Andreas Gursky

Galerie Monika Sprüth, Cologne

Private Collection, United Kingdom

Sale: Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art, 28 June 2010, Lot 14

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Exhibition Catalogue, Munich, Haus der Kunst, Andreas Gursky, 2007, pp. 126-27, illustration of another example in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, Darmstadt, Institut Matildenhöhe, Andreas Gursky: Architecture, 2008, p. 81, illustration of another example in colour

Michael Fried, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before, New Haven and London 2008, p. 169, illustration of another example in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, Krefeld, Krefeld Kunstmuseum, Haus Lange und Haus Esters; Stockholm, Moderna Museet; Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, Andreas Gursky. Werke - Works 80-08, 2009, pp. 196-97, illustration of another example in colour 

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is some extremely minor wear along the extreme right outer edge and towards the lower right and lower left corner tips of the 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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Encompassing airports, stock exchanges, factory halls and landfills, Andreas Gursky’s photographs provide an arresting study of contemporary socioeconomic topography. In 2001 the artist explained his ambitious project: “I pursue one goal – the encyclopaedia of life” (the artist cited in: Helga Meister, ‘Fotografisches Lexicon des Lebens’, West-deutsche Zeitung, 3 May 2001, p. 20). Indeed, his iconic images bring seemingly heterogeneous subjects together to both literally and metaphorically portray the zeitgeist of the end of the Twentieth and beginning of the Twenty-first Centuries. Stateville, Illinois from 2002 is a stunning example of Gursky’s enterprise on an extraordinary scale; a striking portrait of a building designed as a control mechanism that is considered a perfect architectural structure for the modern-day exercise of power.

Built in 1925, the Stateville Correctional Center is a maximum security state prison in Crest Hill, Illinois. Andreas Gursky’s impressive photograph of seemingly endless cells was taken in the building known as the “F-House”, a roundhouse, whose floor plan employs a panoptical layout. Designed in the late Eighteenth Century by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham, the Panopticon is an architectural prototype that was intended to optimise social control with a minimum of surveillance in public spaces. Although suitable for hospitals, schools and factories, Bentham’s design was famously applied to develop prisons where inmates would be under constant observation. Bentham proposed a circular building where the inmates would be housed in individual cells that looked inwards. A single observation tower at the centre housed guards who could see out while remaining concealed; the design’s essence was “Seeing without being seen” (Jeremy Bentham cited in, Exhibition Catalogue, Darmstadt, Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, Andreas Gursky: Architecture, 2008, p. 82). The concept of the Panopticon later served as the central idea for the theories of the French philosopher Michel Foucault on modern society and the use of surveillance towards social control. In 1975 he wrote that “The Panopticon (…) must be understood as a generalizable model of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men… it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form” (Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London 1979, pp. 205-214). In Stateville, Illinois, Gursky wonderfully summarises Foucault’s theories in a single, powerful image. From the standpoint of the photographer, the viewer becomes the warden, his omnipotent gaze in the cells and the inmates that inhabit them.

A work of monumental proportions, Stateville, Illinois can arguably be seen as the contemporary equivalent of a Nineteenth Century history painting. By virtue of their grand scale and painterly preoccupation with composition, light and colour, Andreas Gursky’s photographs cease to work as photographs-as-objective-images but become historical documents of our social ethos. In his quasi-titanic quest to portray humanity, Gursky has repeatedly focused his lens on architecture. This choice not only serves the artist’s compositional requirements but also introduces an abstract element that detaches the photographer, and hence, the viewer, from the human element in the scene. The prisoners in Stateville, Illinois can only be glimpsed behind an abstracted grid of cell bars. Stateville, Illinois is a superb photograph that prodigiously captures the underlying structures in its subject, uncovering the true anatomy of power agendas worldwide and their effects on architecture and, most importantly, humankind.