Thomas Ruff
Portrait (C. Pilar)

Portrait (C. Pilar)

© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Portrait (C. Pilar)
Portrait (C. Pilar)
ArtistGerman, born 1958
CultureGerman
Titles
  • Portrait (C. Pilar)
Date1989
PlaceGermany
MediumChromogenic print
DimensionsImage: 63 × 47 1/4 in. (160 × 120 cm)
Frame: 82 11/16 × 64 15/16 × 1 1/2 in. (210 × 165 × 3.8 cm)
Credit LineGift of Manfred Heiting, The Manfred Heiting Collection
Object number2002.3037
Non exposé

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

Sometimes size does matter. Thomas Ruff was among the first contemporary artists to print photographs on a scale that rivaled painting and to face-mount his prints to Plexiglas—a technique that brings the subject into the viewer’s world seemingly without any barrier or mediation.


Ruff is among a generation of German photographers (along with Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, and Candida Hofer) who rose to prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s. All were students of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, and from their teachers they adopted a serial, typological approach to their subjects—recording and categorizing their subjects with a no-nonsense objectivity. Here, Ruff rejected the conventions of artistic portraiture (“We weren’t living by candlelight in caves anymore,” he said) and instead portrayed his fellow students and art-world friends as if for an ID card or mug shot. Despite—or perhaps because of—that deadpan, frontal presentation, neutral background, and monumental scale, Ruff’s portraits such as this one of the German artist Carol Pilar are both mesmerizing and impenetrable. “Maybe my portraits are anachronistic,” Ruff has said, “because even though they show every detail of the skin, clothes, and hair of the sitter, they still don’t try to show any of his or her feelings.”


ProvenanceArtist, Düsseldorf; Stewart Regen Gallery, Los Angeles; Christie's, New York; Lunn Ltd., New York.

Bought by Manfred Heiting from Lunn Ltd., New York, on 10/11/1988.
Exhibition History"Contemporary Photos from the Manfred Heiting Collection," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, May 17–August 10, 2003.

"Contemporary Photography from the Collection of the MFAH," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, August 15, 2003-January 4, 2004.

"Ruptures and Continuities: Photography Made after 1960 from the MFAH Collection," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, February 21–May 9, 2010.

“History of Photography I: Selections from the Museum's Collection,” Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 1, 2014–February 22, 2015.

"The Marzio Years: Transforming the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1982–2010," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, October 25, 2020–January 10, 2021.

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

If you have questions about this work of art or the MFAH Online Collection please contact us.

Young Man
Thomas Ruff
1982
Chromogenic print
2002.2058
copystand image of photocopy in file
Thomas Ruff
1989, printed 2009
Chromogenic print
2011.277.8
copystand image of photocopy in file
Thomas Ruff
1989, printed 2009
Chromogenic print
2011.277.3
copystand image of photocopy in file
Thomas Ruff
1989, printed 2009
Chromogenic print
2011.277.2
copystand image of photocopy in file
Thomas Ruff
1988, printed 2009
Chromogenic print
2011.277.1
copystand image of photocopy in file
Thomas Ruff
1988, printed 2009
Chromogenic print
2011.277.7
copystand image of photocopy in file
Thomas Ruff
1989, printed 2009
Chromogenic print
2011.277.6
copystand image of photocopy in file
Thomas Ruff
1989, printed 2009
Chromogenic print
2011.277.5
copystand image of photocopy in file
Thomas Ruff
1989, printed 2009
Chromogenic print
2011.277.4
neg lal_03
Thomas Ruff
2014
Chromogenic print
2015.99
neg nus_28
Thomas Ruff
2014
Chromogenic print
2015.102
neg lal_08
Thomas Ruff
2014
Chromogenic print
2015.101