A god’s eye view of global capitalism
Andreas Gursky Hayward Gallery, London SE1
It is 50 years since the opening of the Hayward Gallery. To mark the anniversary, the brutalist block on London’s South Bank is reopening after two years of refurbishment. Downstairs, I’d be amazed if visitors noticed anything different: brass fittings have been polished, terrazzo floors replaced, and the building’s endless expanses of concrete cleaned with a special paste used to de-blemish ancient sculptures. Think subtle spruce-up, not radical overhaul.
Upstairs, though, rows of pyramid skylights, which leaked from the off, and were then hidden by false ceilings, have been fixed and revealed.
They are a triumph, letting in a cascade of natural daylight, washing away any lingering worries that this building is too awkward and severe to show art to great effect.
Here, then, is the Hayward as it was meant to be: a premium exhibition hall. A successful foil, in fact, for its latest show, a retrospective of 68 photographs, produced over the past quarter century, by Andreas Gursky, the 63-year-old German artist.
Gursky belongs to a generation of brilliant photographers who studied in Düsseldorf during the Seventies and Eighties under Bernd and Hilla Becher, the married conceptual duo who rigorously documented ageing structures in grids of black-and-white photographs resembling mugshots for the machine age.
Along with Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff, both subjects of recent, and superb, retrospectives at the Whitechapel Gallery, Gursky is the best-known of their pupils.
Today, his monumental, complex images, mostly glazed and presented in handsome wooden frames to demonstrate that photography can compete with painting, can sell for millions of pounds at auction.
Above all, as an introductory wall-text points out, Gursky has a reputation as a chronicler of global capitalism: his large-format colour photographs, typically shot from an elevated, godlike vantage point, and often stitched together digitally to ensure uniformity of focus, with little or no depth of field, present seaports and airports, stock exchanges and factory floors, “99 cent” superstores, livestock mega-farms, and glittering financial high-rises.
Generally, Gursky treats human beings like ants: tiny, tirelessly busy specks that whirr about, animating the grand structures of his compositions. As a strategy, it is both an asset – in terms of straightforward retinal pleasure, this is a cracker of a show – and, arguably, his Achilles’ heel.
This is because, apart from a Hogarthian panorama of young hedonists getting wasted at a rave in Dortmund, there is little room, in Gursky’s aesthetic universe, for individuality, or the mess and slop of daily existence.
The results are undeniably spectacular. But, as years have elapsed, Gursky’s monomaniacal approach has grown excessively theatrical, and, on occasion, even formulaic. There is little room for the viewer in work like this, which is so sure of itself that it can come across as domineering.
Sometimes, of course, the Gursky treatment works brilliantly, especially when his subject is politically charged.
Consider, for instance, Nha Trang (2004), an overhead shot of a Vietnamese factory, in which rows of anonymous workers, wearing orange uniforms, produce cheap wicker furniture for Ikea. It is a stunning demonstration of the dehumanising effects of global capitalism.
More recently, though, Gursky has produced a series about North Korea, featuring phalanxes of performers in colourful costumes, on a gigantic stage in Pyongyang, pretty, petal-like choreographed shapes in the manner of an enormous, living kaleidoscope.
Uncomfortably, we look at each image from the perspective of the Supreme Leader, which, I suppose, makes a chilling point about the impact of totalitarianism upon individual lives. You can’t help feeling, though, that there is a latently despotic quality to the way that Gursky constructs images, too. For all their visual sensuality, his self-consciously artificial photographs have a cold, calculating streak. There is no room for error or imperfection; any element that threatens to interfere with his pristine vision is digitally eliminated. Humanity is kept at a distance.
Even that unforgettable photograph of the Vietnamese factory offers an illustration of his autocratic aesthetic: apparently, the workers only wore bright uniforms at Gursky’s insistence.
Meanwhile, his aerial vantage point has become ever more remote and demiurge-like, as witnessed by recent composite photographs of the Earth’s oceans, pieced together using satellite imagery. These are statements by an artist with a god complex. Still, do not miss the opportunity to encounter so many impressive works by this colossus of contemporary photography. From Thurs-april 22. Information: 020 3879 9555; southbankcentre.co.uk