Michael Zhang:
Titled “Rhein II”, it’s a 1999 photograph by Andreas Gursky showing the Rhine river. Last night it sold for a whopping $4,338,500 at Christie’s.
Shawn King sent this to me tonight. I have to say, I just don’t get it.
∞ World's most expensive photograph
Like I said to Jim on iChat, “You could take that shot with your iPhone!!!”
🙂
A commenter said, the buyer is investing in the name of the artist, not the photograph itself.
I agree with that. The buyer is not simply going to display the work and say “look at this photograph.” nope, he’s going to say “look at this Gursky.” I’m assuming his name means something in the art world.
In Pixelmator, rotate 90 degs, change colours to red and blue and presto, you can get the Voice of Fire purchased for 1.8 million by the National Gallery of Canada!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_Fire
And you would be dead wrong. Appreciating Gursky’s photos on a computer screen is simply impossible, and the idea that any phone would take a picture of this quality in the next decade is a sheer illusion.
This picture is approx 12′ by 6′ and even if you stand directly in front of it, you won’t see any pixels, blown out areas (the dynamic range is humongous, thanks to the reflections on the water) and the spectrum of colors is dream-like. Judging it by a thumbnail on a sRGB device is not doable. His execution and composition are as flawless as you can find them.
It might certainly not mean much to people outside Europe, but showing the Rhine river in such a composition was indeed a novelty in 1996. Other artists (depending on their political intentions) were either portraying that river as an industrial sewerage, or as glorified/romanticized nationalistic bullshit.
I am not saying, I would pay $4.3 million for it though…
I wish I could see this print in its original size myself in order to experience its aesthetic and technical accomplishment.
One somewhat comparable experience I did have, though, was to view Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” on exhibit at The Art Institute in Chicago. Its “pointillism” technique is truly impressive, as well as its rather large size of 3 meters by 2 meters.
You do know the photographer said he did a lot of editing of this photograph Photoshop, right? And not just adjusting curves, actual pixel editing.
This is a quote of a comment made by someone who observed a Gursky photograph in person:
The first time I saw photographs by Andreas Gursky…I had the disorienting sensation that something was happening—happening to me, I suppose, although it felt more generalized than that. Gursky’s huge, panoramic color prints—some of them up to six feet high by ten feet long—had the presence, the formal power, and in several cases the majestic aura of nineteenth-century landscape paintings, without losing any of their meticulously detailed immediacy as photographs. Their subject matter was the contemporary world, seen dispassionately and from a distance. Tomkins, Calvin. The New Yorker. “The Big Picture.” 22 January 2001
Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” can be viewed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sunday_Afternoon_on_the_Island_of_La_Grande_Jatte
Photography is one of the few forms of art I can really appreciate, but this price point is mind boggling.
Then again, I suppose I have a hard time recognising the beauty—and thus the worth—of the picture because I grew up 150 m away from the Rhine and was able to enjoy this kind of view almost daily.
Yes, Gursky has been into digital editing since the 90s, which I am perfectly fine with; art photographers have even been doing that, even in darkrooms, forever. As long as the details and the composition are honest…
I don’t get this either. Even at a very large scale I don’t think I would be very engaged by this photo. It is just boring to me and someone paying millions of dollars for it seems ridiculous. Are there drugs hidden in the paper/medium?