Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- August 2nd

Steel Woman II by Thomas Schutte

Anne d'Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden (PMA parking garage)

Oy. Image from philart.net

                         Fuck this sculpture and fuck pretentious-ass "series" of the same sculpture over and over again in slightly different ways. This piece of shit is just another in a series of garbage by German artist Thomas Schutte (Pronounced shoot-a).
                       The sculpture (and series) depicts a nude woman bending in on herself in some kind of fucked up yoga pose on top of a steel coffee table. The left arm of the figure is all fucked up, looking more like an error in the casting process than a design. The hair looks like a mat of macaroni and cheese that got out of control. Don't worry, this malformed piece of horsetrash is considered a great work of art by a super-human artist.
                    Series like this happen when a perfectly good artist gets way too full of shit and gets called "one of the world's most important contemporary artists" by snooty art publications. They get to a point where anything they make will get its ass kissed, so they make series of the same shit over and over again. Schutte, who used to make some pretty cool shit, started making these coffee table nudes in 1998 and hasn't fucking stopped since.  Sometimes he switches up the materials used--- this one was while he was using steel.
                   

Photo from a Schutte show in Italy this last June. Is that enough coffee tables for ya?

                To be fair, Schutte has done some non-coffee table works since '98 that are pretty cool, but he eventually goes right back to the stupid nudes on the tables in between and that's what mostly gets displayed. What bunk. Schutte has been quoted as saying "Design is an element in Social Responsibility." How is depicting naked chicks on coffee tables with missing limbs and shit "social responsibility"? Schutte, you need to shoot-a the fuck up. The more you have to explain it, the more it sucks.
             Steel Woman II was made in 1999 and was displayed along with other coffee tables for 10 years before being installed in the Anne d'Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden in 2009. I bet that if she was named Anne Murphy, they wouldn't be naming shit after her, no matter how awesome she once ran the place. d'Harnoncourt is the ultimate name for something at the PMA-- it has it all... lowercase first letter, apostrophe, lots of syllables, and from Austrian nobility (the d' names from non-German Austrian nobility were made up to sound more regal, so the name has been bullshit since the beginning).
              Its just a matter of time before every city and college campus will have one of Schutte's shitty coffee table nudes.... however, the Anne d'Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden's stuff is supposed to rotate out every few years, so hopefully Philly won't have one by then. Thank Zod.

"You're welcome."

               For the PMA's high-falutin-ass description of the sculpture, click here.