The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Andreas Gursky · a photograph · 1999 · chromogenic colour print face-mounted to acrylic glass and framed by the artist, issued in an edition of six · the unit scored is the image in its edition: the six prints are one work and no single print is scored · the image stands whole in its six prints; the buildings removed from the far bank in the making are not part of it, and the photograph they were removed from is context
Mode
Large colour tableau photograph of a real place, digitally emptied into an abstraction of bands; documentary in claim, constructed in fact
Mythos
The Rhine of the Rheingold, the Nibelungen and the Lorelei, named in the title and refused in the image; earth, water and sky in strata, and the river as time and boundary, evoked by the format
Phase
Made in 1999, three years after <i>Rhein I</i> of the same stretch of river; sold at Christie’s, New York, in November 2011
Presentation
One image in an edition of six, a chromogenic colour print face-mounted to acrylic glass and framed by the artist; large and horizontal, with no figure, no vertical and no diagonal of consequence
Register
Stillness, emptiness and grey calm; a cold, horizontal sublime that depends on size and in reproduction is quiet
Scale
One stretch of river in one light, five bands of three colours, one path and no person
Governing Proposition
A large colour photograph of the Rhine near Düsseldorf under an overcast sky, built in parallel bands: grey sky, a strip of green far bank, the grey river, a green near bank divided by one straight pale path. The buildings on the far bank were removed by digital means, and nothing in the print shows it. The wager of the picture is that a view emptied of everything removable can show a modern river more truly than the place itself, nature as managed ground in bands, and that a photograph can be a construction and remain a true picture.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The picture is a photograph of the Rhine near Düsseldorf, dated 1999, by Andreas Gursky, born in Leipzig in 1955 and trained at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie under Bernd Becher. It is one image, a chromogenic colour print face-mounted to acrylic glass and framed by the artist, issued in an edition of six. The six prints are one work: the image is what is scored, and no single print. Its title is the name of the river and a number, and the number points back to Rhein I of 1996, an earlier and smaller picture of the same stretch of river, which stands outside the work as context, with the rest of Gursky’s pictures of the 1990s.
The view is taken from a high, flat point so that every edge in it is horizontal. The sky is overcast, and the light that comes through it removes shadow, holding the greys and greens in a narrow, even key. There is no figure in the picture, no vertical and no diagonal of any consequence. The print is large, made at a size few laboratories could then manage, and the face-mount gives it the presence of an object rather than a sheet on a wall.
The picture belongs to two inheritances at once. One is the objective, serial photography of the Düsseldorf school, made under the Bechers; the other is the large colour tableau photograph that Gursky, Struth, Ruff and Jeff Wall had brought to the scale of painting in the 1980s and 1990s. Behind both stand German landscape painting and the colour field of Newman and Rothko. The picture takes something from each, and its departure from all of them is a single act, made on the far bank.
Movement II
The image is built in parallel bands. From the top: a grey sky; a narrow strip of green, the far bank; the grey river; and a near bank of green grass, divided by a straight pale path that runs the width of the picture as a sixth thin band inside it. Five bands of three colours, sky, grass and water, and nothing that crosses them. The river’s grey is kept distinct from the sky’s, so that the two greys do not merge across the far bank.
Each band bears load. Take away the far bank and river and sky collide; that narrow strip of green is the hinge of the whole. Take away the overcast and the river becomes a holiday. What yields is not a part but a measure: the exact proportion of the bands, which could be imagined a little otherwise, one band a little higher, without loss. The picture is economical to the point of necessity, and stops there; reduction is not the same thing as being required.
One law governs everything: the horizontal. The overcast sky is the least made thing in the picture and the path the most made, and they obey the same law. The light flattens every form into a stripe, and the edit serves the bands. Nothing in the picture contradicts it. But the territory the law governs is very small, and the coherence is won by exclusion. That is the picture’s point and its limit: a landscape reduced to strata is a landscape administered, and the knowledge of that order is the order of the image.
Movement III
Gursky removed by digital means the buildings that stood on the far bank, and the removal is invisible at any distance. A straight view of a real place, taken with the documentary photograph’s claim to have been there, has been emptied into an abstraction, and nothing in the print shows that anything was done. The eye that stands before it sees a river, two banks and a sky. The photograph from which the image was made, and the buildings taken out of it, are context, and they are not part of the work.
This is the picture’s sharper disclosure: that a photograph of the real can be a construction and still be true. The buildings were removed to make a truer picture of what a modern river is, and the photograph’s claim on reality becomes a matter of authorship, not of the shutter. As a painting, the same image would be a minor exercise in colour-field landscape. It knows what it knows because it is a photograph, and the erasure turns the photograph’s own claim against itself.
The disclosure has two limits. It was not new in 1999: Gursky had been altering his pictures digitally since the early 1990s, and Rhein I had made the composition three years before, so the swerve is a refinement of a proven path carried to its purest form, at small stake. And the eye cannot see it: the knowledge of construction lives in the account of how the picture was made more than in anything the viewer finds. The disclosure needs the caption.
Movement IV
The path is the one straight human mark in the picture: a line of travel with no traveller. Take it away and the near bank is a flat green field, and the image loses the only sign that this land is kept. With it, the whole view reads as managed ground. The river is canalised, the banks are mown, the path is ruled straight, and nature appears as administered land, ordered into bands. That is the first thing the picture brings into the open, and it holds.
Against it stands the title. The Rhine is one of Europe’s most storied rivers: the Rheingold and the Nibelungen, the Lorelei, the Romantic Rhine of castles and vineyards, the frontier river of the wars. The picture names the river and refuses all of it. The most storied river in German culture is shown as a channel between lawns, and nothing in the image marks this stretch as the Rhine at all. The title carries the whole weight of what is withheld, and the refusal is the picture’s one built relation to myth.
The orders the picture holds are few and held by implication. The natural order is there in sky, water and grass; labour and administration in the banks and the path; industry in its absence, the buildings removed; history only in the river’s name; perception in the question of what a photograph shows. No one lives in this picture. There is no person, no family, no sacred order and no story, and much of its force is a mood, stillness and grey calm, which ranks below a meaning however well it is rendered.
Movement V
At full size the bands fill the field of vision. The river becomes a slab of grey with no beginning or end and the sky a lid of cloud above it, and the viewer stands before a horizontal immensity as Friedrich’s monk stands before the sea, with no figure in the picture to stand in for him. The response is stillness more than awe, a held breath, sustained rather than recurring. In reproduction the picture is quiet, even dull, and its detractors say so; its elevation depends on its size.
In November 2011 a print sold at Christie’s, New York, for $4,338,500, at the time the highest price paid at auction for a photograph. The sale made the picture the emblem of the photograph as a museum object priced like a painting, and it is cited in nearly every account of photography and the market since. That reach is presence more than redirection: the turn the picture states belongs to Gursky’s work of the decade, to Wall and to the Düsseldorf school, and no line of artists taking this picture as its starting point is shown. The sale also asks what is sold when one of six prints is priced as a unique object.
The image stands whole in its six prints, and no single loss would take it. Chromogenic prints are known to fade and shift in colour over decades, a face-mounted print cannot easily be treated, and an edition can be reprinted, which raises the question of what would then survive; the edition offsets that risk. After twenty-seven years the questions the picture sustains are real, about photography’s truth, about the emptiness as critique or celebration, about the price. But return to the image yields the same calm. The bands, once read, are read.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test has already been run, and by the maker: the picture is what was left when everything removable was removed. What stands is five bands and a path. Take away the path and the near bank is a flat green field: the image loses its one human mark and its one line of travel, the only sign that this land is kept. Take away the far bank and river and sky collide; that narrow strip of green is the hinge of the whole. Take away the overcast and the river becomes a holiday. Each band bears load. What yields is the exact proportion: a picture this reduced is easily imagined one band a little higher without loss. Reduction is not the same as necessity.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Two things are brought into the open, and both can be stated. First, the modern landscape is managed: the river is canalised, the banks mown, the path straight, and nature appears as administered ground, ordered into bands. Second, and more sharply, a photograph of the real can be a construction and still be true: the buildings were removed to make a truer picture of a modern river, and the photograph’s claim on reality becomes a matter of authorship, not of the shutter. What holds the axis below the bar is that the human condition disclosed is thin: no one lives in this picture, much of its force is a mood of stillness and grey calm, and the second disclosure needs the caption, since the eye does not see the erasure.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Elevation is real and of one kind: a cold, horizontal sublime, met at scale. At full size the bands fill the field of vision, the river becomes a slab of grey with no beginning or end, and the sky above it is a lid of cloud. The Romantic sublime of German landscape painting, Friedrich’s monk before the sea, is present as a structure: the viewer before a horizontal immensity, with no figure to stand in for him. The response is stillness more than awe, a held breath. What holds the axis is height and frequency: one effect, sustained rather than recurring, and dependent on size; in reproduction the picture is quiet, even dull, and its detractors say so. Subtraction reaches calm more surely than transport.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The Rhine is one of Europe’s most storied rivers: the Rheingold and the Nibelungen, the Lorelei, the Romantic Rhine of castles and vineyards, the frontier river of the wars. The picture names the river and refuses all of it. That refusal is the work’s one structural relation to myth: the most storied river in German culture is shown as a channel between lawns, and the title carries the whole weight of what is withheld. Beyond the title, the bands summon the old order of earth, water and sky in strata, and the river as time and boundary, but these are evoked by the format, not built in the particular, and the particular is effaced on purpose. Myth evoked by name and denied by image; built only in the denial.
Score: 6.9 / 10
The inheritance is double: the objective, serial photography of the Düsseldorf school under the Bechers, and the large colour tableau photograph that Gursky, Struth, Ruff and Jeff Wall had brought to the scale of painting in the 1980s and 1990s. Behind both stand German landscape painting and, in the bands, the colour field of Newman and Rothko. The departure is to take the documentary photograph and make it a fiction in the name of truth: a straight view of a real place, digitally emptied into an abstraction, with no sign of the intervention. The stake was low. Gursky had been altering his pictures digitally since the early 1990s, the large format was common ground, and Rhein I had made the composition three years before.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Would a different form change what the work knows? Largely. As a painting the image would be a minor exercise in colour-field landscape; it knows what it knows because it is a photograph, carrying the photograph’s claim to have been there, which the erasure turns against itself. As a small print it would be a postcard; the scale makes the river a wall and the viewer a figure before it. The parallel bands are the knowledge of order: a landscape reduced to strata is a landscape administered. The invisibility of the alteration is the instrument of the second disclosure. Held below 8 because much of what the work knows travels at the size of a page, as its fame shows, and its knowledge of construction lives in the account of its making more than in anything the eye finds.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Evidence over promise: twenty-seven years, and the axis is partly forecast. The questions it has sustained are real. Is it a photograph or a painting, and what is a photograph once its maker removes what stood before the lens? What does accuracy mean if it needs fiction? Is the emptiness a critique of the managed landscape or a celebration of it? What does the price of 2011 say about the photograph as a unique object when it is one of six? Before a print at full size there is more than reproduction shows, the grain of the grass, the texture of the water. But return yields the same calm; the bands, once read, are read. Much of the return is to the debate on photography’s truth and its market, of which this is the most cited case rather than the deepest instance.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Published, so intrinsic force and achieved reach are scored together, in the field of German and international art photography of the 1990s. Intrinsic force: the purest statement of a turn already under way, the documentary photograph become a constructed tableau, digital alteration placed at the service of a realist claim. It is not the reorganisation itself, which belongs to Gursky’s work of the decade as a whole, to Wall’s staged pictures and to the Düsseldorf school; within Gursky’s own work, his pictures of crowds and goods carry it as much. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the sale of 2011 made it the emblem of the photograph as a museum object priced like a painting, cited in nearly every account of photography and the market since. That reach is presence more than redirection; no line of artists taking this picture as a starting point is shown.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at twenty-seven years. Form: whole. The image exists in six prints, and no single loss would take it. Presence: wide, shown and reproduced without end; but much of that fame is its price, and fame and price are presence, not proof. Fabric: chromogenic colour prints are known to fade and shift in colour over decades, and a print face-mounted to acrylic cannot easily be treated; an edition can be reprinted, which raises the question of what then survives. That general risk is charged lightly, and the edition offsets it. The figure is the usual one for its span, not the widest, because its presence leans on one auction.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Judged as command of large-format colour photography and of digital composition. The making is exact and largely load-bearing: a high, flat viewpoint that makes every edge horizontal; an overcast light that removes shadow and holds the greys and greens in a narrow, even key; the seamless removal of the buildings, invisible at any distance; the colour of the print, the river’s grey kept distinct from the sky’s; the print itself, made at a size few laboratories could then manage, and the face-mount that gives it the presence of an object. The decisions are the maker’s. What holds the axis is that the range is narrow by design, one view, one light, one operation of erasure, and the few elements ask little of the hand beside Gursky’s dense pictures of crowds and stock.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the overcast sky, the least made thing in the picture, and the straight path, the most made. They obey one law, the horizontal. Every element is a band parallel to the frame, and everything that would break the law, the vertical of a building, the incident of a figure, has been removed. The law reaches the making itself, since the edit serves the bands, and the light, which flattens every form into a stripe. Nothing in the picture contradicts it. What holds the axis below 8 is that narrowness is not coherence: the territory is five bands of three colours, and the law, once grasped, governs a very small field. Its coherence is achieved by exclusion, which is its point and also its limit.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The orders held are few, and held by implication. The natural order, in sky, water and grass. Labour and administration, in the mown banks, the canalised river and the path: nature as managed ground. Industry, held by its absence, the buildings removed. History, held only by the river’s name. Perception and the image, in the question of what a photograph shows. They are integrated in one view, but most are present as absences: the picture’s method is to take orders out rather than hold them. There is no person, no family, no state but by implication, no sacred order and no story. That holds the axis lowest of the twelve, at its floor: the figure describes the form, a single, emptied view.
Score: 6.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.5 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.5, then The Made at 8.2 and The Inevitable at 7.9. An image that stands whole in an edition of six, its presence wide though it leans on one auction; a making exact in viewpoint, light, erasure and print, every edge horizontal and the removal invisible at any distance; and a picture that is what was left when everything removable was removed, five bands and a path, each bearing load.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.0: the natural order, administration, industry by its absence, history by a name and the question of the image, held as absences in one emptied view, with no person, no family, no sacred order and no story. Next above it, The Archetypal Deep at 6.9: the most storied river in German culture named and refused, myth built only in the denial. Then The Bottomless Well at 7.2, and The Unconcealment, The Swerve and Pressure on Tradition at 7.4: a return that yields the same calm, a disclosure that needs the caption, a refinement of a proven path at small stake, and a reach that is presence more than redirection.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.9 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.8, The Made at 8.2, The Inner Law at 7.8, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.5 meets the bar of 8.5 exactly, but The Unconcealment at 7.4, The Swerve at 7.4, Pressure on Tradition at 7.4 and The Archetypal Deep at 6.9 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Archetypal Deep, 6.9, The Bottomless Well, 7.2, and The Unconcealment, The Swerve and Pressure on Tradition, each 7.4, all below 7.5; The Sublime meets it exactly at 7.5, and The Encompassed, which it exempts, meets its own floor of 6.0 exactly. Three of the five summit conditions are met: the Necessity Cap, the Coherence Floor and the Megethos Floor. The twelve sum to 90.0, an average of 7.50. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.5, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Rhein II, a photograph by Andreas Gursky dated 1999, from reproduction and from its literature; not from close study of a print at full size, so that what is said of the print surface, its grain and colour and their ageing, is general and not observed. The work scored is the image in its edition: a chromogenic colour print face-mounted to acrylic glass and framed by the artist, issued in an edition of six, the six prints scored as one work and no single print alone. The image stands whole in its six prints; nothing in it is known to be lost, replaced or remade. The buildings that stood on the far bank were removed by digital means in the making, and they, the photograph from which the image was made, Rhein I (1996) and the rest of Gursky’s work of the 1990s are context and are not scored. The sale of a print at Christie’s, New York, in November 2011 for $4,338,500 is a fact of reception and is weighed only as reach and presence. No words are quoted but the title; the maker’s own account of the picture, as it has been reported, is not given, because its words could not be verified. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the dimensions of the print and of its frame, and so its exact proportion and area; whether artist’s proofs exist beyond the six; which public collections hold prints; what the removed buildings were, and whether figures were removed with them; and whether the maker’s digital file survives as a further form of the image.