Thomas Schütte

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is deeper and richer in the original. Condition This work is in very good condition. There are small welding marks along the outer edges of the metal plinth and dark surface irregularities to the side edges of the plinth.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

General by Thomas Schütte, provides a unique opportunity to acquire a sculptural work from the recent series of one of the most important artists of this generation. The significance of this work has definitively been acknowledged by the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago through their acquisition of a work from the General series, and the current sale marks the first time these works have appeared at auction.

Fundamental to Schütte’s artistic career has been the mining of crucial contemporary issues including power, politics, memory, and the deficiency of art to bring these concerns into the contemporary conscious.   For Schütte, art does however provide a means to question, to expose inconsistencies and to undermine certainties. The artist’s unrelenting investigations into our modern day psyche are no more pointed than when focused towards political realities and their resulting reflection of societal structures.

In the present lot, Schütte employs the expressive potential of physiognomy to once more engage the individual viewer to address a broader universal reality.  Reminiscent of the tradition of sculpted caricature by Honoré Daumier in France, the late 18^th century sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt in Germany, 15^th century Italian caricature and the exaggerated characters of Commedia dell’Arte, Schütte borrows from forms of visual political critique that have been employed throughout history, reapplying it to the present day. The isolated figure, wrapped in a heavy blanket that reveals only a disquieting and grotesque face, stands motionless. Bound by an oversized mantel that is suggestive of an infant’s swaddling clothes, the artist relegates this archetypal historical figure of the General to immobility, immortalizing him within a moment of secluded impotence. Simultaneously however, the artist’s use of aluminum releases the figure from isolation, the shiny surface joining the work and the viewer in distorted reflection; the dictator and society at once echoed in and reinforced by each other, highlighting a world of charged anxiety. General, in communion with Schütte’s army of dystopian figures configured throughout his oeuvre, gives form to the continual burden of traumatic history and it’s heavy handed influence on the present.