Do you want something cool, chic, imposing, prescient, elegant and sexy? Do you have a spare $200,000 - $300,000? If the answers to both questions are yes, then this 53" x 90" Andreas Gursky, "Untitled IX. 1998", coming up at Phillips Contemporary Art Sale on May 14 might be for you!
In the mid to late 1990s, Gursky turned his attention to the intersection of art and consumer culture with a series of huge color pictures of interior details of various Prada stores. Both Prada and Gursky were cresting waves of re-invention - Prada of its brand and Gursky of contemporary color photography - and the Gursky/Prada photographs are an observation and a commentary of the minimalist fetishism and artistic ambition of high fashion: underwear as expensive as jewelry being displayed like fine art in a store designed to look like a cutting edge museum.
At the time I didn't quite get the pictures - they were also on one level clearly a threat to the classic school of photography I was associated with - but 10 years later, at which point they're already fast becoming period pieces, I think they're pretty impressive.
A few more Gursky Prada pictures below, but none as good to my mind as "Untitled IX":
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