Pictures of Car Radios Taken while Good Music Was Playing (Ansichten von Autoradios, in denen gerade gute Musik spielt)

Hans-Peter FeldmannWW-1970-130524

1970·Gelatin silver prints (4) and chromogenic prints (2)·50 × 60 × 0.6 cm (19 11/16 × 23 5/8 × 1/4 in.)

<p>Conceptual artist Hans–Peter Feldmann is known to trade seriousness for humor and the rarified for the mundane. In the 1960s he began taking photographs while also amassing images made by others; his presentations often mix the two groups indiscriminately. It would presumably be hard for the artist to know what music was playing in a car photographed by someone else, let alone to judge its quality: “good music,” like fine art, is for the beholder or listener to assess. This evocative set of pictures nevertheless uses the silent, static medium of photography to convey the easy pleasure of listening to music while driving.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1970
Medium: Gelatin silver prints (4) and chromogenic prints (2)
Dimensions: 50 × 60 × 0.6 cm (19 11/16 × 23 5/8 × 1/4 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Hans-Peter Feldmann

Artist

Hans-Peter Feldmann

Photography

Hans-Peter Feldmann was a German artist known for his systematic collections and archival presentations of found photographs, postcards, and mass-produced images. Working primarily with appropriation and photobook formats, he assembled vast inventories of vernacular material, wedding photos, passport pictures, advertisements, organized by category or formal similarity rather than narrative or authorship. His practice interrogated the nature of documentation, seriality, and the aesthetic potential of the mundane within postwar conceptualism. Feldmann's work was exhibited internationally and remains foundational to understanding photography's role in contemporary art practice.

Dusseldorf, Germany

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