Ideal [Dis-]Placements. Old Masters at the Pulitzer. The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
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Introduction

When we decided to extend Ideal [Dis-] Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer by three months, we needed to replace the drawings in the Lower Gallery due to the light-sensitivity of works on paper. This changeover presented the opportunity for another perspective on Old Master paintings.


We installed two photographs by Thomas Struth, related to his series...

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Thomas Struth, German, b. 1954

The Restorers at San Lorenzo Maggiore, Naples, 1988,
printed 1989
Color photograph
Framed: 119.1 x 159.7 x 3.2 cm (46 7/8 x 62 7/8 x 1 1/4 inches)
Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

On Museum Photographs
I felt a need to make these museum photos, because many works of art, which were created out of particular historical circumstances, have now become mere fetishes, like athletes or celebrities, whereby the original inspiration for these works is fully obliterated. What I wanted to achieve with this series . . . is to make a statement about the original process of representing people leading to my act of making a new picture, which is in a certain way a very similar mechanism: the viewer of the works seen in the photo is an instance which finds itself in a space to which I, too, belong when I stand in front of the photo. The photos illuminate the connection and should lead the viewers away from regarding the works as mere fetish-objects and initiate their own understanding or intervention in historical relationships.

Thomas Struth, "Interview between Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Thomas Struth," trans. Sarah Ogger, in Thomas Struth: Portraits (New York: Marian Goodman Gallery, 1990), 39.

Thomas Struth, German, b. 1954

Initially drawn to painting, Struth first created hybrid black-and-white photographs and paintings, which depicted figures walking or standing in public spaces, such as shopping areas and street corners.... Dissatisfied with the inability of such images to represent the complexity of the historical moment in which he lived, Struth took his camera into the street and found that the background he was using for his paintings on photographs – the city itself – contained just as much complexity. Here was a place with its own history that could be coaxed into an image by deliberate observation and execution, a place that bore the marks of history and psychology in its buildings, cars, and sky, in their totality and their interrelationship.

Charles Wylie, "A History of Now: the Art of Thomas Struth," in Douglas Eklund and Thomas Struth, Thomas Struth 1977-2002 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 149-150.

Thomas Struth, German, b. 1954

Pantheon, Rome, 1990, printed 1991
Chromogenic print
Framed: 187.3 x 242.3 cm (73 3/4 x 95 3/8 inches)
Saint Louis Art Museum, Funds given by Mr. and Mrs. Donald L. Bryant Jr., the Honorable and Mrs. Thomas F. Eagleton, Mr. and Mrs. James D. Burke, Dr. and Mrs. Alvin R. Frank, Dr. and Mrs. Robert D. Fry, Suzy and Richard Grote, Bob and Signa Hermann, Mr. and Mrs. John Peters MacCarthy, Eleanor J. Moore, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer Jr., and the Contemporary Art Society in honor of Michael and Lisa Shapiro
229:1992

On Museum Photographs
I felt a need to make these museum photos, because many works of art, which were created out of particular historical circumstances, have now become mere fetishes, like athletes or celebrities, whereby the original inspiration for these works is fully obliterated. What I wanted to achieve with this series . . . is to make a statement about the original process of representing people leading to my act of making a new picture, which is in a certain way a very similar mechanism: the viewer of the works seen in the photo is an instance which finds itself in a space to which I, too, belong when I stand in front of the photo. The photos illuminate the connection and should lead the viewers away from regarding the works as mere fetish-objects and initiate their own understanding or intervention in historical relationships.

Thomas Struth, "Interview between Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Thomas Struth," trans. Sarah Ogger, in Thomas Struth: Portraits (New York: Marian Goodman Gallery, 1990), 39.

Thomas Struth, German, b. 1954

Initially drawn to painting, Struth first created hybrid black-and-white photographs and paintings, which depicted figures walking or standing in public spaces, such as shopping areas and street corners.... Dissatisfied with the inability of such images to represent the complexity of the historical moment in which he lived, Struth took his camera into the street and found that the background he was using for his paintings on photographs – the city itself – contained just as much complexity. Here was a place with its own history that could be coaxed into an image by deliberate observation and execution, a place that bore the marks of history and psychology in its buildings, cars, and sky, in their totality and their interrelationship.

Charles Wylie, "A History of Now: the Art of Thomas Struth," in Douglas Eklund and Thomas Struth, Thomas Struth 1977-2002 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 149-150.

24 October 2008 through 20 June 2009

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