Posted by Geist can mean zeitgeist, the Holy Spirit, a powerful mind, clergyman or ghost, and is used to describe the science of thinking itself. Despite the seeming incompatibility, all refer to something higher and difficult to grasp, something that cannot be fully explained or is not fully logical.
When I hear the word “Geist”, my mind goes to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s work “Phänomenologie des Geistes“, the “Phenomenology of the Spirit”. Schütte though was not content was “Geist”, so he went for “Großer Geist”. Could it be that the artist plays with Hegel’s legacy?
Schütte’s iconic Große Geister series, executed between 1996 and 2004, contains seventeen aluminum figures.
One of them is “Großer Geist Nr. 13”, which I have viewed in Athens and in Venice.
- Athens, Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Thomas Schütte, January – February 1999.
- Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Il Mondo vi appartiene / Le monde vous appartient / The World Belongs to You, June 2011 – February 2012.
The press release of Bernier/Eliades Gallery read like this:
‘THOMAS SCHÜTTE
January 16 – February 25, 1999
Thomas Schtutte was born in 1954, in Oldenburg,Germany. He lives and works in Dϋsseldorf.
“One of the most important German artists working in the late 20th century, Thomas Schütte’s installations, sculptures, models, drawings and watercolours can take many, often contradictory guises.
His art looks utilitarian, offering shelter, sustenance and companionship, yet delivers false promises and alien worlds: a museum that incinerates art; potatoes made of bronze; or the artist’s own ‘audience’, consisting of wooden stand-ins or metallic figures assembled before his work. Like Gulliver wandering through a Swiftian world of shifting scales, the viewer is immersed in a series of theatrum mundi, poetic yet dysfunctional utopias which alternate between the private and the public, the romantic and the sceptical.
The artist deploys a vivid spectrum of colours and a range of materials to revision the basic constituents – natural, cultural and political – of everyday life whilst exploring fundamental questions about the artist and society.”
(Thomas Schütte, Phaidon)
The exhibition will last until February 25, 1999.’
The Palazzo Grassi website published a note at the time of the exhibition, from which I quote the following.
“The Grosse Geister came to life through the formation and molding of long strands of wax, which were
then cast in aluminum. This explains their anti-monumental appearance: they are both robotic and organic, futuristic and absurd. The “great minds” referred to in this work’s title are contained in reflective aluminum shells, which passively absorb the shadows and forms of their environment. Despite their monumental size, they seem elastic, ready to move about the space as soon as the viewer looks away. This blending of contradictory elements results in these comic somewhat mischievous sculptures, through which Schütte gives mass and presence to vaporous beings.”
The sculpture is incised with the artist’s name, foundry name, and dated 1998 on the heel of the right foot’ It is made of cast aluminum.
Its dimensions are: 98 3/4 by 62 1/4 by 35 in. 250.8 by 158.1 by 88.9 cm.
The humanoid figure has no face we can relate to. Its posture is contemplative and somehow angry. It took its place quite nicely in the rather intimate gallery space in Athens, and in the palace in Venice. Initially it appeared to me like an armoured knight, but slowly this impression faded. What we see is Nr. 13’s body without any cloths or other covers.
It was sold in a Sotheby’s auction on 16 May 2019. The estimated price was between 4 and 6 million US dollars.
In Sotheby’s catalogue note we read:
“At once otherworldly and intensely tangible, Großer Geist Nr. 13 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.” (the artist in Julian Heynen, James Lingwood and Angela Vettese, eds., Thomas Schütte, London 1998, p. 25) Instead, Schütte invites his viewers to ponder Großer Geist Nr. 13 for themselves, encouraging a profound reflection on their place within the surrounding environment, and the inherent limits of human experience.”