dc.description.abstract | Andreas Gursky’s large-format photographs represent grand artificial spectacles with dinstinct details and vivid colors, and the works made him one of the stars of contemporary photography. I use the term, “the all-seeing eye,” as the topic of this thesis, for pointing out that Gursky’s photograph combines macroscopic and microscopic vision, and they form the visual experience almost like an Olympain god’s for spectators. Gursky entered Düsseldorf Kunstakademie in 1980, and was instructed by Bernd and Hilla Becher in the following six years. The Bechers defined their photography as “typology,” which concentrates on the forms of their objects, and avoid any personal touches in representation. This objective style could be linked to Neue Sachlichkeit photography in Weimar Germany. Since there were no predesessors of color photography in Germany in 1970s, Gursky might be inspired by New Color Photography in United States in terms of arranging colors and form. From mid-1980s to early 90s, his works exhibit some prominent features of New Color Photography, such as the geometrical order of composition, color field, and using view camera to capture landscape from a long distance.
Concerning the aesthetic of the form, Gursky’s work could be categorized as the photograph of “the tableau form.” The photograph of tableau form hangs on the wall in exhibitions, and produces confrontational experience for spectators. The concept of tableau form could be traced back to the art criticism written by Denis Didrot in the 18th century. He stresses that the tableau should exhibit absorption, which means the figures in the painting are absorbed by what they are doing, and obliviate the presence of the spectator. And Gursky’s photograph, which takes contemporary spectacles as subject, also delivers and transforms these traits. Futhermore, Gursky uses digital technology to create images that are beyond the perception of human eyes, and it leads to the discussions on indexicality and photographic truth. With the improvement of digital technology, photography abandoned its traditional technological entity, and becomes post-photography. Gursky combines the visual field which is broadened by technology, and our expectation of realness from photography, thus he creates an alternative truth in his photograph. The images are like visions perceived by a cyborg, and they create the all-seeing eye in contemporary form.
Since stock markets, concerts, and hotels around the world are subjects of many Gursky’s photographs, critics tend to use discourses of postmodernity, consumerism, globalization, and late capitalism to analyse these works. However, some of the critics put their emphasis on the subjects alone, and neglect the importance of the form in their discussion, so the linkage they built between the subject and the discourses is not always convincing. Finally, in the second part of chapter three, I would point out some possible causes of the phenomenon that Gursky’s works made top prices in the auctions. Without access to the inside information of the auctions, this part would focus on photographs themselves. There are three major factors that would affect the prices, which are the scale of the work, limited editions, and whether the other editions of the work have been collected by well-known museums. And in the catalogues publiched by Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the authors quote academic researches frequently, for diluting the commercial characters of the auction houses. They also emphasize that the works have entered the collections of important collectors, and compare the works to the paintings of Old Masters. The purpose of these strategies is to create a brand which the buyers could recognize and identify with, in order to increase their confidence in the value of the artworks.
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