In the early 1980s appropriating images became the favored mode of expression for many artists, including Sherrie Levine (1947, Hazelton PA). Levine strives to copy the works that symbolize modernity in order to question and test aesthetic categories such as authorship and originality. Levine’s art often leaves us with the impression that the notion of author is, above all, a historical construct. But rather than rejecting the notion and concluding that it has disappeared forever, she tries to redefine it, aware that the idea is part of a story. Levine’s work may be interpreted as the expression of mourning the values of modernity: she confirms the failure of the avant-­garde movement, yet she is unable to replace it, unable to find a valid counterweight to this loss. Her work is like a funerary monument erected to the glory of dashed hopes.