Andreas Gursky
‚Rhein II“

Key Pieces

For this week’s Key Pieces series, we kept a close eye on German photographer Andreas Gursky and his work entitled Rhein II.

1. Andreas Gursky compiled Rhein II in 1999.
2. It shows a section of the river Rhine and its close environment outside Gursky’s hometown Dusseldorf.
3. Details such a dog-walkers and factory buildings were removed by Gursky through digital editing.
4. The photograph is three meters wide, two meters high and a chromogenic print on paper.
5. After Andreas Gursky’s photograph 99 Cent II Diptychon became the most expensive photograph in 2007 (sold for $3.34 million at Sotheby’s), he topped himself with Rhein II. It got sold for $4.3 million at Christie’s New York
6. The picture belongs to an edition of six. One belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one to the Tate Modern, another one to the Pinakothek der Modern in Munich, yet another one to the private museum Glenstone in Potomac, and the two last ones belong to private collectors.
7. It reveals the long lasting German artistic interest for romantic landscape and nature.
8. Rhein II is a reworking of an earlier image The Rhine from 1996. The earlier work has a slightly higher and flatter viewpoint and a more uniformly grey sky.
9. Its high scale format evokes theart of painting, especially the stripes of Barnett Newman.
10. Rhein II represents the acceptance of photography as an art equivalent to sculpture and painting.

Andreas Gursky, Rhein II, 1999, Photograph, C-print mounted to acrylic glass, 190 cm × 360 cm (73 in × 143 in)

Andreas Gursky, The Rhine, 1996, Photograph, C-print mounted to acrylic glass, 190 cm × 360 cm (73 in × 143 in)