Skip to content

A monthly online presentation of secondary market works

Thomas Schütte

Vater Staat, dressed

2010

Thomas Schütte

Vater Staat, dressed, 2010

In Vater Staat, dressed (2010), a stoic figure stands atop a smooth steel base, his body engulfed in cloth, tightly bound by a knotted cord, his weathered and imperious face set in pensive resolve. This expressively modelled work in bronze attests to the mastery of German artist Thomas Schütte, whose sculptural practice explores the complexities of the human condition, embodied in figures that appear at once stately and farcical, erudite yet flawed. Created the same year Schütte was awarded the Düsseldorf Art Prize, and five years after he received the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Vater Staat, dressed exemplifies the sculptor’s virtuosic command of materiality and adept manipulation of scale.

Thomas Schütte, Vater Staat, 2010. Installed at Campo della Salute, as part of the exhibition ‘Éloge du Doute’, Pinault Collection, Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy, 10 April 2011 – 15 March 2013 © DACS, 2024

Thomas Schütte, Vater Staat, 2010. Installed at Campo della Salute, as part of the exhibition ‘Éloge du Doute’, Pinault Collection, Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy, 10 April 2011 – 15 March 2013 © DACS, 2024
Photo © imageBROKER.com GmbH & Co. KG / Alamy Stock Photo

‘An implacable patriarch, [Thomas Schütte's Vater Staat] is like a figure from an undiscovered civilisation, or an unbending father from a scary puppet theatre.’

— ADRIAN SEARLE, ‘Thomas Schütte: Men, Monsters and Self-Portraits’, The Guardian, 24 September 2012

The title of the work – Vater Staat, which translates as ‘Father State’ – implies that the subject is a despot. Yet, while the figure stands alone, elevated by his pedestal, his diminutive stature, aging countenance, and heavy, ligated garments – which ensnare his arms and hands – suggest a constrained authority, implying the inherent fallibility of patriarchal sovereignty. This sculpture is part of a series of works collectively titled ‘Vater Staat’, a motif which Schütte frequently revisited between 2007 and 2010, working in various sizes and media, including modelling clay, wax, steel and bronze. Among these works, Vater Staat, dressed is distinguished by the addition of fabric sourced from the artist’s own clothing that envelops the figure’s form.

Explore Thomas Schütte's Vater staat, dressed, 2010 with Associate Director Louisa Sprinz

‘[Schütte’s] figures are lonely on their plinths. Like specimens in a zoo or birds in a cage (or bodies on a slab), they seem to have nowhere to hide. Some seem to retreat within themselves…’

— Penelope Curtis, ‘Reclining Sculpture’, in Thomas Schütte: Hindsight, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Prestel, 2009, p.57

Busts of emperors and empresses in the Hall of Emperors, Capitoline Museums, Rome. Photograph by Fratelli Alinari, c.1890
Photo © Alinari Archives, Florence

Schütte began his exploration of bound figures in the early 1990s with his enduring series ‘United Enemies’, featuring pairs of humanoid forms with grotesque physiognomies, draped in fabric often taken from the artist’s discarded shirts or bathrobes. Conceived during Schütte’s residency in Rome in 1992, the series draws inspiration from the political turmoil in Italy at the time, when several heads of state were discredited and deposed for corruption, as well as from the classical portrait busts of Roman emperors he encountered in the Capitoline Museums. Schütte refers to his satirical pairings as ‘puppets’ or marionettes. Through its textile materiality and bound form, the solitary figure of Vater Staat, dressed evokes a similar puppetry and gestures towards the flaws of totalitarian state power, though Schütte has disavowed any explicit political intent.

Get in touch to view the work at White Cube's London galleries

Contact us

Auguste Rodin, Monument to Balzac, 1898 (cast 1954)
Photo © The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florence

In 2010, Schütte also produced large-scale iterations on this theme, executed entirely in bronze. These works have since been installed in public exhibition spaces worldwide, including The Art Institute of Chicago, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Punta della Dogana in Venice, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and as part of the Serpentine’s acclaimed solo exhibition on the artist in London in 2012. The constrained subject of Vater Staat, dressed is reminiscent of Auguste Rodin’s Monument to Balzac (conceived in 1898), where the figure’s dense bronze cloak similarly serves as a substitute for the body. Drawing from the long European tradition of classical statuary, Schütte reinterprets the form, deliberately undermining the portrayal of the body as monolithic and sovereign. In this act of subversion, he offers a critique of the often unsettling veneration of certain values and politics that such monuments and memorials inherently uphold. ‘In my eyes’, Schütte has remarked, ‘the figurative tradition failed at the point when the artist had to create heroes in a democratic system’ (Conversation with James Lingwood, in Thomas Schütte, Phaidon, London, 1998, p.14).

Thomas Schütte, United Enemies, 1993 © DACS 2024
Photo © bpk / Hamburger Kunsthalle / Elke Walford

Schütte’s ambiguous, polymorphic works offer an anxious reflection on the human condition, registering its contradictions across varied materials and extremes of scale. Combining the caricatural satire of his early, domestic-scale ‘United Enemies’ with the imposing grandeur of his public statuary, Vater Staat, dressed expresses the tense unity of strength and weakness, gravitas and levity.

‘[Schütte’s] figures are melancholic and maladroit, deconstructive and derisive, understated and uncanny, virtuosic and flawed, all at the same time.’

— Andre Rottmann, ‘Permanent Provinciality: Notes on Thomas Schütte’s Figures’, in Thomas Schütte, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2024, p.29

Thomas Schütte, by Horst Ossinger, 2016
Photo © dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo

Vater Staat, dressed formerly belonged to the collection of prominent Chicago art dealer, Donald Weese Young, who acquired the work directly from the artist. Other works from the Weese Young collection now permanently reside in revered museum collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago. Two major retrospectives on the artist will take place over the next year: the first at MoMA in New York, and the second at Punta della Dogana in Venice.

Unless otherwise stated, artworks by Thomas Schütte © DACS 2024

To learn more about consigning with White Cube

Visit our Collect page

White Cube’s original gallery opened in 1993, in the heart of central London at 44 Duke street, St James’s. At just under sixteen metres squared, its proportions encouraged an intimate, focused encounter with a single important work of art or body of work. It is this experience that informs the presentations for the Salon programme.

Create an Account

To view available artworks and access prices.

Create account