Thomas Schutte: Hindsight - Hardcover

Cook, Lynne; Mehring, Christine; Curtis, Penelope

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3791350501 ISBN 13: 9783791350509

Publisher: Prestel Pub, 2010

Synopsis

This major retrospective volume on the
celebrated contemporary German artist is a
kaleidoscopic sampling of Thomas Schütte s
exploration of the perversity and pleasure of
modern life. Organized around the themes of models, monuments, and
memorials key subjects in Schütte s art this volume offers a
comprehensive selection of work from the late 1970s to today
by an artist considered a key figure of his generation. Schütte s
installations, sculptures, prints, drawings, and watercolors
often take contradictory forms, and his art may seem to depict
alien worlds. Yet his focus is everyday life, whose basic
constituents natural, cultural, political he revises, using a
broad range of materials and colors, while asking questions
about the place of art in society. Schütte has long engaged
with many of the traditional genres of sculpture the reclining
female figure and the commemorative portrait bust, for
example yet the results are utterly unconventional. A deeply
contrarian spirit informs his approach, resulting in a
transformation of standard and formulaic modes into singular
statements that reflect on history, politics, social space, and
collective experience. Together the works in this book
comprise an impressive career marked by constant change
and innovation.

About this title

Review

Thomas Schütte is a catalog of works by this contemporary German artist. Schütte studied under Gerhard Richter, Benjamin Buchloh, and Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Academy in the 1970s. He comes from that strong conceptual background, but as his career matured the emotional content of his work evolved and became much more potent. Schütte's work is incredibly eclectic: ceramic figures, architectural models, drawings, outdoor sculptures, photographs, and installations. A recent work, Big Spirits (1996), is a collection of larger-than-life-size aluminum figures that seem to be morphing before one's eyes. They are at once ghost, human, and machine. Also riveting is The Innocents (1994), a series of photographs of the heads of handmade figurines, and United Enemies, A Play in Ten Scenes (1993)--offset lithographs, also of figurines wrapped in Schütte's clothes. His watercolors are beautiful, ranging from drawings of fruit to portraits of women. Whatever the project, Schütte is tapped in to a particular humanity.

Included in the book are essays by Julian Heynen and Angela Vettese, an interview with James Lingwood, and an essay by Roman philosopher Seneca, chosen by the artist. There is also a story by Schütte--printed in English for the first time. --Jennifer Cohen

About the Author

LYNNE COOKE is Curator of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain, and Curator at Large for the Dia Art Foundation, New York, USA. PENELOPE CURTIS is Curator at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK. CHRISTINE MEHRING is Professor of Art History, the University of Chicago, USA.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prestel Pub
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 3791350501
• ISBN 13: 9783791350509
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 205