MUSA - The City as Art Lover (de) - a podcast by CastYourArt.com

MUSA - The City as Art Lover

The collection of the city of Vienna shows an enormous variety of approaches to the human figure. In other words: the sculpture steps off its pedestal - or not.

The museum on demand (MUSA) houses much of the artwork purchased by the City of Vienna through the years and is currently displaying them in the exhibition “re_figuring spaces”. The collection that owes its existence mostly to sponsorship initiatives of the municipality provides a glimpse of the different positions on sculpture and their evolution in the last half-century, as well as a who’s who of the Austrian postwar art scene.

The interest for the preoccupation with the human figure is the constant of the exhibition, likewise the themes of irruption and fragmentation defining modern and postmodern sensibility can be found in the very diverse works.

While the techniques of dealing with the issue of the human body have been expanded enormously, from photography and performance to the allusion to the body by its mere absence, the stone pedestal statues made for eternity still maintain their position. A huge variety of materials is used in the works; guided tactile tours for the visually impaired are also available.

The body allows access to beauty as well as to the brutal and grotesque, but by the same token questions arise regarding the historical, social and political context. The body has still maintained its vital importance in modern and postmodern times; perhaps only by now it has reached the necessary ambivalence to achieve its goals in artistic practice, and to question the boundaries of social identity as well as political and sexual orthodoxies.

In many of the displayed works the conceptions of how the self and identity are embedded within, and confined by the body, are being undermined in more or less subtle ways. They remind us of the frailty of the human body’s existence, eternally in peril of passing over into a different physical state, at which the artworks present themselves as a memento mori.

So where is this self located, if not within the boundaries of our body? If the body can be a valid object for display even as divided, fragmented or actually absent one, where is the limit? Finally, beyond movement and the flow of time one arrives at mere existence or nonexistence..

The human figure is treated, penetrated, displayed, transformed, is being operated with. Here the artists or a live persons body itself becomes the location, origin and subject of reflection. Beyond the parameters of sculpture as such, a large part of this current in postwar art has generated a vide variety of practices by which the territory of the body can be explored subcutaneously. More radical forms of reflection serve as backdrop for referring to the “I” as the center of existence. The recurrent re-turn to the body as origin of contemplation and container of identity reveals the eternal relevance of the issue.

The evolution of the enquiries concerning the human body, which are subject to constant changes, ranging from new diseases to genetic engineering, robotics, to the expansion of the limits of human life with comatose states, in vitro fertilization and prenatal diagnosis, perpetually generate new domains of reflection.
The question whether if there is any identifying feature distinguishing the sculptural oeuvre of postwar Austria has to be decided by the visitor, given the enormous variety of artistic production. At least the exhibition provides a good overview. It is in any case not too daring to predict that the interest for the examination of the human figure will remain a constant in fine arts.

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