Rosemarie Trockel – a multifaceted artist with the courage to criticize

We warmly congratulate Rosemarie Trockel on her 60th birthday, which was celebrated on November 13, 2012!

Rosemarie Trockel – for example, her work features beautiful sculptures made from and with living plants, which can be viewed in German sculpture parks. However, many gardeners are unaware of these ever-changing and constantly evolving sculptures. Some gardeners don't even know Rosemarie Trockel, who ranks among the top third of the 100 most sought-after artists in the world on the "eternal ranking list" of what is probably the most well-known online artist database.

Trockel has consistently ranked quite high on the annual art bestseller lists for several years, and relevant publications frequently cite her as one of the world's most important artists . An artist who predates Salvador Dalí or Alberto Giacometti should surely be on everyone's lips; why isn't that the case?

Well, one reason for this is probably that, according to reports from those close to her, Rosemarie Trockel shows no particular interest in increased media presence; she is generally described as rather reserved towards public display. Another reason might be that her work is far too diverse and imaginative to be merchandised, that is, to generate and sell all sorts of off-the-shelf products derived from her works.

Rosemarie Trockel was born in 1952 in Schwerte, North Rhine-Westphalia, and grew up not far away in Leverkusen-Opladen, in what was then a largely rural area. The daughter of a civil servant and a mechanical engineer, she wasn't constantly exposed to art by her family, but even without any formal "early artistic encouragement," Trockel began drawing early and intensively.

Before dedicating herself to art, the dutiful daughter first completed a teacher training program "to appease her parents." At the age of 22, she enrolled at the Cologne School of Applied Arts, where she studied painting. Among others, she studied under Werner Schriefers, a painter and also a trained textile artist; perhaps this laid the foundation for her idea of ​​creating textile artworks.

Since graduating in 1978, Trockel has explored many fields of art, producing paintings and drawings, creating sculptures and objects, designing photographs and prints, and conceiving installations and video works.

Shortly after completing her studies, she met the architect Monika Sprüth, who later became her gallerist. Sprüth frequently accompanied the artist on her trips to the USA, where Trockel met artists such as Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, and Jenny Holzer.

The works of these women, highly regarded in art circles, reinforced her own artistic ideas, in which, for example, the role of women in the society of the time was critically examined; Trockel also formulated a very fundamental critique of the existing art establishment.

Since her first solo exhibition in Cologne and Bonn in 1982, her works have garnered increasing enthusiasm. Trockel's machine-knitted pictures, in which she cast traditionally feminine domains in a completely unfamiliar light and ironically questioned the meaning of many common symbols, became particularly well-known. Towards the end of the 1980s, Trockel also gained recognition in the USA, exhibiting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1988 and in Chicago and Boston in 1991.

From that time on, things went steadily uphill: In 1997, at documenta X in Kassel, she built a “House for Pigs and People” together with Carsten Höller.

Here, peaceful and happy pigs were united with relaxed people, which not only made factory farming and slaughter seem downright grotesque, but also fundamentally questioned the current relationship between humans and animals for all those who wanted to think that far; such a question, perceived as outrageous, caused a great stir.

Rosemarie Trockel was the first woman to design the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale on her own in 1999. The list of artists represented there to date, in light of gender distribution, clearly illustrates how necessary Trockel's commitment to women artists is in the male-dominated art world.

In 1998, Trockel was appointed professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Her regular exhibitions and projects include, for example, a work created in 2006 for the Cologne Sculpture Park and her participation in the Skulptur Projekte Münster 2007. In October 2011, Trockel was awarded the Kaiserring of the city of Goslar, and since 2012 she has been a member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Trockel's art is rightly popular; it is inventive, witty, not limited to any one material , and consistently ironic. Her works are multifaceted and peppered with numerous allusions, and if a review speaks of "aggressive irony against male fantasies," you should probably first check whether the author is a man. Because those men (and sometimes women) who want to dominate art criticism persistently pigeonhole Trockel as a feminist, even though she herself hasn't written much on the subject.

Undoubtedly, she is among those who don't believe that women are less valuable than men, and of course Trockel considers it unfair when men receive more money than women for the same work, and believes that this must be fought against. It's unlikely that many people in our society would disagree.

Aside from that, Trockel simply wants to pursue her profession, namely creating art. That's why she has always resisted the term "women's art"; she dislikes it intensely. When asked if she has a female perspective on things, she dryly replies, "What other perspective should I have?"

For her, the fact that women have a different perception than men is a given, not a question of emancipation. Rosemarie Trockel's work is a constant and vital call to action for all women who share this view, urging them to take matters into their own hands without allowing themselves to be reduced to social criticism or feminism.

A brief overview of the artist's work can be found on the website of the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt am Main.

Rosemarie Trockel – A Retrospective in New York

Furthermore, you can view a number of her installations and works in the following video about the New Museum New York's 2012 retrospective.

The exhibition “Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos” at the New Museum in New York presents the extensive and diverse work of the German artist Rosemarie Trockel. The German artist is known for works that address questions of sexuality, feminism, and the hierarchy of systems. “A Cosmos” encompasses all three main gallery floors of the New Museum.

The exhibition showcases drawings, collages, installations, videos, furniture, clothing, and Rosemarie Trockel's famous "knitted pictures." For this retrospective, Trockel places her work alongside those she considers kindred spirits. For example, Trockel's ceramics from recent years are on display, as are Leopold's and Rudolph Blaschka's 19th-century glass models of marine animals.