Man Without Face 2018

Thomas Schütte's bronze sculpture looms above us, standing tall on its pedestal. It's easy to imagine him, in the studio, wrestling with the form, coaxing it into being through the push and pull of material and intuition. I wonder what was going through his mind as he worked on this figure. There is something haunting about this bronze; the patina is almost ghostly, but it's not a ghost, it's the figure of a man, but without a face. It feels very current, in that the missing face is like an erasure—of identity, perhaps. He's a ball player, or so it seems, but his gesture is passive. Is he about to throw the ball, or has he given up? There is a vulnerability to his form, and in that I sympathize with him. Schütte's work reminds me of other artists grappling with the human condition, like Giacometti, or even the raw expressiveness of early German Expressionists. We are all in conversation. Artists borrow, steal, and build upon the ideas of those who came before us, to create something entirely new. Art is an ongoing process that allows for the exchange of ideas across time and place.