist Elaine Sturtevant oncereplied: "I create vertigo." Since the mid-1960s, Sturtevant has been using repetition tochange the way art is understood. In 1965, what seemed to be a group show by then "hot"artists (Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, George Segal, and James Rosenquist, amongothers) was in fact Sturtevant's first solo exhibit, every work in it created byherself.

Sturtevant would continue to make her work the work of others. Thesubject of major museum exhibitions throughout Europe and awarded the Golden Lion for lifetimeachievement at the 54th Venice Biennale, she will have a major survey at the MoMA, New York, in2014.

In Under the Sign of [sic], Bruce Hainley unpacks thework of Sturtevant, providing the first book-length monographic study of the artist in English.Hainley draws on elusive archival materials to tackle not only Sturtevant's work but also theessential problem that it poses. Hainley examines all of Sturtevant's projects in a single year(1967); uses her Gonzalez-Torres Untitled (Go-Go Dancing Platform) from 1995 as aconceptual wedge to consider contemporary art's place in the world; and, finally, digs into the mostoccluded part of her career, from 1971 to 1973, when she created works by Michael Heizer and Walterde Maria, and had her first solo American museum exhibit.

Bruce Hainley lives and works in Los Angeles. A contributing editor at Artforum, he is the author of two books of poetry, one of which, Foul Mouth, was a finalist in the National Poetry Series. With John Waters, he wrote Art -- A Sex Book. He teaches in the MFA programs of Art Center College of Design and the Roski School of Fine Arts, University of Southern California.