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拍品专文
Currently the subject of the visual arts most esteemed accolade, a lifetime retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Thomas Schütte forms part of a rich lineage of German artists emerging in the late twentieth century who cast off traditional forms. Schütte melds historical elements with a contemporary questioning of the art object and the role of the artist. Part of an eight-piece series of duotone busts, Großer Doppelkopf Nr. 8 is a prime example of the artist’s sculptural output in which monumental ceramic figuration meets theatricality and an investigation into materiality. “In the wake of a remarkable surge of artistic production in postwar Germany, Thomas Schütte’s work stands out among a younger generation of artists for its ambition, its diversity in its form and media, and its awareness of the historical, social, economic, cultural, as well as personal, conditions of twentieth-century Germany,” former director of the Dia Art Foundation Michael Govan noted. (M. Govan, quoted in Thomas Schütte: Scenewright, Gloria in Memoria, In Medias Res, exh. cat., New York, Dia Art Foundation, 2002, p. 6). Leveraging the plasticity of his medium, Schütte creates an imposing double portrait that splits down the middle like two halves of a fractured psyche. The artist’s predilection for rugged, worked surfaces highlights the artistic process while also allowing for a reexamination of modeled figuration.
Set atop an imposing black steel pedestal, Großer Doppelkopf Nr. 8 exhibits a material playfulness that is at odds with its austere support. Formed in ceramic and then glazed in opposing layers of red and cyan, Schütte’s two-faced bust is affixed to a billowing base of smooth nodules which consequently rests upon flat, unforgiving steel. The rough texture of the two visages shows evidence of hatching, kneading, and delicate incisions from the modeling process that lay bare the artist’s working methods. The organic, irregular nature of the worked clay contrasts sharply with the machined precision of the black base and its exacting edges. “Schütte has a close and interesting relationship to the plinth; much of his earlier work involved fashioning some kind of stand for mannequins and his architectural models. […] Set apart, on a platform, these figures seemed to be both in the dock and on the podium” (P. Curtis, “Reclining Sculpture,” in Thomas Schütte: Hindsight, exh. Cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2009, p. 54). The juxtaposition of the minimal plinth with the double-faced form in clay prompts a reassessment of sculptural presentation and viewing in the public sphere.
Like Janus, the Roman god of doors, beginnings, and endings, the sculpture faces both forward and backward. One is never able to see both faces in full view at any given time, but the artwork’s conjoined nature makes it impossible for one to regard one visage without an awareness of the other. To this end, art historian Rainald Schumacher posits that Schütte sees himself not as part of the “avant-garde” which makes the future appear in the present, but as a “rearguard” who reexamines the past and thus opens future possibilities by examining what previous “aesthetic revolutions” have failed to see (R. Schumacher, Thomas Schütte, exh. cat., Munich, Sammlung Goetz, 2001, pp. 55, 59). Schütte studied under Fritz Schwegler and Gerhard Richter at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the 1970s and was thus privy to new ideas being formulated within that artistic hotbed during that era. This tutelage, as well as an interest in public sculpture and the place of art within the social environment, led him to explore the intersection of art and authority in works like the present example. However, it was a trip to Italy in the 1990s that perhaps cemented the connection between figuration and societal structures in his practice as he witnessed the political turmoil of the era while viewing the eroding vestiges of both Fascist propaganda and Ancient Roman political effigies. By foregrounding the charged historical nature of sculpture throughout human history, works like Großer Dopplkopf Nr. 8 ask for a more active viewing of art in the public sphere.
Set atop an imposing black steel pedestal, Großer Doppelkopf Nr. 8 exhibits a material playfulness that is at odds with its austere support. Formed in ceramic and then glazed in opposing layers of red and cyan, Schütte’s two-faced bust is affixed to a billowing base of smooth nodules which consequently rests upon flat, unforgiving steel. The rough texture of the two visages shows evidence of hatching, kneading, and delicate incisions from the modeling process that lay bare the artist’s working methods. The organic, irregular nature of the worked clay contrasts sharply with the machined precision of the black base and its exacting edges. “Schütte has a close and interesting relationship to the plinth; much of his earlier work involved fashioning some kind of stand for mannequins and his architectural models. […] Set apart, on a platform, these figures seemed to be both in the dock and on the podium” (P. Curtis, “Reclining Sculpture,” in Thomas Schütte: Hindsight, exh. Cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2009, p. 54). The juxtaposition of the minimal plinth with the double-faced form in clay prompts a reassessment of sculptural presentation and viewing in the public sphere.
Like Janus, the Roman god of doors, beginnings, and endings, the sculpture faces both forward and backward. One is never able to see both faces in full view at any given time, but the artwork’s conjoined nature makes it impossible for one to regard one visage without an awareness of the other. To this end, art historian Rainald Schumacher posits that Schütte sees himself not as part of the “avant-garde” which makes the future appear in the present, but as a “rearguard” who reexamines the past and thus opens future possibilities by examining what previous “aesthetic revolutions” have failed to see (R. Schumacher, Thomas Schütte, exh. cat., Munich, Sammlung Goetz, 2001, pp. 55, 59). Schütte studied under Fritz Schwegler and Gerhard Richter at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the 1970s and was thus privy to new ideas being formulated within that artistic hotbed during that era. This tutelage, as well as an interest in public sculpture and the place of art within the social environment, led him to explore the intersection of art and authority in works like the present example. However, it was a trip to Italy in the 1990s that perhaps cemented the connection between figuration and societal structures in his practice as he witnessed the political turmoil of the era while viewing the eroding vestiges of both Fascist propaganda and Ancient Roman political effigies. By foregrounding the charged historical nature of sculpture throughout human history, works like Großer Dopplkopf Nr. 8 ask for a more active viewing of art in the public sphere.