On the occasion of Sturtevant: Double Trouble, the first comprehensive survey in America of the late artist's 50-year career, the exhibition's curator and MOCA's director introduce a challenging and influential body of work, one that has been largely overlooked in the history of postwar American art.
Named for her lamentation of "the perverse simultaneous double trouble of being ahead and being behind," the retrospective presents over forty works that attest to Sturtevant's profound, career-long commitment to the investigation of art history, as it happened in real time. By controversially "repeating" the work of artists from Andy Warhol to Felix Gonzales-Torres, Sturtevant broke many taboos in the art world, and ultimately revealed a prescient understanding of visual culture.
MOCA Director Philippe Vergne had known Sturtevant for more than twenty years, and was among the enigmatic artist's most ardent supporters in the United States. "She was not waiting for history to capture and rubber stamp an artist.… She had this immediate ability to capture the most important aesthetic breakthroughs of her time."
An Introduction to Sturtevant - MOCA U - MOCAtv