Thomas Schütte (b. 1954)

'I think it was John Berger who once said: Virtually all that has remained from the tangled mass of the 19th century are a few rough sketches. Pathos failed to establish itself. The 20th century successfully erased it until it formulated its own pathos formulas. Consequently, I prefer the sketch because you can just roll up a month's work and pack it under your arm. Not everything has to be cast in lead' (T. Schütte, interview with U. Loock, Thomas Schütte, Cologne 2004, p. 88).



Executed in 1989, Chinatown is a large-scale watercolour that prefigures the artist's seminal Chinatown model installation; part of Schütte's Big Buildings exhibition at the Marian Goodman Gallery in 1989. Large format works on paper have always been fundamental to Schütte's practice, the artist often preferring the flat to the concrete medium. In this aquamarine painting, accented with a series of canary yellow buildings assembled in the foreground, the artist has artfully articulated his vision for the later 1:20 model. As the artist has described, the work on paper takes on a special significance for the artist: 'I think it was John Berger who once said: Virtually all that has remained from the tangled mass of the 19th century are a few rough sketches. Pathos failed to establish itself. The 20th century successfully erased it until it formulated its own pathos formulas. Consequently, I prefer the sketch because you can just roll up a month's work and pack it under your arm. Not everything has to be cast in lead' (T. Schütte interview with U. Loock, Thomas Schütte, Cologne 2004, p. 88).