Andreas Gursky

Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon, 2001, C-print mounted to acrylic glass, 2x 207 x 307 centimeter

Andreas Gursky, Chicago Board of Trade II, 1999, C-print mounted to plexiglass in artist's frame 73 x 95 inches

Andreas Gursky, Rhein II, 1999, C-print mounted to plexiglass in artist's frame, 81 x 140 inches

Andreas Gursky, Shanghai, 2000, C-print mounted to plexiglass, 119 x 81 inches

Andreas Gursky (January 15, 1955) is a German visual artist known for his large format architecture and landscape color photographs, often employing a high point of view. Rhein II, an image by Gursky, fetched $4.3m (£2.7m) at Christie's, New York on November 8, 2011, becoming the most expensive photograph ever sold.

Education

He was born in Leipzig in 1955, but he grew up in Düsseldorf, the son of a commercial photographer. In the early 1980s, at Germany's State Art Academy, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Gursky received strong training and influence from his teachers Hilla and Bernd Becher, a photographic team known for their distinctive, dispassionate method of systematically cataloging industrial machinery and architecture. Gursky demonstrates a similarly methodical approach in his own larger-scale photography. Other notable influences are the British landscape photographer John Davies, whose highly detailed high vantage point images had a strong effect on the street level photographs Gursky was then making, and to a lesser degree the American photographer Joel Sternfeld.

Career and style

Before the 1990s, Gursky did not digitally manipulate his images. In the years since, Gursky has been frank about his reliance on computers to edit and enhance his pictures, creating an art of spaces larger than the subjects photographed.^{[citation needed]} Writing in The New Yorker magazine, the critic Peter Schjeldahl called these pictures "vast," "splashy," "entertaining," and "literally unbelievable." In the same publication, critic Calvin Tomkins described Gursky as one of the "two masters" of the "Düsseldorf" school. In 2001, Tomkins described the experience of confronting one of Gursky's large works:

"The first time I saw photographs by Andreas Gursky...I had the disorienting sensation that something was happening—happening to me, I suppose, although it felt more generalized than that. Gursky's huge, panoramic color prints—some of them up to six feet high by ten feet long—had the presence, the formal power, and in several cases the majestic aura of nineteenth-century landscape paintings, without losing any of their meticulously detailed immediacy as photographs. Their subject matter was the contemporary world, seen dispassionately and from a distance."

Visually, Gursky is drawn to large, anonymous, man-made spaces—high-rise facades at night, office lobbies, stock exchanges, the interiors of big box retailers (See his print 99 Cent II Diptychon). In a 2001 retrospective, New York's Museum of Modern Art called the artist's work, "a sophisticated art of unembellished observation. It is thanks to the artfulness of Gursky's fictions that we recognize his world as our own." Gursky’s style is enigmatic and deadpan. There is little to no explanation or manipulation on the works. His photography is straightforward.

Gursky's Dance Valley festival photograph, taken near Amsterdam in 1995, depicts attendees facing a DJ stand in a large arena, beneath strobe lighting effects. The pouring smoke resembles a human hand, holding the crowd in stasis. After completing the print, Gursky explained the only music he now listens to is the anonymous, beat-heavy style known as Trance, as its symmetry and simplicity echoes his own work—while playing towards a deeper, more visceral emotion.^{[citation needed]}

As of end 2011, Gursky holds a new record for highest price paid at auction for a single photographic image. His print "Rhein II" sold for USD $4,338,500 at Christie's, New York on 8 November 2011.

Exhibitions

Gursky first exhibited his work in Germany in 1985 and has subsequently exhibited throughout Europe. His first solo gallery show was held at Galerie Johnen & Schöttle, Cologne, in 1988. Gursky's first one-person museum exhibition in the United States opened at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 1998, and his work was the subject of a retrospective organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2001, touring to Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2001–2002. Further museum exhibitions include "Werke-Works 80-08", Kunstmuseen Krefeld (2008, touring to Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Vancouver Art Gallery in 2009); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2007); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2007, touring to Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Sharjah Art Museum, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Ekaterina Foundation, Moscow in 2007–2008). His work has been seen in international exhibitions, including the Internationale Foto-Triennale in Esslingen (1989 and 1995), the Venice Biennale (1990 and 2004), and the Biennale of Sydney (1996 and 2000).

Gursky is represented by the Gagosian Gallery in the U.S. and by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in Europe. Before moving to Gagosian, he has been showing with Matthew Marks Gallery since 1997.

Selected Exhibitions

• 1989 Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld; Centre Genevois de Gravure Contemporaine, Geneva, Switzerland
• 1992 Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland
• 1994 Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
• 1995 Portikus Frankfurt; Rooseum, Malmö, Sweden; Tate Liverpool, England
• 1998 Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, USA; Museum of Contemporary Arts, Houston, USA
• 1999 Serpentine Gallery, London, England; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland; Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy
• 2000 Sprengel Museum, Hannover; Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig; Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA USA
• 2001 Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France;
• 2003 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, U.S.
• 2005 Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; Juan March Institute, Madrid, Spain
• 2007 Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany
• 2007 White Cube, London, England
• 2007 Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel
• 2007 Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey
• 2007 Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, U.S.
• 2008 Exhibition Building Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt, Germany
• 2008 Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
• 2008 Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, Moscow, Russia
• 2008 PinchukArtCentre, Kiev, Ukraine
• 2008 Haus Lange/Haus Ester, Krefeld
• 2008–2009 National Gallery of Victoria International, Melbourne, Australia
• 2009 Modernamuseet, Stockholm, Sweden
• 2009 Vancouver Art Gallery Vancouver, Canada
• 2012 Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Humlebaek, Denmark

Collections

Gursky's works are part of worldwide collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Tate Modern, London; SFMOMA, San Francisco; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Kunsthaus Zürich. Along with Pinchuk, private collectors said to own Gursky in depth are Eli Broad in Los Angeles, Mitchell Rales in Washington, DC, and Bernard Arnault in Paris.

See also

• List of most expensive photographs
• Aerial landscape art

External links

• Sprüth Magers Berlin London
• Andreas Gursky at the Matthew Marks Gallery
• Ralph Rugoff on Andreas Gursky
• Andreas Gursky on Artcyclopedia
• Andreas Gursky at the Museum of Modern Art
• 2001 Andreas Gursky Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
• A.Gursky – Solo Exhibition 2007 in Munich
• Andreas Gursky’s Personal Exhibition in the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation
• Andreas Gursky, Kunstmuseum Basel Video at VernissageTV 2007
• Ben Lewis: "Gursky World" (Video, 2002)