Thomas Struth - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, November 13, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

  • Exhibited


    University of Salamanca, Thomas Struth: New Pictures from Paradise, February 27 – April 14, 2002 (another example exhibited); Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Thomas Struth: New Pictures from Paradise, June 14 – September 8, 2002 (another example exhibited)

  • Literature


    I. Hartmann, H. R. Reust, Thomas Struth: New Pictures from Paradise, Munich, 2002, cat. 7421 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay


    My approach to the jungle pictures might be said to be new, in that my initial impulses were pictorial and emotional, rather than theoretical. They are "unconscious places" and thus seem to follow my early city pictures. The photographs taken in the jungles of Australia, Japan, and China, as well as in the California woods, contain a wealth of delicately branched information, which makes it almost impossible, especially in large formats, to isolate single forms. One can spend a lot of time in front of these pictures and remain helpless in terms of knowing how to deal with them. There is no sociocultural context to be read or discovered, unlike in the photographs of people in front of paintings in museums. Standing in front of the facade of the cathedral in Milan, one experiences oneself as a human being defined by specific social and historical conditions. The jungle pictures, on the other hand, emphasize the self. They present a kind of empty space: emptied to elicit a moment of stillness and internal dialogue. You have to be able to enjoy this silence in order to communicate with yourself--and eventually with others.
    Thomas Struth, “Thomas Struth: talks about his ‘Paradise’ series - A ThousandWords – photographer”, ArtForum, May 2002

  • Artist Biography

    Thomas Struth

    Thomas Struth is a German photographer best known for his large-scale, classically composed photos of museum, cityscapes, and family portraits. Struth is a prominent member of the Düsseldorf School of Photography, the group of artists who studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the mid-1970s under influential photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. Struth’s highly centralized, balanced photos incorporate cutting-edge photographic techniques and the tenets of classical composition to develop the documentarian aims of the Bechers.

    Struth’s work has been widely celebrated by the international art community. He represented Germany at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990 and has been the subject of major retrospectives including those at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Haus der Kunst, Munich. He lives and works in Berlin and New York.

     
    View More Works

43

Paradise 6

1998

C-print.

69 5/8 x 87 1/8 in. (176.7 x 221.3 cm).

This work is from an edition of 10.

Estimate
$60,000 - 80,000 

Sold for $62,500

Contemporary Art Part I

13 Nov 2008, 7pm
New York