Exceptional Works: Rosemarie Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel, Untitled, 1987 (detail)

“We must understand fashion not only as an adornment of the body, but as acting for the body of society.”

—Rosemarie Trockel, 1987

Rosemarie Trockel

Untitled, 1987

Knitted wool in three (3) parts

Overall: 98 1/2 x 213 inches (250.2 x 541 cm)
Panel, each: 98 1/2 x 71 inches (250.2 x 180.3 cm)

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Rosemarie Trockel (b. 1952) is one of the most important contemporary conceptual artists to have emerged in postwar Germany. Questioning the criteria that legitimized art, social order, and gender identities in the male-dominated German art scene of the 1970s and ‘80s, Trockel produced her first Strickbilder or “knitting pictures” in 1985, which consist of machine-knitted wool stretched onto canvas frames.

Instantly recognizable as part of this acclaimed early series, Untitled (1987) is one of two large-scale triptychs featuring the woven text “Made in Western Germany.” Smaller, single-panel works featuring this text are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).

Rosemarie Trockel, 1989 (detail). Photo by Benjamin Katz

Designed by the artist on a computer, the knitted works were then machine-made, patterning the material with motifs or recognizable logos and stretched like canvas over stretcher bars.

Combining a supposedly “feminine” or domestic activity with a contrastingly “male” method of industrial production, Trockel engages with issues of commodification, feminism, the notion of “traditional women's work,” and other concerns in contemporary culture.

Rosemarie Trockel, Untitled, 1987 (detail)

“In the ’70s there were a lot of questionable women’s exhibitions, mostly on the theme of house and home. I tried to take wool, which was viewed as a woman’s material, out of this context and to rework it in a neutral process of production.”

—Rosemarie Trockel, 2003

“Made in Western Germany” references not only Trockel’s birthplace but also the commodification of art in a consumerist society. The repetition of the phrase in a gridlike pattern emphasizes its cultural significance, as well as engaging with questions of originality and mass production.

In 1974, German courts ruled that “Made in Germany” did not adequately distinguish between Western and Eastern Germany; consequently, “Made in Western Germany” became ubiquitous on consumer products made in the West. It became obsolete shortly after the present work was made, when the country was reunified in 1990.

Installation view showing a related work by Rosemarie Trockel, Untitled, 1987 at center, in the ongoing exhibition Collection 1970s–Present, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

“Like Duchamp's ready-mades ... Trockel's knitted pictures are not craftwork.... [They] reflect not only past social conditions which brought forth standardi[z]ed patterns ... they also reflect the present conditions in which not just objects but signs too are transformed into commodities.”

—Peter Weibel, artist and curator, 1988

Announcement for Eau de Cologne I, Monika Sprüth Galerie, Cologne, 1985

In 1985, examples of the knitting pictures were included in the first of three now-historic exhibitions titled Eau de Cologne at Monika Sprüth Galerie in Cologne. Organized by Trockel and Sprüth, this disruptive show featured only women artists, and was conceived in answer to the question: “How will art and the art establishment change as a result of the participation of more women?”

The accompanying magazine, edited by the artist Jutta Koether, included works, interviews, and writings by the show’s artists and other notable women in the art world. Trockel designed the cover for the third issue of the publication.

Rosemarie Trockel's design for the cover of Eau de Cologne No. 3, 1989

“Her wool pictures are engaged with the tradition of easel painting without wanting to signal their participation in a tradition in a constructive way necessarily, but wanting to indicate a certain kind of impossibility of not engaging with that genre.”

—Brigid Doherty, art historian, 2020

Consign with David Zwirner

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