Not Vital “Tongue”
“Tongue” 2008, stainless steel, edition of 3, 780 x 170 x 150 cm
The Tongue is My Yardstick Thomas Kellein
‘The tongue is my yardstick’ – to quote Not Vital. Once again he has transformed a sense organ – all but unmediated – into a sculpture. In 1994 there were ears: countless black bronzes stuck into a thick, upright plaster shape, entitled Sausage and Ears. This was followed by Antlers + Eyes: white plaster antlers with plentiful dark eyes, like leaves on a tree, gazing down from the wall. And then there was the teaching that Vital took on in December 1988 in Cairo – when his Egyptian students asked what sculpture was, he referred them to their own noses. This led to the making of 171 Egyptian Noses in 1990, consisting of a tower of organs cast from individual human faces. Take almost anything by Not Vital, and you will find human organs and their sensual function. Sensuality means sensitivity, sensitivity means pain. Vital’s sculptural method involves making casts of the organs and impaling them. Now, after more than twenty years preparing the ground, the ‘tongue’ has emerged as the outstanding motif, a monument in its own right – upright and chased in stainless steel. At first, in his early gallery shows in New York, there were plaster or bronze animal cadavers, fixed to a wheel like a trophy on some sort of mountain path. Even the Pole Animal on a tree trunk (1982) was upright and 330 cm in height, like an orientation point in the Swiss Alps, where you have to be prepared for snow drifts and avalanches in winter. Similarly impaled on rods are the Sei Sorelle, six sisters, embodiments not only of the principle of totems and taboos, but also of Picasso’s famous maxim, ‘I do not seek, I find!’ Vital finds sensuality, but not only for himself – it is for us, too. His tower-like sculpture Gramophone is a homage to our sense of hearing. His immensely elegant sequence of marble hearing aids, His Master’s Voice (1992), was dedicated to the deaf Ludwig van Beethoven. However, with this new Tongue for Beijing, the time of the trophies, shocks and memento mori seems somewhat to have passed. Vital’s sights are no longer set on papillae, the little nodules that alert our brains. This Tongue of Vital’s – not only a taste organ, for it also touches and sucks and registers the temperature of foods, before passing them on to the digestive system, now (more than ever before) – stands before us in even greater sublime splendour. Gleaming, it points to yet another function – human speech. And in the People’s Republic of China, it may well also relate to the fact that medical students, training to become tongue diagnosticians, are said to have to scrutinise between fifteen and twenty thousand tongues during their training. The story of Tongue began in 1985 when Vital bought a calf’s tongue in a butcher’s shop in Lucca. He then took it to Pietrasanta, made a plaster mould and had it cast in bronze. The ensuing, first bronze Tongue was thirty-nine centimetres tall and perhaps Vital’s most impossible work of art. We need only recall reports of the horror that met Auguste Rodin’s Age of Bronze – a cast made, after much consideration, directly from the fine figure of the soldier Auguste Neyt with elegiacally raised arms, only to be initially rejected by the jury of the 1878 Salon in Paris. Because it was a cast! The extent of the jury’s mistake is clear when one views their decision in light of Rodin’s search for physical immediacy, for direct feeling, and his battle against historical traditions, in particular the canonisation of the art of Classical Antiquity. It fell to Rodin to pave the way for the twentieth century, a century that was to know direct pain. The good citizens and art connoisseurs of Switzerland have been able to see Not Vital’s work, including his Tongues, for some time now. I have heard some of their comments: ‘I don’t know whether it’s good or bad.’ And they were not especially amused by Vital’s hypertrophied Testicles of Michelangelo’s David (now measuring 138 x 120 x 97 cm) hanging on the wall in Kunsthalle Basel. So can a Tongue be a work of art? ‘If I say so’, might be Vital’s answer, but he held his tongue. He enlarged his 1985 Tongue, and ten years later – by now 200 cm in height – it was shown on a sculptor’s stool in the Sperone Westwater Gallery. On that occasion in New York, you could have walked into a virtual huntsman’s room and responded to the sight of body parts of dead animals with a grim, grinning dance. But what Americans would feel like dancing at the sight of animal entrails? 1996 saw the making of Vital’s Tongue in Carrara marble; this version is now in Kunsthalle Bielefeld. At the time, Germany had its own Rodin moment with the sculptor Not Vital. ‘Of all the pieces you’ve bought, I have my doubts about this one,’ was the reaction of one of my most valued colleagues. Admittedly, as yet there are no comparisons to be made with Vital’s work, no style and no library – as in the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges – where you could read clever things on the subject of tongues and, very important in art history, find a foothold. Although in 1951 Albert Einstein did allow himself to be photographed with his tongue out because the paparazzi were getting
"Tongue" 2001, silver, edition of 7, 37.5 x 8.5 x 9.5 cm
"Tongue" 2008, stainless steel, edition of 7, 37 x 8.5 x 9 cm
on his nerves. He took the newspaper picture (having cut out his companions) and sent it to his friends as a portrait of himself. And in 1973, the artist Peter Weibel – to name a contemporary of Not Vital – had his tongue cemented into position for an hour as part of the Action Raum der Sprache. But while the tongue is still as much of a sculptural taboo as ever, Vital simply takes this as his cue to enlarge the work. In 1995, he installed a bronze Tongue, 360 cm in height, outside his parents’ home in the Engadine. Once again he held his peace, and just showed the work with a smile. Now at 768 cm, the work has been chased in stainless steel for Beijing. It rises up like a monument to the twenty-first century. ‘The tongue is my yardstick,’ says the artist, perhaps suggesting to us – as the beholders of this work of art – that if sculpture today wants to break its own boundaries, it can celebrate an organ that uniquely links our cognitive capacities, our sensuality, our sex drive and our consumption of food and drink. What else is there? We are connected – by our tongues – with all other human beings and with all mammals. Archaic is the new modern. And, wherever possible, Not Vital adds pleasure to pain.
Translated from German by Fiona Elliott
Not Vital 1948
born in Sent, Engadine, Switzerland He currently lives and works in Sent, New York, and Agadez (Niger)
Selected Solo Exhibitions 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1993
"Tongue", Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Beijing, China "Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom", Currents – Art and Music, Beijing, China "10 Austrians + more", Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria "Punts", Galerie Luciano Fasciati, Chur, Switzerland "Lotus, Coffee and Stone Pine, Portraits, Snow and Boyfriend", Sperone Westwater, New York, USA The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, USA Galerie Guy Bärtschi, Geneva, Switzerland "New Sculpture", Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France "Agadez", Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany "Agadez" Albion, London, UK "New Sculpture", Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria Sperone Westwater, New York, USA "Milla larmas id 1 chamel", Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin, Germany "300 Camels", Central House of Artists, Moscow, Russia Chasa Jaura, Valchava, Switzerland Galerie Tschudi, Zuoz, Switzerland "Mias muntognas", Edith Wahlandt Galerie, Stuttgart, Germany "Vital", Galerie Guy Bärtschi, Geneva "Fat es Fat", Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, Switzerland Kunsthalle Göppingen, Göppingen, Germany Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Lugano, Switzerland Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France Galleria Cardi & Co., Milan, Italy "New Sculpture", de Pury & Luxembourg, Zurich, Switzerland "Meine Schafe", Gallerie Luciano Fasciati, Chur, Switzerland Galeri Nils Staerk, Copenhagen, Denmark "Snowballs", Baron/Boisanté, New York, USA Sperone Westwater, New York, USA "Skulpturer OchTeckningar",GalerieNordenhake,Stockholm, Sweden "Nototo", Milleventi, Milan, Italy "New Sculpture", Sperone Westwater, New York, Italy "Large Works on Paper", Baron/Boisanté, New York, USA "Totem und Tabu", Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden "Schoppa", Luciano Fasciati, Chur, Switzerland Galerie Lehmann, Lausanne, Switzerland "Sculpture", Sperone Westwater, New York, USA Galleria Milleventi, Turin, Italy Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone, Rome, Italy "Private View", Berggruen & Zevi Limited, London, UK Gallerie Lehmann, Lausanne, Switzerland "Cow Dung, New Bronze Works", Wooster Gardens, New York, USA "Adam, One Afternoon", Baron/Boisanté, New York, USA "disegns/squitschs in lain, Zeichnungen/Holzschnitte" Galleria d'Art Center Augustin, Scuol, Switzerland Gallerie Niels Ewerbeck, Vienna, Austria Mendelson Gallery, Pittsburgh, USA "Curtis Anderson, Not Vital", Baron/Boisanté, New York, USA "Skulpturen, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik", Galerie Edith Wahlandt, Stuttgart, Germany
1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983 1982 1981 1980 1979 1976 1974 1973 1972 1971
Berggruen & Zevi Limited, London, UK Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland "sculture recenti", Studio Guenzani, Milan, Italy "Cacche di Mucca", Galleria Via Farini, Milan, Italy "18 Buatschas", Kunsthandlung Luciano Fasciati, Chur, Switzerland "Bronzen", Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria "The Complete Prints and Multiples", Baron/Boisanté, New York, USA "Druck-Graphik & Multiples", Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur, Switzerland Baron/Boisanté, New York, USA PS Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Curt Marcus Gallery, New York, USA Galerie Ascan Crone, Hamburg, Germany Museé Rath, Geneva, Switzerland "Not Vital at Akhnaton", Centre of Arts, Akhnaton Hall, Zamalek, Cairo, Egypt "Sculptures And Works on Paper", The Greenberg Gallery Annex, St. Louis, USA "Not Vital, Dessins et Sculptures", Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris, France Galerie Montenay, Paris, France "Bilder und Skulpturen", Binz 39, Scuol, Switzerland "Plastiken und Zeichnungen", Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland Curt Marcus Gallery, New York, USA Galerie Ascan Crone, Hamburg, Germany Baron/Boisanté, New York, USA "Works on Paper", Swiss Institute, New York, USA "Skulpturen", Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne, Germany Gallery Nature Morte, Forum Art Fair, Zurich, Switzerland "Sculpture + Drawings", Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, USA Gallery Nature Morte, New York, USA Galleria Pinta, Genova, Italy "Drawings and Sculpture", Willard Gallery, New York, USA "Sculpturen en Tekeningen", Galerie Barbara Farber, Amsterdam, Netherlands "Not Vital at Nature Morte", Nature Morte, New York, USA "Recent Sculptures and Drawings", Mendelson Gallery, Pittsburgh, USA "Plastiken und Zeichnungen", Galerie Hartmann, St. Gallen, Switzerland Mendelson Gallery, Pittsburgh, USA Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus, Switzerland Gimpel-Hanover and André Emmerich Galerien, Zurich, Switzerland Altstadt-Galerie, Chur, Switzerland "Recent Drawings", Albert White Gallery, Toronto, Canada Gimpel-Hanover and André Emmerich Galerien, Zurich Mendelson Gallery, Pittsburgh, USA Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur, Switzerland Galerie Peter Noser, Zurich, Switzerland Dritte Galerie, Zofingen, Switzerland Galleria LP 220, Turin, Italy Galleria Diagramma, Milan, Italy Galerie d'art moderne, Chur, Switzerland
Published by: Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, on the occasion of Not Vital’s solo exhibition Tongue at Galerie Urs Meile in Beijing, China, from April 22 to September 21, 2008 Edited by: Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne Photography: Oak Taylor-Smith © 2008 Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Not Vital All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in written form by the publisher. Printed in China
Galerie Urs Meile, no.104, Caochangdi, Chaoyang District, 100015 Beijing, China, T+ 86 10 643 333 93 Galerie Urs Meile, Rosenberghöhe 4, 6004 Lucerne, Switzerland, T+ 41 41 420 33 18 galerie@galerieursmeile.com, www.galerieursmeile.com