Ohne Titel, 1983
Information about the artwork
- Translated titleUntitled
- MaterialEmulsion paint, oil crayon, and shellac on paper
- Dimensions39.2 x 25.3 cm
- Year of acquisition1986
- Inventory numberUAB 411
- On viewOn view
- Copyright© Rosemarie Trockel. VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn [2026]. Photo: Haydar Koyupinar, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Museum Brandhorst, Munich
More about the artwork
Rosemarie Trockel is considered one of the first German artists to systematically address gender stereotypes, introducing machine-made line drawings and household appliances into the battleground of art. Works on paper and vases have been consistent means of expression in her practice since the late 1970s. The five-part series presents hand-painted red grid patterns into which eyes, fingers, noses, and a skull—severed and repeated—are integrated. “We are in the age of partial objects, bricks and leftovers,” wrote the philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari (1930-1992) in 1972. In 1980s Germany, this philosophy gained broader attention and found resonance within feminist discourse. While in other bodies of work Trockel turned the male sexual organ into a “partial object,” here she focuses on human sensory perception: seeing, touching, and smelling. The title of a contemporary catalogue essay accompanying these works quoted the confrontational statement by the Austrian writer Karl Kraus (1874-1936): “Man has five senses, woman only one.” This quote reflects the patriarchal environment in which Trockel developed her own critically ironic strategies.
