Portrait
Artist
Thomas Ruff
(German, born 1958)
Date1990
Mediumdye coupler print
Dimensionsimage: 158.7 × 120.1 cm (62 1/2 × 47 5/16 in.)
sheet: 216.9 × 164.1 cm (85 3/8 × 64 5/8 in.)
sheet: 216.9 × 164.1 cm (85 3/8 × 64 5/8 in.)
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineGift of the Friends of Contemporary Art in memory of Geraldine Persons
Object number1993.22
Label TextThe emotionless and unidentified face in Thomas Ruff’s Portrait is a disturbingly neutral surface on which to project our assumptions about who she might be. She is located in the space of the page frontally, like an antique sculptural bust. Despite its extreme scale and its passport photo objectivity, the mercilessly “honest” portrait conveys an inaccessibility in terms of knowing the person behind the image. Ruff’s hermetic portraiture reminds us that despite likeness, an image has an autonomous existence apart from the person depicted, one with its own startling discoveries awaiting us – a stray strand of hair, a facial blemish). She is less the subject than the medium, the true subject being Ruff’s multi-image project of creating what he called, “a contemporary representation of humankind.”ProvenanceJack Tilton Gallery, New YorkOn View
Not on view
