The Swiss artists Fischli & Weiss and their quiet conquest of the art world

Since the Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss joined forces in 1979 to form the artist duo Fischli & Weiss, this partnership had proven beneficial several times; the two had mutually inspired each other and had already presented several works that had attracted great interest and amusement from the public.

Fischli & Weiss were just beginning to slowly become more and more well-known when they conquered Documenta in 1987 with their wonder machine, immortalized “The Way Things Go”

Fischli & Weiss's most important success

The artistic triumph of the artist collective Fischli & Weiss then began in 1987 at documenta 8 in Kassel: “The Way Things Go”, a quirky and deliciously exciting and fun film, became an absolute audience hit during documenta, which so many people wanted to see outside of documenta that it made the artists internationally famous in a fairly short time.

This “course of things” presents “life” as an art film by setting a continuous process in motion, similar to a Rube Goldberg machine.

This similarity was intentional; the inventor of this senseless, world-changing apparatus, Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, and the creator of this ingenious comic character, the American cartoonist Reuben “Rube” Goldberg , must have really seen the world in a very similar way to the two Swiss artists.

A Rube Goldberg apparatus is a nonsense machine, completely unnecessarily complicated, that accomplishes a task that is certainly not meaningful – as cumbersome as possible, with as many detours as the imagination allows and in as many individual steps as particles can be put together.

Rube Goldberg and his Professor Gorgonzola already saw the sole purpose of their machine as providing pleasure to an observer, and that is exactly what the process depicted in the film "The Way Things Go" achieves:

The viewer sees a structure that, over a length of about 25 meters, generates flames and chemical reactions, all kinds of movements, foam and explosions, and many more events in a chain reaction that is not always recognizable, one after the other, in which each action sets the next one in motion.

The components of this machine are typically not technically useful; tires and cans, plastic bottles and balloons, fireworks and much more are used – truly characteristic objets trouvés, found everyday objects that now become a work of art.

This machine finds its meaning solely in its activity, freely following the famous quote by the English philosopher David Hume: “From the fact that one thing follows another, nothing follows at all.”

A whole lot of fun, and if you've found chemistry and physics boring so far, you should definitely watch this film about the machine that can do nothing and does nothing but "machine".

Many international exhibitions by the artists Fischli & Weiss followed

Although their first solo exhibitions took place as early as 1985 at the Cologne Art Association and the Kunsthalle Basel, and by 1987 the artists had already made it into the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles , their real breakthrough came after their resounding success with the public at Documenta: Fischli/Weiss were invited to represent Switzerland several more times, at the Venice Biennale and at other important international art festivals.

This was followed by over 300 exhibitions across the world, and today the artist duo is probably represented in every self-respecting museum of contemporary art.

Collections of works by the artist couple have now also found their way into many places: In the Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Frankfurt and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Turin and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, in the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, in the MACBA Barcelona and the Middlebury College Museum of Art, in the museum in progress, Vienna and the SAFN Museum Reykjavík and the Schaulager Basel, in the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and in over 30 other art venues somewhere in our beautiful world.

The two artists are practically regulars at the Venice Biennale Swiss Pavilion at Expo 'n' Expo '92 in Seville, and participated in the biennials in São Paulo (1989), Sydney (1990, 1998, 2008), Porto Alegre, Brazil (2008), and Gwangju, South Korea (2010).

How much does a work of art by Fischli & Weiss cost?

Not necessarily very much: The unconditionally worthwhile “The Way Things Go” unfolds in all its splendor and absurdity on DVD starting from 29.90; a DVD of guaranteed good quality can be ordered at www.artfilm.ch/der-lauf-der-dinge-dvd for 47.00 CHF (38.05 €).

1986 rubber sculpture “Candle” , “One Who Left to Learn Fear,” a delightful but rather tiny sculpture made of unfired clay, went for a good $37,000; also in May 2013, the gelatin silver print of the photograph “The Car of Evil” in $57,500.

Or you might get lucky and catch a “Fischli & Weiss” at an event like the auction held a few years ago to benefit SOS Children’s Villages : The Fischli & Weiss painting did achieve the highest price, ahead of works by Jörg Immendorff, Jonathan Meese, Thomas Bayrle, Cosima von Bonin and Martin Kippenberger – but this highest price amounted to only 13,000 euros; the works of all the aforementioned artists usually fetch significantly less than such “peanut prices”.

Reception and appreciation of Fischli & Weiss

Since their first appearance at Documenta, there has been widespread agreement among critics that the artist collective Fischli & Weiss are among the best-known and most successful protagonists of contemporary Swiss art.

In the artist list of the largest artist database Artfacts.net, Fischli & Weiss were ranked 19th in 2012, and in the art compass of “manager magazin” the two took 26th place among the 100 best artists in the world.

Furthermore, Fischli & Weiss were of course among the favorites of art educators – whether photography or sculpture, installation and/or film, one has to search for a while to find art that is closer to everyday life and at the same time so surprising and amusing.

This art is also enjoyable for people who have absolutely no knowledge of art, and it allows these people direct access without any effort.

Artistic “colleagues” of Fischli & Weiss

Art critics see parallels in the often parodic attitude of her works to the unforgettable Dadaist, Surrealist and conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp and of course to the kinetic artist Jean Tinguely , but also to the Swiss poet and intermedial artist Karl-Dietrich Roth (Diter or Dieter Roth).

When it comes to the specific topic of the Rube Goldberg apparatus or “what-happens-next machine”, there are a few artists worth mentioning; this kind of playfulness is (fortunately) anything but new in art: Even in the Baroque period, people enjoyed elaborately conceived and built mechanical devices and water features, which very often already incorporated a good dose of mischief.

In the modern era, these beginnings evolved into "kinetic art" and became truly popular in the 1950s and 60s. Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp built kinetic objects of movement and light, while constructivist machines are known from the artists Naum Gabo and László Moholy-Nagy, Alexander Rodchenko, and Vladimir Tatlin.

More or less possible or impossible world machines, inspired by Rube Goldberg, have recently also appeared in the work of American artist Tim Hawkinson—complex devices that “produce” music or abstract art. In 2008, artist Christoph Korn designed an entire series of digital “NON machines” with extremely simple programming, confronting the viewer with deceleration and disconnection, the withdrawal of knowledge, or non-functionality.

The influence of Fischli & Weiss on subsequent artists

Especially in Switzerland, there are of course several young artists who look to the famous duo for inspiration. Sadly, the duo was torn apart at the end of April 2012 when David Weiss succumbed to cancer in Zurich .

Peter Fischli continues to work, initially on works he had started together with his partner: In March 2013, the sculpture “Rock on Top of Another Rock” , created over four years of collaborative work, was unveiled in front of the Serpentine Gallery in London's Kensington Gardens.

As the name suggests, this sculpture consists of “one stone on top of another,” enormous boulders, each so precisely balanced on the other that it looks as if it landed on top of it just then. This blend of Stonehedge reminiscence and everyday tourist landmark will remain in Kensington Gardens for a year before traveling to Doha, Qatar, where all stone is turned to sand.

The further development of kinetic art à la “Lauf der Dinge” is already underway – it is called “cybernetic art” , and here the artwork reacts to external influences, e.g. human intervention or electronic impulses.

As early as the 1960s, the father of cybernetic art, the Hungarian artist Nicolas Schöffer , conceived his cybernetic and spatiodynamic towers. Meanwhile, many artists incorporate exciting technical constructions into their artworks, powered by natural forces or motors, clockwork mechanisms, or manually. These artists are absolutely at the cutting edge of technology, and computer-controlled art objects are anything but rare these days.

What do Fischli & Weiss say about themselves and life?

Both artists have always been reticent about the interpretations of their work. This, of course, is then interpreted in turn; for example, the art magazine "Art" about "subversive nonsense messages ," and critics were only too happy to place them in the Dadaist tradition.

The artists themselves remained silent, looked at the world with amused childlike eyes, then rearranged this world a little with their childlike hands, thus making adults laugh as well.

Fischli & Weiss preferred to express their more than ironic attitude towards life in their works: They often satirize the conceptual art approach, detached from the creation of works, especially in the form of the "ready made" incorporation of readily available objects, by arranging seemingly everyday studio equipment in the corners of a museum room, which they carefully carve from polyurethane foam in the finest craftsmanship, then paint realistically, thus inwardly smilingly exposing the absurdity of the increasing disdain for artistic and craft work.

Such a work of art is also absolutely in keeping with the old tradition of trompe-l'oeil , the masterfully executed optical illusion, and in fact Fischli & Weiss are doing exactly what is expected of an artist according to the traditional concept of art that "art comes from skill", namely to imitate nature as faithfully as possible…

Peter Fischli has not yet announced how his work will continue after the loss of his colleague and friend David Weiss; he wants to first finish all the projects they started together in order to gradually approach the question of what his art should look like without his former partner.

Lina Sahne

Passionate author with a keen interest in art

www.kunstplaza.de