Aluminiumfrau Nr. 18

With this sculpture, Thomas Schütte has made an art-his­torical topic his own: the reclining nude woman. When asked why this woman is on a table, Schütte’s answer is technical. We have to go back to the Ceramic Sketches, the ori­gin of his large-scale sculptures. This set of ceramics was produced in purposeful haste in order to build up a reser­voir of forms. Unlike his monumental sculptures, each of which took six to eight months to complete, the artist explains that he produced six or seven pieces a day, leaving himself an hour for each one. The starting point was a small rectangular clay panel—now the table—to rest the figure on, because “mak­ing standing ceramic models is impossible. What are they sup­posed to stand on?” From this exploration, he chose to retain certain models, enlarging them considerably and altering their materials and surfaces—sometimes pushing them to the edge of abstraction.