April 2001 - Nr. 4
New York’s Museum of Modern Art Showcases German Photographer Andreas Gursky
TWIG - Supermarkets crammed with commodities, immense hotel lobbies, a teeming throng of techno fans and the flurry of a stock exchange trading floor are among the emblems of global society captured by German photographer Andreas Gursky. The artist’s first major exhibit in the United States opened earlier this month at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, a retrospective featuring more than 40 of his works from the past two decades.
Hailed by museum director Glenn Lowry as one of the most original and impressive figures in contemporary art, Gursky has been compared to a wide range of artists, from the Conceptualists of the 1960s and 70s to the masters of German romanticism. His gigantic images, some of which are more than 15 feet wide, are a combination of dazzling visual effects and keen social commentary.
Born in Leipzig in 1955, Gursky grew up in Düsseldorf. His father, a commercial photographer, gave him his first lessons with the camera. He later studied at the Folkwangschule in Essen, West Germany’s leading school for professional photographers, and at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, where he was influenced by the minimalist style of his teacher Bernd Becher. Gursky began moving in a new direction in the mid-1980s, shooting crisp, panoramic pictures of the Alps and other vacation landscapes, inspired by American colour photographers such as Stephen Shore. In the 1990s, he used the same sweeping perspective to create an orderly yet disturbing vision of society today: vivid, slick, anonymous, and dominated by commerce and consumer goods. Many of his recent works are a composite of traditional photography and computer manipulation.
Gursky’s works will be on display at the Museum of Modern Art until May 15. For more information, visit the museum online at www.moma.org . ( Arts / Culture )
