[no title] 1993

This is one of three sculptures in Tate collection (see Tate T07018 and T07019) which are part of a larger group collectively titled United Enemies 1993-4. Schütte made eighteen similar sculptures each comprising a pair of small male forms bound together and sealed under a glass dome mounted on a cylindrical pillar. He modeled the figures’ heads by hand in coloured fimo, a modeling compound sold in toy shops. The bodies are stuffed rags swaddled on a tripod of doubled beechwood dowel sticks. Schütte bound them in pairs with masking tape and medical sticking plaster. Each couple stands on a shallow wooden plinth set on a tall section of terracotta-coloured plastic drainpipe. Some are trapped facing towards each other; others look away. The figures have bald heads and deeply incised features; their caricatured expressions are reminiscent of the ‘character head’ busts created in the late eighteenth century by Austrian baroque sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736-93). The figures in this sculpture are wrapped in a single piece of yellow toweling, apparently a face flannel to which the manufacturer’s label is still attached. This is bound around the figures, over a section of white sheeting, with blue electrical tape making a dramatic ‘X’. The characters’ heads are marbled in appearance; one is green and white; the other is grey and white with dark brown streaks. Schütte photographed the sculptures’ heads and shoulders close up against a black background and under a bright light. He created a portfolio of ten offset lithographs in an edition of thirty-five from the photographs (see Tate P77752-P77761) subtitled ‘A Play in Ten Scenes’, referring to the theatre of public life. The sculptures were initially installed with the prints, resulting in disorientating disjunctions in scale.