Sherrie Levine | Gustave Flaubert un coeur simple

Sherrie Levine, 

Gustave Flaubert un coeur simple 

Ghent, Belgium: Imschoot, Uitgevers, 1990 

[63] pp., 21 x 15 cm.,

Edition of 50 [+12 AP] signed and numbered copies

"Sherrie Levine (b. 1947) questions the concept of originality in any art object, challenging the value placed on originality by artists and society in general. Gustave Flaubert: Un Coeur Simple is a short story by nineteenth-century French author Gustave Flaubert, which Levine had re-typeset and reprinted. It is the story of a simple servant girl, Félicité, who transfers her affections from one being to another, until finally she is left with a stuffed parrot, formerly her pet. On her deathbed, she confuses the parrot with the Holy Ghost.

In the spirit of the story, Levine’s book is a ghost of the original. The work is beautifully printed on handmade paper, conferring on the physical copy an aura hauntingly similar to that of the original. Levine does not conceal the reality that her work is a reproduction — indeed, she incorporates that fact in her title, taking possession of Flaubert’s story, and remaking it so that we can no longer distinguish the copy from the original.”

- National Gallery of Canada