Thomas Schütte

Thomas Schütte’s Großer Respekt has the look of a model for a public square, the center of which is to have a large monument. The sculpture is reminiscent of the well-known work by Rodin, The Burghers of Calais, but in comparison to his tragic figures, the men ‘depicted’ by Schütte are sooner tragicomic. Bound together, they stand with their feet in a basin filled to the rim. Their arms make helpless gestures at an audience that hasn’t the least concern for them. Though many of his works are ‘models’ that comment on the public position of art, Schütte has also carried out actual sculptures for public spaces. Some of those emphasize, in a comical way, the disfunctioning of art in the public space. In 1987 he erected a tall pillar on a square in Münster: two cherries were displayed on this.