Skip to main content
Washington University in St. Louis
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Create an account to add artworks to your personal collections.

Enter your email address below to recieve an email to reset your password.

An email has been sent to your inbox to reset your password.

image alt

Andreas Gursky

Beijing

2010

image alt
1 / 1

Andreas Gursky is best known for his large-scale digital photographs that arguably changed the status of the photographic medium. While analog photography is typically understood to record experiential reality, Gursky’s use of digital technologies in the postproduction process frees his photography from indexical qualities, inviting skepticism about the supposed reality of the visible. Beijing is also exemplary of Gursky’s artistic oeuvre in that it features a site of global mass traffic: the image depicts an interior view of Beijing’s famous national stadium, the so-called Bird’s Nest, a structure designed for the summer 2008 Beijing Olympics by the Swiss-based architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. In this image Gursky combined several interior views of staircases within the stadium, emphasizing the complex beam structure that defines the architecture but distorting the perspectival orientation. As with his other photographs, the image remains ambivalent: is it primarily a study of the formal qualities of the building, compressing our experience of its interior into one complex image, or is it also a critique—of this site, and of other sites that celebrate nationalism as well as global economic power? [Permanent collection label, 2016]

  • Artist Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
  • Title Beijing
  • Date 2010
  • Medium Inkjet print
  • Edition description 4/4
  • Dimensions framed | 120 7/8 x 83 7/8 x 2 3/8 in.
  • Credit line University purchase with funds from the David Woods Kemper Memorial Foundation, 2012
  • Object number WU 2012.0006

Encountering the City: The Urban Experience in Contemporary Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/12/2014 - 01/04/2015

Contemporary German Art: Selections from the Permanent Collection
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/03/2013 - 09/07/2013

10/5/2012
Sprüth Magers Berlin London (London)

This artwork record may be incomplete or need refinement. Our staff actively researches the collection and revises records when new information is available. If you have questions or comments about this record, please contact us.

Related Content

go to Architecture and Built Environment page
2010_0014.tif
Theme

Architecture and Built Environment

go to STEM page
4220.tif
Theme

STEM

go to Contemporary German Art: Selections from the Permanent Collection page
no image
Exhibitions

Contemporary German Art: Selections from the Permanent Collection

May 03, 2013 - September 07, 2013
go to Encountering the City: The Urban Experience in Contemporary Art page
no image
Exhibitions

Encountering the City: The Urban Experience in Contemporary Art

September 12, 2014 - January 04, 2015

Image Reproduction Request Form

To request image materials and/or permission to reproduce a work of art from the Museum's collection, please complete and submit the form below. The information you provide here will enable us to process your request and assess the appropriate images, permissions, and any applicable fees. 

Typically, image requests that do not require new photography can be completed within three weeks. Whenever possible, rush orders may be accommodated, although additional fees may apply.

If you have questions, please contact Kristin Good, associate registrar, at kristin.good@wustl.edu.

Checking this box constitutes a legal signature. By checking this box, the applicant agrees to abide by all terms and conditions under which permission is granted to reproduce works of art in the collection of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, and that permission is contingent upon payment of any applicable fees.

* Required fields

test View details