The Art of Advent: Day Seven
We are a week into the Art of Advent and, although St Andrews has had a few snow flurries, the snow man is yet to grace our three streets. Over the pond, New Yorkers, however, got to enjoy a snowman all year round in 2019. Exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, Peter Fischli and David Weiss created an actual Snowman who stood in a glass door freezer. Taking inspiration from the French artist Ben Vautier’s question “If everything is sculpture why make sculpture?”, the creation of a snowman making viewers aware of quotidian sculptural forms around them and their own creation potential in making them. The sculpture itself is very simple, made out of three spheres placed on top of each other but, more than the object itself, the discussion around the potential for art in our everyday takes its conceptual focus.
Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Snowman, 1987/2016. Copper, aluminium, glass, water, and coolant system, 218 x 128 x 165 cm.
Fischli describes how the snowman is a “sculpture that almost anyone can make” but, set within the sculpture garden year round, proves paradoxical: it is only because of the technical, expensive, and energy-dependant technology that the sculpture survives. To create the snowman, humidity is pumped into the freezer which then condenses around a mould to create its effect. Snowman was originally made as a site-specific sculpture in 1987 for a German thermic power plan, who used the energy created by the heat to keep the snowman cool. Electricity dependant in New York, as the world heats up, a sculpture that artificially creates snow seems somewhat out of place from an ecological perspective.
This notion of the juxtaposition between the everyday and out-of-place is, however, central to the Snowman project. One does not expect, within the museum context, especially on a summer’s day to see a snowman. Awakening viewers’ to the potential for art in strange places – even in their own backyard – is what Fischli and Weiss project is all about.
Snowman exhibited in MOMA’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden
Bibliography
Museum of Modern Art. “If Everything Is Sculpture Why Make Sculpture? Artist’s Choice: Peter Fischli”. Date Accessed: 7th December 2023. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/4982.