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Lot Essay
This work is accompanied by a photo-certificate of authenticity signed by the artist and dated 28.07.2005.
Executed in 1989, Musée du Louvre I forms a part of Struth's celebrated Museum series of photographs. Musée du Louvre I allows him to compare explicitly the epic paintings of the past with his own picture of the modern age. Visually, Musée du Louvre I certainly has enough figures and movement to justify some claim to the mantle of the Davids and Delacroix of yore. As in his other Museum pictures, Musée du Louvre I explores the tension between the paintings and the people viewing them. By extension, Struth manages to embrace his own viewers in this equation. The voyeuristic act of seeing people viewing pictures forces us into a questionable position of vulnerability, compelling us to examine our own status as viewer, making us aware that we are to some extent participating in another, larger ongoing artwork. At the same time, Musée du Louvre I addresses head-on questions about the status of photography within art, aggressively yet respectfully staking a claim as heir to an epic and venerable tradition of painting.
Of all the Museum photographs, few have the internal harmony of Musée du Louvre I: the monumental scale of the paintings in the background is echoed by the scale and bustle of Musée du Louvre I itself. In this way, there is a synthesis as well as a contrast between the art of the museum and the art of Thomas Struth. That this room in the Louvre contains paintings largely illustrating French history of the Napoleonic era permits Struth to introduce the question of identity on a personal and national scale into his picture, and to do so in an explicit manner seldom matched in his other Museum pictures: 'For me, making a photograph is mostly an intellectual process of understanding people or cities and their historical and phenomenological connections' (Thomas Struth, quoted in A. Goldstein, 'Portraits of Self-Reflection', pp. 166-73, C. Wylie et al., Thomas Struth 1977 2002, exh.cat., Dallas, 2002, p. 171).
Executed in 1989, Musée du Louvre I forms a part of Struth's celebrated Museum series of photographs. Musée du Louvre I allows him to compare explicitly the epic paintings of the past with his own picture of the modern age. Visually, Musée du Louvre I certainly has enough figures and movement to justify some claim to the mantle of the Davids and Delacroix of yore. As in his other Museum pictures, Musée du Louvre I explores the tension between the paintings and the people viewing them. By extension, Struth manages to embrace his own viewers in this equation. The voyeuristic act of seeing people viewing pictures forces us into a questionable position of vulnerability, compelling us to examine our own status as viewer, making us aware that we are to some extent participating in another, larger ongoing artwork. At the same time, Musée du Louvre I addresses head-on questions about the status of photography within art, aggressively yet respectfully staking a claim as heir to an epic and venerable tradition of painting.
Of all the Museum photographs, few have the internal harmony of Musée du Louvre I: the monumental scale of the paintings in the background is echoed by the scale and bustle of Musée du Louvre I itself. In this way, there is a synthesis as well as a contrast between the art of the museum and the art of Thomas Struth. That this room in the Louvre contains paintings largely illustrating French history of the Napoleonic era permits Struth to introduce the question of identity on a personal and national scale into his picture, and to do so in an explicit manner seldom matched in his other Museum pictures: 'For me, making a photograph is mostly an intellectual process of understanding people or cities and their historical and phenomenological connections' (Thomas Struth, quoted in A. Goldstein, 'Portraits of Self-Reflection', pp. 166-73, C. Wylie et al., Thomas Struth 1977 2002, exh.cat., Dallas, 2002, p. 171).