Blauer Bunker
1984
Installation, ( 3 x ) ca. 200 x 157 cm, 161 x 108 x 126 cm.
Materials: synthetic paint on paper, latex on plaster, wood
Collection: Collectie Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (Inv. no. 2210).
Blauer Bunker by German artist Thomas Schütte is a scale model for a spherical bunker with a monumental staircase and a circular port as gateway. The whole stands on a plate resting on a wooden stillage-like construction. The bunker is painted uniformly bright blue, whilst the plate is only partially covered with blue paint strokes. On the walls beside and behind the bunker, three orange-painted sheets of paper are fixed, on which simple vegetal forms are depicted.
Blauer Bunker seems to be a model for a building that could be carried out, yet Schütte only made it as a sculpture. Schütte makes more architecture models like this. They are intended as 'mental models': buildings that allow Schütte to question the role and position of art and the artist in our present culture. A bunker is a safe haven in times of danger – for people, but also for art. At the same time, it's a place where you are isolated from your surroundings. Because of the monumental entrance, Schütte's bunker becomes a large and impressive building, like a museum. It is also reminiscent of eighteenth-century utopian architecture, where the perfect sphere is seen as a symbol of perfection and of the sublime.
With his model, Schütte raises questions regarding the museum as institution. It's a safe place to keep art, but how accessible is the museum, literally and figuratively? In Schütte's model, the threshold, the entrance, is very high and the sphere is literally inaccessible, because any door is lacking. The entrance is only an apparent entrance. The sheets on the walls contrast strongly with the bunker: orange versus blue, fragile nature versus powerful architecture. The presentation of both has something provisional about it: the sheets are only attached to the wall at the top, the bottom of the sheets curls slightly. The wooden structure on which the bunker rests, seems to have been put together equally quickly and looks like it has been painted casually. Schütte offers us a proposal, a sketch, not a definitive answer.
