Thomas Struth (b. 1954)

Executed in 1989, Musée d’Orsay II, Paris is one of the major works in Thomas Struth’s hugely influential series of Museum Photographs, a colossal undertaking that occupied the artist for 15 years. Describing his intentions for the series, Struth explains that the liminal space of the museum provided “the potential for including a marriage of a contemporary moment with a historical moment in one photographic plane” (the artist cited in: A. Kruszynski, ed., Thomas Struth: Photographs 1978-2010, Munich 2010, p. 198). In this way, Struth seeks to capture a moment of unique temporal tension, in which contemporary society communes with the most celebrated icons of human history. Through the medium of photography, this moment of communion is memorialized and sustained as an object of contemplation in its own right. In the present image, the viewer is invited to observe a pair of museum patrons from a distance as they are dwarfed by the colossal neoclassical painting, Romains de la Décadence by Thomas Couture. Struth expresses the sublime power of the painting by framing it beyond the silhouette of these human figures, their faces invisible, inviting the viewer to embody their complex, awe-struck emotions. Further emphasizing the grand scale of the image, the arcs of two of the Musée d’Orsay’s famed windows tower over the monumental painting in the extreme background. Musée d’Orsay II, Paris is an intellectually rigorous and inspirational picture that celebrates humanity’s history of creative genius.