Beschreibung:

ULTIMATE Thomas Struth Art Institute of Chicago II, Chicago, 1990 1990 Chromogenic print, Diasec mounted. Image: 136.8 x 175 cm (53 7/8 x 68 7/8 in.) Frame: 187.3 x 222.5 cm (73 3/4 x 87 5/8 in.) Signed, titled, dated and numbered 1/10 twice in pencil on the verso. This work is number 1 from the sold-out edition of 10.
Provenance Acquired directly from the artist Exhibited Photographie III – Thomas Struth - Museum Photographs, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, 11 November 1993 - 16 January 1994 Thomas Struth Strangers and Friends – Photographs 1986 - 1992, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 19 January - 27 March 1994; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 18 January - 9 April 1995 Thomas Struth Still, Carreé d’Art – Musee d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, 14 March - 7 June 1998; Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, 20 January - 15 March 1999 Thomas Struth 1977-2002, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, 12 May - 18 August 2002; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 14 September - 5 January 2003; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 4 February - 18 May 2003; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 28 June - 28 September 2003 Thomas Struth Photographs 1978-2010, Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, 11 June - 12 September 2010; Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf, 26 February - 19 June 2011; Museu Serralves, Porto, 29 October 2011 - 26 February 2012 For another print Literature Thomas Struth Museum Photographs, Schirmer/Mosel, 1993, p. 13 Thomas Struth Strangers and Friends, MIT Press, 1994, p. 19 Thomas Struth Still, Schirmer/Mosel, 1998, p. 73 Thomas Struth 1977-2002, Schirmer/Mosel, 2002, p. 105 Thomas Struth Museum Photographs, Schirmer/Mosel, 2005, p. 49 Thomas Struth Photographs 1978-2010, Schirmer/Mosel, 2010, p. 119 Catalogue Essay In ULTIMATE this autumn, we are delighted to present Thomas Struth’s masterwork Art Institute of Chicago II, Chicago, 1990, which is appearing at auction for the very first time. Acquired directly from the artist in 1990, the same year in which the work was created and first exhibited, the present lot is number 1 from the sold-out edition of 10 and has been in the same private collection for over 25 years. Prints of this image have been acquired by the following institutions: The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; and Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo. Art Institute of Chicago II, Chicago, 1990, by Thomas Struth is a remarkable work from his first series of museum photographs, his best-known and most acclaimed body of work, in which Struth examines the socio-political dynamic of the museum and the viewer. While these photographs might resemble casual snapshots taken surreptitiously of visitors as they wander through a gallery, they are in fact highly deliberate. Wielding a large-format camera, Struth would spend hours, or even days, on each image. As he set himself up in each location waiting for the right moment, visitors to the space would have noticed him and his camera. In investigating the act of viewing within a museum context, Struth photographed the art and the visitors – the viewer looking at art and the viewer looking at other viewers. Through the multiple layers of viewing, Struth in turn examines the museum’s means of control and representation, what they exhibit and how, as well as what narrative the museum provides for the work in relation to its setting. In his words, ‘the idea behind the museum photographs was to retrieve masterpieces from the fate of fame, to recover them from their status as iconic paintings, to remind us that these were works which were created in a contemporary moment, by artists who have everyday lives.’ By illustrating this through the photographic medium, Struth recalls the history of photography in relation to representation, and by viewing his work in a gallery setting, we are reminded of the photograph as a work of art. Struth’s museum photographs ushered in a new visual language in photography. Along with fellow exponents of the Düsseldorf School of Photography, including Andreas Gursky Candida Höfer and Thomas Ruff Struth created new oversized colour photographs – monumental in scale and precision – that rivalled contemporary paintings. Applying new technical possibilities to create their work, these practitioners collaborated