Elaine Sturtevant, was a conceptual trailblazer whose radical practice questioned authorship, originality, and the mechanisms of meaning in contemporary art. Beginning in the mid-1960s, she famously recreated the works of her male peers, including Warhol, Johns, Lichtenstein, and Duchamp, not as copies, but as deliberate acts of repetition that prefigured the logic of postmodern appropriation.

Though often dismissed or misunderstood by her contemporaries, Sturtevant found an unlikely ally in Andy Warhol, whose Flowers she also appropriated. When asked how he made his work, Warhol famously replied, “I don’t know, ask Elaine.”

Today, Sturtevant is recognized as a pioneer of postmodern appropriation, her influence seen in artists from Sherrie Levine to Richard Prince. With exhibitions at MoMA and the Musée d’Art Moderne, and works held by major institutions including SFMOMA and the Moderna Museet, her legacy continues to strengthen. Study for Flowers stands as an early and potent example of her vision—a work that duplicates in order to disrupt, and copies in order to question what, and who, we value in art.