Lot 126
  • 126

ANDREAS GURSKY | EM, Arena, Amsterdam I

Estimate
150,000 - 250,000 GBP
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Description

  • Andreas Gursky
  • EM, Arena, Amsterdam I
  • signed, titled and dated 2000 on a label affixed to the reverse
  • c-print, in artist's frame
  • 278.1 by 211.8 cm. 109 1/2 by 83 3/8 in.
  • Executed in 2000, this work is number 6 from an edition of 6.

Provenance

Sprüth Magers, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exhibited

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Andreas Gursky, March - May 2001, p. 43, illustrated in colour (ed. no. unknown)
Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Andreas Gursky, February - April 2002, p. 50, illustrated in colour (ed. no. unknown)
Krefeld, Haus Lange und Haus Esters; Stockholm, Moderna Museet; and Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, Andreas Gurksy, Werke. Works 80-08, October 2008 - September 2009, p. 183, illustrated in colour (ed. no. unknown, smaller version)

Condition

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly lighter and brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are two vertical lines towards the right edge of the work, which relate to the joining of the paper. Very close inspection reveals some superficial scuffs and media accretions to the surface of the Plexiglas and some tiny scuffs and chips to the extreme edges of the artist's frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Catalogue Note

Few photographers have had such a seismic and lasting impression on contemporary art as German artist Andreas Gursky, whose overwhelming panoramic images document the grandiose perspectives and restless environments of late stage, global capitalism in the Twenty-First Century. EM, Arena, Amsterdam I, executed in 2000, is a spectacular work from Gursky’s portfolio, incorporating monumental scale, extraordinary detail, art historical cues and a universally recognisable scene into a certified masterwork. Cropped and retouched, foreshortened, and rendered with an unprecedented fineness, the present work demonstrates the variety of formal and epistemological concerns Gursky addresses in his practice. Emerging from the pupilage of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf – alongside Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth – Gursky is the preeminent member of what is popularly known as the Dusseldorf School of Photography. Eschewing the black and white, documentary style of his teachers, in the 1990s Gursky made digital post-production an essential tool of his method, cultivating a deft ability to render impossible realities wholly tangible. It was this early period of experimentation that indiviualised Gursky, identifying him as a maverick composer of images: “my pictures from the 80s and 90s represented a new kind of photography, I would perhaps point to an ability to mix together the most varied fields of perception with a very idiosyncratic formulation […] that I was able to develop a new way of seeing” (Andreas Gursky cited in: Exh. Cat., Hayward Gallery, Andreas Gursky, London 2018, p. 116). This revolutionary process of remixing, assembling, and unifying ways of seeing into a holistic macro-composition channels the Romantic sublime of Caspar David Friedrich; placing the multitudes of people in a startling fragility and susceptibility to the scale of the cycles and systems around them. In photographs of stock markets, Italian beaches, hikers on a mountainside, and crowds at a music concert, the serial, documentary-form of the Becher’s images is united in one image – identifying the individual amongst individuals. This remarkable fusion of microcosms of theatre creates a monumental dramaturgy, and echoes the philosophy of Gerhard Richter – whose practice relies heavily on the photographic image – that considers photography a close analogy to reality, rather than its direct reproduction.

Orientating the aspect of the photograph from an aerial viewpoint, EM, Arena, Amsterdam I, manifests an otherworldly, celestial quality. Observing the outstretched vista of manicured grass and dancing players from this vertiginous frame of reference, Gursky implements a structural schema that is consistent across his oeuvre, subjecting warehouses, archipelagos, and sports events to the same compositional devices that uncouple the horizon line from perspective, becoming a formal element of an abstract picture. Abstracting the landscape of the stadium in this way, Gursky abbreviates the action of the football match, reducing it to a formal matter of points, lines, and gestures in a colour field akin to the works of Robert Motherwell or Kenneth Noland. The dizzying scale of the present work – combined with its flawless and uniform depth of focus – produces a dramatic, consuming field of vision, whose spatial flattening of the football pitch leaves little to differentiate near from far.EM, Arena, Amsterdam I, is a breathtaking work by one of the most important artists working today, and demonstrates the art historical hallmarks and technical virtuosity of Gursky’s most revered images that have come to redefine photography in the postmodern period.