19.01.08 | 28.04.08

Audience 08 Florence 2004 Audience 09 Florence 2004 VIA GIOVANNI TAPPIA Naples 1989 VICO DEI MONTI Naples 1988 Paradise 1 (Pilgrim Sands) 1998 Via Del Parco Margherita, Naples 1988 Via Della Sanità Naples 1988 Corso Vittorio Emanuele Neapel 1989 Via Vannella Gaetani Naples 1988 Via Giuseppe Verdi Milan 1992 Via Emilio Cornalia (Mit Hochhaus) Milan 1992 The Consolandi Family Milan 1996 New York 2001 The Lingwood & Hamlyn Family London 2001 The Richter Family 1 Köln 2002 The Falletti Family Florence 2005 The Okutsu Family In Western Room Yamaguchi 1996 The Ayvar Family Lima, S.M.P / Peru 2005 Veddeler Brückenstrasse Hamburg 1986 Via Monte Cardonet Rome 1988 Via Guglielmo (Mit Lkw) Rome 1988 Via San Giovanni A Mare Neaples 1988 Le Lignon (Horizontal) Geneve 1989 Via Emilio Cornalia Milan 1992 Piazza Virgilio Mailand 1998 Friedrich-Engels-Strasse Leverkusen 1980 Kanzlerstrasse 1, Duisburg 1989 Leipziger Strasse Essen 1989 Kunsthistorisches Museum 3 Wien 1989 Louvre 4 Paris 1989 Art Institute Of Chicago 1 Chicago 1990 Museo Del Prado 8-1 Madrid 2005 Museo Del Prado 8-3 Madrid 2005 Museo Del Prado 8-4 Madrid 2005 Museo Del Prado 8-5 Madrid 2005 Paradise 9 1999 Paradise 22 2001 Stanze Di Raffaello 2 Rome 1990 Galleria Dell’ Accademia 1 Venice 1992 Cerro Morro Solar Lima / Peru 2003 Pasaje Gaspar Lima / Peru 2003 Calle Wakulski Lima / Peru 2003 Plaza Elguera Lima / Peru 2003 Pasaje Sta. Rosa Lima / Peru 2003 Jiron Cailloma Lima / Peru 2003 Drammen 1 Drammen/ Oslo 2001 Manzhouli Inner Mongolia, China 2002 Las Vegas 1 Las Vegas, Nevada 1999 Pudong Shanghai 1999 Chong Wen Meng Dong Beijing 1996 Hazienda Rio Palpa Palpa / Peru 2003 Paradise 30 2005

Thomas Struth

Museo Del Prado 8-2 Madrid

2005

Courtesy :

In 1989 Struth began work on the famous cycle devoted to the visitors to big museums, establishing a complex critical discourse about the contemporary function of these places, on the use of the works exhibited and the potential of photography to construct images capable of questioning the role of art and putting it on the line. Printed on a monumental scale like murals, these works portray the heterogeneous crowds of visitors in the rooms of museums, establishing a sort of dialogue, on the one hand, between the pictures and the public portrayed in the photographs, and on the other with us who in our turn are gazing at these representations. This dialogue revives the value of the pictures reproduced, but at the same time records their transformation into fetishes of the culture industry. Almost like a sociologist of contemporary society, Struth studies the social and cultural experience of the museum, analyzing the behaviour of crowds intent on the most varied activities: enchanted before a work or intently listening to a guide, lost in their thoughts or distracted by their neighbours. Viewed close up we read in their faces wonder and boredom, uncertainty and emotion, fatigue and haste and suddenly everything seems clear: these places are the striking portrayal of our contemporaneity. The photographs, enlarged but hardly ever touched up digitally, reveal without mystifications the reality of the present captured by the lens during long and patient ambuscades. While photography forms the link between architecture, painting and the human presence, the public, not the painting or the building, is the true protagonist of these lively theatrical scenes. All the more so because in many cases the perspective is on the side of the work, as if the artist were viewing the public from a privileged point of view. Through the graphic medium he grasps the special relationship established between the visitor and the masterpiece displayed in the museum, like the intimate three-way conversation captured in Kunsthistorisches Museum 3 (Wien 1989) or the relaxed pose of the group before the tragic shipwreck of Théodor Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa in Louvre 4 (Paris 1989), which prompts complex observations about the true dramatic power of the works of the past in a numbing age of multimedia hegemony. While in Art Institute of Chicago 1 (Chicago 1990) the motionless visitors before Georges Seurat’s La Grande Jatte repeat the paused and calm rhythmsof the Pointillist composition, in the series of the Stanze di Raffaello (Rom 1990) the swift and chaotic pace of the crowd which throngs the Stanza della Segnatura clashes with the complexity and solemnity of the subjects dealt with in the frescoes. In Museo del Prado 8 (Madrid 2005), finally, the artist succeeds in relating a work of 1656 like Diego Velásquez’s Las Meninas to a public of young people and adults, creating an interplay of glances that move from the figures portrayed in the painting to those portrayed in the photograph and finally leading to us. As if to say that we observe art, but in the same way art observes us.
 

Kunsthistorisches Museum 3 Wien

1989

Louvre 4 Paris

1989

Art Institute Of Chicago 1 Chicago

1990

Stanze Di Raffaello 2 Rome

1990

Galleria Dell’ Accademia 1 Venice

1992

Audience 08 Florence

2004

Audience 09 Florence

2004

Museo Del Prado 8-1 Madrid

2005

Museo Del Prado 8-3 Madrid

2005

Museo Del Prado 8-4 Madrid

2005

Museo Del Prado 8-5 Madrid

2005

Geldern (Basso Reno) 1954
Born at Geldern in 1954, Thomas Struth began his artistic training by studying painting under Peter Kleemann and Gerhard Richter at the Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf ...
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