.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Thomas Struth's work deals with the relationship between the observer and the observed. In the late 1980s, he began photographing visitors in museums looking at works of art. In time, the size of the images grew and the colours became more intense. Images of people in motion began to blur and the lighting began to obscure rather than to clarify the photographer's scene, but he remained faithful to the objective spirit of his earlier work. Whether taken in the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna, the Museum of Modern Art in New York or, in this case, the Art Institute of Chicago, the resulting works loom over the viewer, overwhelming them with their sheer visual impact and the eerie sensation of being a real-life version of that which is surveyed.
Struth began his series of photographs of the populated interiors of galleries, churches and museums in an attempt to build a connection between the viewer and the image, and to try to initiate an understanding in historical relationships between the viewer and the act of making a new picture. The artist himself has said of his museum pieces: "I felt a need to make these museum photographs because many works of art, created out of particular historical circumstances, have now become mere fetishes, like athletes or celebrities, and the original inspiration for them is fully obliterated."
Struth began his series of photographs of the populated interiors of galleries, churches and museums in an attempt to build a connection between the viewer and the image, and to try to initiate an understanding in historical relationships between the viewer and the act of making a new picture. The artist himself has said of his museum pieces: "I felt a need to make these museum photographs because many works of art, created out of particular historical circumstances, have now become mere fetishes, like athletes or celebrities, and the original inspiration for them is fully obliterated."