Thomas Schütte: A Journey Through Perspectives

“I try to see one thing from five different viewpoints and keep moving, working around a central point,” Thomas Schütte has said. “But what it is I don’t know. As soon as you define it, it’s ended.” The exhibition Thomas Schütte surveys half a century of work by one of the most inventive artists of our time. Although foremost a sculptor, Schütte incorporates a wide variety of disciplines in his capacious practice: drawing, painting, printmaking, installation, design, and architecture. For Schütte, there is no hierarchy of mediums. Delicate watercolors and brilliantly glazed ceramics hold their place next to monumental bronzes, architectural models, and fully realized buildings. He resists a signature style and instead takes inspiration from a multitude of sources, including Conceptual art, classical statuary, modernist sculpture, theater design, and narrative film.

The following sections highlight five significant works by Thomas Schütte that exemplify the diversity of his artistic approach.

Installation view, Thomas Schütte, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, September 29, 2024–January 18, 2025.

Alain Colas. 1989

Alain Colas was a French sailor who was lost at sea during a transatlantic race, on November 16, 1978—coincidentally, the same day as Schütte’s birthday. A decade later, the artist was invited by the French government to submit a proposal for a monument commemorating Colas in his hometown of Clamecy. Schütte designed a figurative bust that would be anchored in the bay like a buoy, periodically submerged by the rising tide. Schütte’s provocation that Colas be memorialized as reliving his death was rejected for obvious reasons—but the work set the tone of the artist’s approach to monumental sculpture in the years to come.

Zeichnung für Alain Colas (Drawing for Alain Colas). 1989. Collage with ink on paper

Installation view of the exhibition *Thomas Schütte,” September 29, 2024 - January 18, 2025.

United Enemies. 1994. Two figures of modeling clay, fabric, string, and wood on plastic pedestal with glass bell jar

United Enemies. 1994

In June 1992, Schütte traveled to Rome to participate in a residency at the Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo for six months. While there, he made dozens of little puppets that would become the United Enemies series. Schütte sculpted the heads by hand from modeling clay, spending no longer than an hour on each. He then used scraps of his own clothes or other found materials to dress the figures and bound them in pairs. Akin to scientific specimens preserved under glass, the diminutive adversaries are studies in human moods, impulses, and affects.

Untitled from United Enemies, A Play in Ten Scenes. 1994. Offset lithograph

Krieger. 2012

The figures of Schütte’s Krieger are saber-rattling militants. Although they stand at nearly 10 feet tall, whatever strength their stature may convey is compromised by Schütte. He capped each head with screw-top bottle lids, so that these “warriors” appear more like dunces or clowns. Carved from wood, the knotted, disproportionate bodies resemble the callused burls of a tree. Thus diminished, these figures can be understood as farcical depictions and moral anecdotes on war.

Krieger (installation view) . 2012.

Installation view of Krieger. 2012. Wood
Installation view of the exhibition *Thomas Schütte,” September 29, 2024 - January 18, 2025.

Melonen (Melons). 1986. Lacquer on paper

Melonely. 1986

For many artists working in the 1960s and ’70s, ideas often superseded the physical making of art. These ideas were typically ideological, structural, and philosophical in nature and conveyed in the form of words, grids, and graphs. By the 1980s, Schütte and other artists ushered in a return to representation, which some critics described as a response to a “hunger for images.” Around this time, cherries, watermelons, and other kinds of comestibles became motifs in his work. On view here is one of Schütte’s most ambitious installations, Melonely (1986), whose title combines the words melon and lonely. The title also calls to mind melancholy, a psychological state incommensurate with the lighthearted watermelon slices. The artist anthropomorphizes the scattered sculptures of fruit, drawing out a tragicomic quality from the otherwise simple forms.

Melonely (installation view). 1986. Paint on wood, 11 parts, and gouache and watercolor on paper, 14 sheets

Selbstportrait. 30/31.5.75 (Self-portrait: 5/30–31/75). 1975

Schütte made these self-portraits—the only two in existence from a series that once totaled 20 in all—while studying under the painter Gerhard Richter at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Working from a picture, Schütte used a grid to transfer the image to canvas within a strict time limit: each painting was finished over the span of one day, regardless of how complete it appeared. His approach was both inspired by and departs from Richter’s. As in contemporaneous portraits by Richter, Schütte reinterpreted the genre of the headshot through painting. But unlike his teacher, who worked in a photorealistic style and rarely did self-portraits, Schütte varied his painterly treatment and used himself as the subject.

Selbstportrait. 30/31.5.75 (Self-portrait: 5/30–31/75). 1975. Oil on nettle cloth

The exhibition Thomas Schütte is on view at MoMA September 29, 2024–January 18, 2025.