Beschreibung:

Thomas Struth Museo del Vaticano I, Roma 1990 digital color coupler print, mounted on Plexiglas 66 1/8 x 81 7/8 in. (168 x 208 cm) Signed, inscribed, numbered, and dated “Thomas Struth, Rome 1990, 2/10, Print: 1991” on the reverse. This work is number two from an edition of ten.
Provenance Private collection, Germany Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin Private collection, Belgium Sale: Sotheby’s, New York, Contemporary Art Afternoon, November 15, 2007, lot 568 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Hamburg, Kunsthalle, Thomas Struth Museum Photographs, November 1993 – January 1994 (another example exhibited) Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art, November 7, 2010 – October 2011 Literature H. Belting, Thomas Struth Museum Photographs, Munich, 1998, no. 15, p. 58 (another example illustrated) Catalogue Essay Dedicated disciple and international star of the celebrated Düsseldorf School, Thomas Struth first captured people’s attention with the well-known cycle of Museum Photographs, exhibiting internationally to much critical acclaim. Taught under Gerhard Richter and then Bernd Becher Struth’s medium format photography lies in a deep rooted tradition of conceptualism, but his approach to it combines a humanitarian expression of the viewer engaging with subjects, in a modern impression of the tradition of subject vs. viewer devotional painting. The present lot, Museo del Vaticano I, Roma, 1990, from Struth’s most famous Museum Photographs series, was taken after patient observance of the Pinacoteca (Room III), a Vatican room devoted to the Fifteenth Century High Renaissance paintings of Beato Angelico. As with any room in the overcrowded Vatican Museum, the experience of the contemporary visitor is often met with the difficulty in actually viewing the artwork. Struth captures that challenge astutely: the mass of tourists study the religious icons with a mix of attention and intent. Some attend to the paintings as the devotional subjects they intended to be, while others, to be sure, seem not to even glance their way. Struth no doubt catches this exact repose with the utmost care and attention, as if to make a decree on the startling observance of art today: We are not, nor will we ever be, contextualizing these Renaissance beauties the way their patrons commissioned them, yet the very act of revering them brings their importance in the art historical canon full circle. His entire dialogue communicates between two mediums: painting and photography. These religious relics were never meant to be viewed en masse, yet here we are viewing them recontextualized within his photograph. Struth aims to make people more aware of how to read a picture while also taking into account the intention of the photographer, “I wanted to remind my audience that when art works were made, they were not yet icons or museum pieces. When a work of art becomes fetished, it dies.” (Struth, quoted in P. Tuchman, “On Thomas Struth’s Museum Photographs”, Artnet Magazine, July 8, 2003). Museo del Vaticano I, Roma, 1990, remains a testament to the importance Struth has in contemporary art today, having influenced both younger generations and viewers worldwide. Read More