Richard Deacon

In 1987 Richard Deacon installed two large sculptures with twisting, delicate forms in the Tibusstrasse, one on the roof of a temporary garage, the other on a vacant plot between two buildings. Like a Snail (A) consisted of a bunched up, undulating metal ribbon orbiting in an oval around a bulky kidney-shaped outline at its centre. The twisted wooden struts of Like a Snail (B) delineated the bulging structure of a wooden basket that was drawn together a third of the way up. Its open construction allowed visitors to walk through, made evident by the gap left in the basket’s circular base. Suspended at the top end of the structure was a compact ring element cased in plate metal.

Deacon’s concept for his two spatial bodies alluded to the bronze statue of the “Kiepenkerl”¹ (peddler). The artist was intrigued by the basket carried by the traditional itinerant peddler through which one can clearly see the provisions he was transporting. The basket was so full that “the dead hare is close to the top hanging out over the brim, with no room left for the dead pigeons that are dangling from the side. […] It struck me how the man, like a snail, is bearing all that’s essential on his back and is smoking a pipe.”² From this observation Deacon evolved his playful treatment of form and volume in his two works. The rhythmical structures were not only intertwined in terms of outward appearance but were also thematically bound to site-specific history and local culture.

Daniel Friedt

¹ The statue of the “Kiepenkerl” has been located since 1896 (reconstruction in 1953) on Spiekernhof and shows the local Münsterland peddler with his basket, pipe, knotty walking stick and linen smock. Cf. Bernd Thier, “Ein Denkmal entsteht neu”, published on 3.12.2013, http://blog.stadtmuseum-muenster.de/p=443 (last accessed on 1.12.2016).

² Richard Deacon, “Projekt: Like a Snail (A) / Like a Snail (B)”, in: Klaus Bußmann and Kasper König (eds.), Skulptur Projekte in Münster 1987, exhib. cat. Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, Cologne, 1987, 70.