La Fortune (After Man Ray) 1990

Sherrie Levine presents us with 'La Fortune (After Man Ray)', a kind of readymade, or re-made object; a billiards table, but of course it's so much more. It’s like she's saying, “Here, look again.” There’s something about the surface of this piece that’s just so clean. It's a green that feels both natural and totally artificial, like a lawn in a dollhouse. The balls are placed so perfectly, so deliberately. It’s not a game in progress, but a still life, a composition. The polished wood gleams, each leg a carefully turned sculpture in itself, a deep, rich brown against the lighter floor. It’s all so precise, so controlled. Levine’s work is often about copying, about taking something that already exists and presenting it in a new light. It’s like she’s asking: what is original anyway? This piece reminds me of Duchamp, another artist who loved to play with ideas about art and what it means to create. It’s a conversation across time, about authorship, about appropriation, and about how we see.