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Andreas Gursky is well-known for his stunning full-color landscapes, though this one seems to only include green and grey. And yet it just became the world’s most expensive photograph, fetching a whopping £2.7 million.
This is Andreas Gursky’s Rhein II, an 81- x 140-inch print of the famous German river. It went on sale at Christie’s on Tuesday, smashing the previous record of £2.4 million for Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #96, which sold in May. Funny enough, Untitled #96 had itself displaced Gursky’s earlier work, 99 Cent II Diptychon which sold for £2.1 million in 2006. Good to see that at least the high-end photography art market is weathering these economically turbulent times. [BuzzFeed]
Jesus H Christ. When the Sherman picture sold for £2.4 Million I remarked in the comments (on US Giz) that it was bland and ordinary and not worth that much, but that was an absolute masterpiece compared with this.
I remember your comment there — that photo was an absolute joke, and this? This makes me want to delete my Flickr account for good.
I’ve taken photos as bland and as crap as that… can I auction it off for £2.7 million please?
Rich people: They’re fucking stupid.
They’re fucking rich!
What’s the point of buying a print of a photo? For that money I’d expect the original, signed memory card (or negatives if the photographer swings that way)
I actually kind of like it. It reminds me of ‘Nighthawks’; there’s a very thick, quiet atmosphere to it.
I have a similar photo if you want it? Bargain price of £2.6m, I can accept paypal (P.S. or just send me some of what you are smoking!)
Wouldn’t it have been a lot cheaper to buy an awesome camera, fly to this spot, take the photo, get it printed yourself and have a nice weekend away while you’re at it?
I’m all for photographic art (and try not to dismiss certain ‘odder’ pieces too quickly) but this is just plain daft.
Philistinism appears to be rift with you gadgeteers.
He didn’t just walk down the road, take a photo and get a print at Bonus Snaps on the way home, this Artwork was created in 1999. It is from a long standing body of work around his themes, and this item has probably been resold a few times, each time increasing in value.
It is all very well saying I can take a bland geometric landscape shot and spend thousands of pounds printing, mounting and framing it on a monstrous piece of plexi-glass, and it is very easy to say that. But how about doing that with conviction 12 years ago – did you do that? No, you didn’t the Artist did, and only by looking at this work retrospectively can you muster that thought, the artist didn’t need to be led to this conclusion by someone else, like yourselves.
I can go home tonight and paint a Picasso style painting in oil on canvas, is it going to sell for millions? No, be lucky to get £20 for such a brain fart, I can only have that brain fart because a genius like Picasso existed, created and led the way.
This may be a good opportunity to go out into the world and educate yourselves on a subject you seem to know little about, because frankly speaking, when people talk about subjects they know very little about they tend to come across as ignorant pricks, if you know what I mean.
Better to be an ignorant prick than a pretentious twat !
A pretentious twat is a ignorant prick with a posh accent. Being educated in art at postgraduate level, working within art for 25 years, while discussing art on the internet doesn’t make someone pretentious, yet the lack of education and practice in art while discussing it online does.
a snappy snaps introduction, but do you not mean rife? i was always of the opinion that condescending comments on the internet tended to make people come across as ignorant pricks. are you really all that surprised that some people find that price tag a tad high, or that a technology blog might be frequented by a particular demographic? pointless.
I ain’t surprised that some people find the price tag too high, or thinking that such a sum of money is a big deal in established art auctions. Yet realising that such a sum is not a big deal to some people, considering Beckham, an over the hill football star, earns 10 times that sum in a year, that Simon Cowell pays 10 times this sum in income tax each year, or even that Damien Hirst earned a reported £12 from a single exhibition. I find it surprising that photographic based art is still so under valued at this point in history, therefore it makes good sense to invest your earning in a photographic artwork, an art form that has great growth potential, I see such work selling for 2-3 times that amount in ten years, great investment, better than putting your money in Greek bonds
This is why the art world booms in bad economic times, art is one of the few solid investments to ensure that money is safe over a long term, and will likely make a sizable profit in 10 years.
What I find most surprising is in this age of technology and communication is that people still don’t get it, nor feel the need to go out and try and get it, to understand what they are missing.
This isn’t a photograph, it is artwork on photographic substrate. To say otherwise is to say a page from Da Vinci’s sketch book is just a piece of paper – as it obviously f*cking isn’t just a piece of paper, it was once a piece of paper, it is now an important piece of art, it is history, understanding, it defines us.
The point is Duchamp’s Fountain isn’t an urinal turned on its side, it was voted the most important artwork by artists, yet is seen as the biggest joke in the artwork by the general public, that is a big disparity, one of those groups must be right – my money is on the people that are experts within a given field, like you wouldn’t ask an accountant for medical advice. Likewise don’t as some 9-to-5 motherf*cker what is art, because they haven’t got a f*cking clue – this is all cult of the idiot bullshit, when everyone has an expert opinion on things they haven’t taken the time to understand. If that’s the world you want go and take it – switch on your TV, give your life working for some fucker you would like to kill and pretend you are classless and free.
All you need to know here is some wealthy person just made a very clever investment in hard economic times – your advertised programming schedule will now commence.
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I find a lot of Andreas Gursky’s work to be bland and dull. He has some great photos, but others are just reminiscent of this, and that pisses me off.
It IS a bland photograph. That can’t be argued.
But, to understand the photograph, you have to see it in person. It is absolutely huge, and brings understanding to the piece.
If you’re going to look at images on the web, then they’re not going to wow you as much as seeing them in a gallery for yourself.
My personal opinion of any type of art, including photography, is that its not meant to be judged on its past, the prominence of the person who made it and the story behind it etc… instead art is meant to be judged on if people are pleased when they look at it and like it.
Would I spend £1 buying a print of this image, let alone £2.7m? No, because I simply don’t like it, it’s bland and boring. Would I buy it if I knew who the artist was and what work they’ve done in the past? No, because I still don’t like this image.
I swear I’ve seen that in Ikea! : )
Ignoring the fact that this picture looks like a boring overcast day in a typical British reservoir… why would anyone BUY a picture? It’s not like you couldn’t just print your own, it’s not a painting after all. What am I not computing?