Term Paper on Fritz Koenig and His Herd X
Fritz
Koeing was born in Germany in the year 1924; he was one of the most prominent
sculptors since world war. And his work Herd X has created quite a name for
himself. The only work of art in or around the World Trade Center that
miraculously survived the terror attack of September 11, 2001, is the enormous
fountain sculpture “Kugelkaryatide” created and built by the Bavarian sculptor
Fritz Koenig. In spite of the fact that “The Sphere” endured, it is not
undamaged. It carries a heavy mark that makes it a powerful witness of the
catastrophe that occurred on that fateful day. As the centerpiece of a memorial
for the victims of the attack, it will be a witness of the awful and appalling
day for generations to come.
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Koenig, born in 1924 in Würzburg, Germany, is one of the most important and
prominent German sculptors after World War II. His work was shown in exhibitions
all over the world. He calls “The Sphere” his biggest child. It is 25 feet high,
cast in 52 bronze segments, put together in Bremen, and loaded as a whole to
Lower Manhattan. The Port Authority commissioned it in the late sixties.
Initially, Henry Moore was assumed to create the fountain. But the twin towers
architect Minoru Yamasaki, who had seen Koenig’s work at the Staempfli Gallery
in Manhattan, decided to ask the German sculptor.
Filmmaker Percy Adlon (“Baghdad Café”) who has made two previous documentaries
about Fritz Koenig in 1979 and 1996 met with Koenig five weeks after the attack
and the two visited Ground Zero. The film shows Koenig in New York City before,
during and after his confrontation with the remains of his sculpture between the
rubble of Ground Zero. The New York scenes are interacting with Koenig’s story
about the making of the biggest bronze sculpture of our time. A story of an
inconceivable task and a story of broken art as a symbol of tormented humanity.
“Thirty years ago, his work was placed in the five-acre plaza that anchored
Manhattan's Twin Towers, but the sculpture could not but be overshadowed by what
were then the world's tallest buildings. When "The Sphere" was to have its
official unveiling in 1971, the Watergate scandal again minimized the
sculpture's public impact.
Originally, the artist, who has also created memorials at a Nazi concentration
camp in Mauthausen, Austria and to Israeli athletes killed at the Munich
Olympics in 1972, did not want the work to be restored, preferring to let it
rest as "a beautiful corpse," in his words. But more recently, his feelings
changed, and this week he made the journey from Landshut, Bavaria, where he
lives, to lower Manhattan to guide metal workers as they dressed the sculpture's
wounds without erasing its scars. Koenig says he now believes the work "should
be placed upright again so that its spirit is not corrupted, and so that the
memory of the place where people worked and met would be truly represented. As
an artist and a craftsman, I offer my professional services to help to put it up
for the families of the victims in the best possible way." He said his sphere
"now has a different beauty, one I could never imagine…. It has its own life -
different from the one I gave to it.”
Also Koenig has previously created memorials at a Nazi concentration camp in
Austria and to Israeli athletes killed at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
Surrounded by the remains of New York’s World Trade Center lie hundreds of works
of art, numerous created by famous artists. While nothing compares to the human
lives lost in the blight, the ruin of so many works symbolize a consequential
loss to the art world.
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