“We weren’t naïve enough to improve the world, and we weren’t destructive enough to reduce everything to rubble.”
—Thomas Schütte

Standing at over two metres in height and belonging to the artist’s iconic Mann im Matsch series, Mann mit Fahne (M 1:5) is an impressive example of German sculptor Thomas Schütte’s most enduring figure and themes. Standing up to his knees in thick, churning mud, the man braces himself against the elements, the collar of his heavy overcoat turned up in a gesture of self-preservation, steadying himself with the pole of a drooping flag held tightly in his hands. Deeply allegorical, the work casts a critical eye over persistent Enlightenment notions of history as a record of human progress and improvement; unable to move forward or back, the man is here locked in an existential quagmire, the weight of 20^th-century history fixing him fast and undercutting any victorious or nationalistic overtones introduced by the limply waving flag in his hand.

Rebels, Outsiders, Artists

 

In this respect, Schütte’s evocative Mann in Matsch figures strike up a compelling dialogue with the raw and heavily rendered figures of fellow post-war German artist Georg Baselitz’s early Heroes paintings. Like Schütte’s Mann mit Fahne (M 1:5), in these canvases Baselitz focused on the solitary male figure, a wounded warrior who travels through a scarred and broken landscape and identifies himself as an outsider, frequently appearing under the title ‘rebel’ or - more provocatively - ‘artist’. Romantic notions of the artist-as-outsider rebel hero are long-standing and nuanced, and for both Schütte and Baselitz a recasting of this triumphant trope into more troubled territory enabled more complex meditations on the concept of heroism in the aftermath of the Second World War. Deeply rooted in a German artistic and intellectual tradition, both Baselitz and Schütte confront this trauma, asking urgent questions about art’s relationship to history, identity, and power.

 

Working against prevailing Minimalist and Conceptual trends, Schütte studied at the prestigious Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Gerhard Richter and Benjamin Burloh, developing a core repertoire of images and themes that he continues to return to cyclically. It is this iconic image of a man stuck in the mud that, more than any other, defines Schütte’s unique sculptural language, relating directly to his very first figurative sculpture Mann im Matsch from 1982, a small figure locked in a plastic box with oozing, melted wax standing in for mud. Since its earliest manifestations, Schütte has returned to the figure again and again across a variety of mediums and scales, including its largest manifestation now installed in front of the Sparkasse in the artist’s hometown of Oldenburg.

 

Engaging with a long figurative sculptural tradition while challenging the heroic and triumphalist assumptions typically associated with bronze sculpture and its more commemorative functioning, the present work and the broader Mann im Matsch series to which it belongs can certainly be read as ‘anti-monuments’. Tellingly, this is a tradition steeped in German post-war history, where a deep distrust towards monumental forms had developed following their manipulation and exploitation by the Nazis, necessitating new forms and contexts through which to sensitively commemorate national trauma and historical consciousness following the devastation of the Holocaust. Currently the subject of a major retrospective hosted by The Museum of Modern Art in New York, it is Schütte’s ability to encompass both the individual and the collective that gives his sculpture so much power, his work provoking profound meditations on the human condition and our relationship to the grand narratives of nationalism, history, and ideology.

 

Collector’s Digest

 

• Born in 1954 in Oldenburg, Germany, Thomas Schütte studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Gerhard Richter alongside contemporaries Andreas Gursky, Isa Genzken, and Thomas Struth.

• Currently the subject of a major retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Schütte has also enjoyed significant solo exhibitions at the Haus der Kunst, Munich in 2009; The Serpentine Gallery, London in 2012; and the Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2019. The artist was awarded the Golden Lion for his 2005 presentation at La Biennale di Venezia.

• Other examples from the broader Mann im Matsch series in a range of scales can be found in the collections of several prominent institutions. A monumental 5-meter example of Mann mit Fahne is on permanent loan to the Tony Cragg Sculpture Park in Waldfrieden.