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Gursky's painting »Politics II«, created in 2020: Art as a warning
Photo: Andreas Gursky / VG Bildkunst / Bonn
Andreas Gursky is from Düsseldorf, he grew up in the city on the Rhine and still feels at home there.
However, he was born in Leipzig in 1955.
That is why the Museum of Fine Arts there is now commemorating his roots with an exhibition of his works.
Gursky, who has already exhibited in many important museums around the world, was obviously touched by the proposal from Leipzig; he helped prepare the show for years.
The opening was actually supposed to take place last November, in the year of his 65th birthday, but because of the pandemic it was now March.
The artist, known for his painterly photographs, said in an interview that it was not so easy for him to wait so long.
Now his tableaus can be viewed, initially only for a few days, because it is becoming apparent that the museum will soon be closed again;
it could be that afterwards, when everything is allowed to open again, visitors have to show a negative corona test.
But the waiting and the effort are worth it, Gursky always has a lot to offer, and in a certain way overwhelms his audience.
Gursky often shows more of a scene than a viewer can grasp if he were there.
Because he typically puts together several individual images.
He creates an enormous tension between the accuracy of the depicted details and the often monumental format.
So many pictures look like panoramas - of the offer in the cheap supermarket, of the Rhine, of crowds.
One of the more recent motifs is a view of an over-colossal cruise ship, it fits in well with the time for many reasons.
Gursky tells about the world
In general, some pictures look like a contemporary poster.
For example, there is the group of politicians who come together as if for a last supper, in front of a clock that makes it clear that it is almost too late.
Over the years Gursky's works have developed an overly clear conscience, he is not stingy with warning signs.
The artist used to celebrate Formula 1 with his elaborate compositions - today he shows how the environment suffers, how it dries up and is littered.
Although one could of course reproach him for the fact that even the dystopia still has an aesthetic effect on him, at the same time that is part of the irritation.
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As colorful and cool some things appear, so little subtle, it is ultimately so confusing.
The curators in Leipzig say that this photo artist would also show »paradigmatic places of the globalized world«, but there are always places among them that not everyone can go, for example Pyongyang and Apple's headquarters.
Gursky's pictures are almost always both vivid and enigmatic.
A realistic surrealism.
The fact that he knew how to translate great developments into great pictures brought Gursky fame, he is a real star.
His photos are among the most expensive on the world art market.
On the other hand, he has contributed enormously to the fact that photography is finally considered real art, for which no price is too high.
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Artist Gursky in front of his painting "Lager": Everything becomes a panorama.
Photo: Peter Endig / imago images / Peter Endig
How would his life have been in Leipzig?
Each of his works is about what photography can and what it is allowed to do.
His father Willy Gursky, who died in 2016, was an advertising and portrait photographer, and Andreas Gursky's teachers at the Düsseldorf Academy included the two photo concept artists Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Gursky took all the liberties out of these influences and developed something of his own.
He was already using digital cameras when it was frowned upon.
Today he also hangs enlarged cell phone pictures in the museum.
Like one that shows his wife and youngest son.
Apart from Düsseldorf, he lives in Ibiza, as it is even stated on the flyer for the exhibition, other German artists would probably rather keep quiet about such a casual second home.
How would his life have developed if his parents hadn't fled Leipzig to the Rhine in the fifties, if he had been subject to completely different constraints as a child and young adult?
The exhibition includes documents telling the family history, as well as works by Gursky's father and grandfather, who was also a photographer.
So this show is a very personal affair - and at the same time not, the Gursky family reminds us of the somehow paradigmatic place Germany, which was not even one place for a long time.
Reality keeps going crazy, its plots are downright unbelievable, unsubtle anyway.
And the young old master from Leipzig and Düsseldorf also talks about it.