Image © Photo Thomas Schütte
Art © Thomas Schütte
Thomas Schütte’s monumental and enigmatic Großer Geist Nr. 1 is exemplary of the artist’s most seductive explorations of anthropomorphic form, and is one of only three Große Geister executed polished bronze, with the other two housed at the Rubell Museum in Miami and the other in the Neues Museum in Weimar, Germany. Other figures from the series, which Schütte executed between 1996 and 2004, reside in prestigious international collects ions including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in Germany. Boldly testing the limits of his chosen material and provocatively riffing on the storied genre of figurative sculpture, Schütte delves into fundamental philosophical questions about the relationship between “man and animal, man and man, man and light, [and] space and colour.” (Thomas Schütte quoted in: Julian Heynen, James Lingwood and Angela Vettese, Eds., Thomas Schütte, London 1998, p. 25) A stunning example of Schütte’s iconic Große Geister series, Großer Geist Nr. 1 arrests its viewers with its imperceptible gaze, its sleek and reflective sheen, and its dramatic scale, eliciting intensive meditation on the human condition.
Gazing down from a towering height, the molten silhouette of Großer Geist Nr. 1 leans ever so slightly forward, hands at the hips. Its surface gleams, reflecting the transient changes of light in its surroundings and reflecting the viewer’s own, undulating image in its mirror-like shine. Without identifying facial features, Großer Geist Nr. 1 is rendered intriguingly anonymous, exuding an air of mysterious ambiguity that invites imagined narratives. Describings the haunting and elusive presence of the Große Geister, German collects or Friedrich Christian Flick writes: “The figures and their faces acquire contours, without it being possible to say what they actually are: good or evil spirits, wondering or knowing.” (Friedrich Christian Flick quoted in: Ulrich Loock, Thomas Schütte, Berlin 2004, p. 7)
Image © Tate, London / Art Resource, NY
Art © 2021 Georg Baselitz
Right: Alberto Giacometti, L'homme qui marche I, Cast in 1981
Image/ Art © The Estate of Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Giacometti, Paris and ADAGP, Paris) / Bridgeman Images
The apparent fluidity of the metallic form serves as test.mes nt to Schütte’s extraordinary technical virtuosity; within the exacting formal vernacular of his medium, he forges a seemingly elastic creature who appears both mobile and capable of interaction. Großer Geist Nr. 1’s limbs consist of luscious, smooth rolls that invoke the desire to touch. To create these extraordinary figures, the artist first immerses skeins of twisted wax cords—typically used in aircraft construction—in liquid wax, stabilizing and unifying the sculpture’s essential structure; only then does he cast the resulting spiral forms in the gleaming bronze of the outer coating. Schütte’s innovative approach to creating the Geister falls in line with his mode of production overall: “Schütte’s usual approach is to... pursue often unusual, unexpected, and unaccust.mes d strategies.” (Ibid., p. 9) With the present work, Schütte luxuriates in the material capacities of bronze: both its malleability, which allows for the igneous elegance of his figures, and its strength, which allows him to work on a colossal scale.
Private collects ion
Art © Succession Brancusi — All rights reserved. ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2018
Despite its contemporary means of production, Großer Geist Nr. 1 contains a deep awareness of the history of sculpture. Only four years before initiating the Große Geister series, Schütte travelled to Rome to study classical sculpture; the present work’s contrapposto-like stance reveals his particular fascination with ancient masterpieces. Schütte’s deft fusion of figuration and abstraction links the present work with Modernist efforts to embody motion through abstracted form; Umberto Boccioni’s 1913 sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space likewise presents a humanoid creature lunging forward, exuding a similar sense of dynamic movement. Simultaneously, Großer Geist Nr. 1 massive scale contains the presence of such Minimalist objects as Robert Morris's large-scale L-Beams, which likewise engage viewers upon a phenomenological plane. In Großer Geist Nr. 1, Schütte revels in the evolution of his artistic medium, translating its history into an ingenious form reflective of its t.mes .
Establishing Rarity: Schütte’s Polished Bronze Großer Geister
At once otherworldly and intensely tangible, Großer Geist Nr. 1 defies simple understanding, demonstrating the mystique of the artist’s oeuvre. Indeed, Schütte famously refuses to denote specific meaning to his sculptures—as he states, to “cast them into words or philosophy.” (Thomas Schütte quoted in: Heynen, Lingwood, Vettese, ibid., p. 25) Instead, Schütte invites his viewers to reflect upon the purpose of Großer Geist Nr. 1 on its own terms, encouraging a profound reflection on their place within the surrounding environment, and the inherent limits of human experience.
