Him (plastic)

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Him , exhibited in a courtyard entrance of the former Warsaw Ghetto, Warsaw, 2013

Him , German He , also praying Hitler , is a sculpture by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan . The sculpted statue represents the with a gray business suit-clad Adolf Hitler represents hands as a full figure in a kneeling position and folded in prayer. Since 2002, which was hyper-realistic figure as installation shown at various exhibitions, the exhibition space and the position of the figure in each major components of a artistic or curatorial composition ( in-situ installation). In an auction on May 8, 2016 in New York City , the object achieved a price of 17.2 million dollars.

Description, history and reception

For the Färgfabriken in Stockholm- Liljeholmen , Cattelan designed the miniaturized, not life-size, 101 cm high figure Him made of wax, polyester resin and human hair in 2001 . As the sculptor in charge of his design, he commissioned Daniel Druet (* 1941), who has specialized in wax figures since the 1970s, as he did with La Nona Ora . The sculpture shows Hitler kneeling in devotion with his face turned upwards and his hands clasped. When viewed from the rear, she looks like an innocent boy. Cattelan she left with a white collared shirt and black tie attire, in a gray business suit made of tweed stuck whose trouser part a knee breeches , and put her on gray woolen stockings semi-high black leather shoes. There are a total of three copies of the work.

In an exhibition of a copy that took place in Rotterdam in 2002, Him caused a storm of indignation. The German-born Canadian artist, curator and collector Ydessa Hendeles , daughter of Polish Jews who survived Auschwitz , acquired the figure and first included it in her exhibition Same Difference , then in her planning for the Partners exhibition . This exhibition opened in 2003 in the Haus der Kunst in Munich, a building that was planned with Hitler's participation from 1933 to 1937 and was the site of the Great German Art Exhibition from 1937 to 1944, which Hitler also visited . Hendeles showed Him in a separate, empty room, initially showing the approaching viewer only the back of the boyish figure, so that Hitler's face could only be perceived in shock after a moment of closer inspection. Before that, the viewer had to go through her 2002 work The Teddy Bear Project , a collection of around 3000 touching historical photographs depicting people with teddy bears. On the way back the collection of photographs under the by was Him evoked impressions to happen again.

At the end of 2012, the figure caused protests and headlines when it was exhibited in a courtyard entrance of the Warsaw Ghetto as part of a Cattelan retrospective entitled Amen . According to the curators, the exhibition was intended to “raise questions about the origin of evil in humans”. The Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized the portrayal of Hitler as "senseless provocation" and "tasteless abuse of art". An art critic for the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza said that the works on display “only have the expressiveness of a garden gnome”.

Art columnist John Bentley Mays (1941–2016), who saw Him in Ydessa Hendeles' installation Same Difference in 2002, said that Cattelan imagined Hitler as " Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane ". The art journalist Axel Hecht , editor-in-chief of the art magazine art until 2005 , asked in view of the object: “Is Hitler defiantly kneeling before his judge? Does the dictator, driven by later insight, regret the inferno he caused? Does the work refer across generations to the mourning work of Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt , who kneeled in front of the memorial in the former Warsaw ghetto during his visit to Poland in 1970 to demonstrate his shame about the genocide? "Laura Hoptman (* 1962), a curator of Museum of Modern Art , found that the work, which she ranks among the “most disturbing” creations of the iconoclastic artist, also refers to the Catholic topoi of forgiveness and absolution .

One of the three copies of the figure went under the hammer in Christie's Bound to Fail auction series in New York City on May 8, 2016 for $ 17.2 million, which even exceeded the auction house's expectations. The purchaser is an American collector of Austrian descent who survived the Holocaust .

Exhibitions

literature

  • Ydessa Hendeles : Curatorial Compositions . Dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 2009, pp. 6 f., 10 ff., 30, figures 1.97–99 ( PDF ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. $ 17.2 million for a praying Hitler sculpture. Article dated May 9, 2016 in the tagesanzeiger .ch portal , accessed on September 15, 2019
  2. Jennifer Higgie : The artist's joke . Whitechapel Gallery, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8548-8156-7 , p. 208.
  3. Flick Flack: Who built Hitler? In: arte , France / Germany 2020
  4. ^ Ernst van Alphen: Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in the Age of New Media . Reaction Books, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-7802-3414-4 ( Google Books ).
  5. Holger Liebs: Fast greetings. Article from May 17, 2010 in the portal sueddeutsche.de , accessed on September 15, 2019
  6. ^ Brigitte van der Sande: Partners: Ydessa Hendeles's Holocaust Memorial . In: Review . September 30, 2004, p. 3 ( PDF ).
  7. Praying Hitler auctioned for 15 million , article from May 9, 2016 in the portal n-tv .de , accessed on September 15, 2019
  8. Controversial statue: The praying Hitler. Post of 28 December 2016 Portal mirror .com , accessed on September 15, 2019
  9. Praying Hitler in the former Warsaw ghetto causes a scandal. Article from December 30, 2012 in the portal augsburger-Allgemeine .de , accessed on September 15, 2019
  10. John Bentley Mays: Bears . In: Canadian Art . Fall 2002, p. 97 ( PDF ).
  11. Daniel Erk: So much Hitler was seldom: The trivialization of evil or why the man with the little beard can't be killed . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-641-04526-5 ( Google Books ).
  12. Laura J. Hoptman: 54th Carnegie International . Carnegie Museum of Art, 2004, ISBN 978-0-8803-9044-6 , p. 29.
  13. Calvin Tomkins: Lives of the Artists . Henry Holt and Company, New York City 2008, ISBN 978-0-8050-8872-4 , p. 158 ( Google Books ).
  14. Hitler sculpture auctioned for 17.2 million dollars. Article from May 9, 2016 in the portal sueddeutsche .de , accessed on September 15, 2019
  15. ^ Dominique Guillot: Collection Pinault à Rennes. Him, la sculpture de Maurizio Cattelan qui met à genoux. Article from July 9, 2018 in the portal ouest-france .fr , accessed on September 15, 2019