Untitled
In contrast to the spare documentary approach of Bernd and Hilla Becher and their students (including Thomas Struth, whose work is on view to the left), which has dominated German photography for the last thirty years, the Blumes' work is refreshingly expressive and humorous. Bernhard Blume and his wife, Anna, with whom he has collaborated since 1980, studied art in the early 1960s at the Düsseldorf Academy, where both were tremendously influenced by Josef Beuys as well as the international happenings and Fluxus movements. Married shortly after graduating, they found jobs teaching high school and soon became the parents of twin daughters. Using their own middle-class backgrounds and new-found domesticity, they began to stage performances for the camera, posing as "Kleinbürger," typical lower-middle-class Germans, in narratives in which aspects of everyday life go wildly out of control. By transforming the most mundane events into hysterical melodramas, as in this sequence in which Bernhard, in the role of a mild-mannered office worker, goes berserk devouring a head of lettuce, the artist seeks to trigger more serious thoughts about the meaning of life and everyday existence.
Artwork Details
- Title: Untitled
- Artist: Bernhard Johannes Blume (German, 1937–2011)
- Date: 1980
- Medium: Color photocopy from instant color print
- Dimensions: 20.4 x 19.2 cm. (8 x 7 9/16 in.)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, Ronald A. Kurtz Gift and The Howard Gilman Founadtion Gift, 1992
- Object Number: 1992.5159.3
- Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
More Artwork
Research Resources
The Met provides unparalleled resources for research and welcomes an international community of students and scholars. The Met's Open Access API is where creators and researchers can connect to the The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.
To request images under copyright and other restrictions, please use this Image Request form.
Feedback
We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.