Levine repurposes mass-produced images in order to challenge established ideas about originality and authorship. For her Presidents series she ripped images of women from magazines and assembled them into silhouette portraits of three American presidents—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy. In President Collage: 1, a cut-out image of a fashion model forms the profile of Washington seen on the quarter, drawing attention to the relationships between power, gender, and consumption.
Gallery label from Compass in Hand: Selections from The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection, April 22, 2009–January 4, 2010.