Under the Sign of [ <i>sic</i>]

Under the Sign of [sic] is ostensibly a study of the haunting American artist Elaine Sturtevant, but what Bruce Hainley has written, really, is a poem about postwar American art and the woman who remade it in her own image by ‘appropriating,’ which is to say, reconfiguring, the distinctly male and sometimes male queer vision that informed the work of artists such as Warhol, Oldenburg, Johns, and the rest. As the first book-length monograph in English of a baffling, moving, and mysterious artist—’I create vertigo,’ Sturtevant said about herself—Hainley has written a splendid study not only of the artist’s work but also of the atmosphere of change it helped foster.

With prose that is at turns incisive, lively, and deliciously irreverent, this book takes risks in mirroring its artist-subject, but ultimately rewards.

Writing about art is most valuable when it does just that thing that Hainley describes Sturtevant as accomplishing: the separation of ‘cognition from the habit of mindless recognition.’ As in his poetry and previous prose efforts, this is exactly the experience Hainley offers.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Art scholars might argue that concept, not flattery, was at the root Elaine Sturtevant’s work, in which she manually copied pieces by pop artists ranging from Roy Lichtenstein to Andy Warhol, at one point inspiring Claes Oldenburg to say he wanted to kill her. Intrigued yet? ‘Under The Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant’s Volte-Face,’ is a challenging and informative undertaking written by Bruce Hainley, and the first book-length monograph of her art to be released in English.

For a sense of Sturtevant’s assertive elusiveness, read Bruce Hainley’s brilliant, sinuous, interruption-riddled Under the Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant’s Voltle-Face.

Complementing the frisson of the artist’s legacy is Bruce Hainley’s brilliant and timely Under the Sign of [Sic] (2014), a jaw-dropping study of Sturtevant’s practice in which no exegetical expense is spared.

Bruce Hainley is the author of Under the Sign of sic - Sturtevant’s Volte-Face and Art & Culture,both published by Semiotext(e). The editor ofCommie Pinko Guy, he wrote, with John Waters, Art-A Sex Book. He cochairs the Graduate Art program at ArtCenter College of Design and is a contributing editor atArtforum.

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