WEBVTT

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(ambient electronic music)

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(tapping bowl)

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Every human being should know what the sun
is,

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and I don't have to explain to somebody what
the sun is,

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and I don't want to explain to somebody what
pollen is.

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That is something which I sifted it there
to enjoy it and share it with many people,

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but it's not my task to explain this.

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That is the secret and the beauty
and the power and the potential of all this.

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(tapping sifter)

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For me, the pollen is the beginning
of the life of the plants and not less.

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The pollen has an incredible color,
but it's not a pigment for a painting.

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All the pollen I collect is in the close vicinity
of the village where we live in southern Germany.

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And the most beautiful is the dandelion pollen.

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When you sit days and days in a dandelion
meadow,

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it's an incredible experience.

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And it's something totally different
than what our society thinks

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of what you should do or what you should achieve
in an hour or in a day or in a week or in

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a month.

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(tapping sifter)

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The pollen piece at MOMA was pollen from hazelnut.

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They blossom in very early spring.

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For one month about, I can collect one jar
of pollen.

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The pollen which was here at MOMA
was from the early '90s to last year.

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(tapping sifter)

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It's about 15 to 18 seasons.

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This was by far the biggest pollen piece I
ever made.

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The other pollen pieces I made
were like one-quarter of this piece.

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My father worked as a doctor
in a small town in southern Germany.

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There was this one friend, Jakob Braeckle
is his name,

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who was this artist from a local town.

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He was the only friend of my parents.

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He showed my parents many things
which somehow became very important

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for our family and for myself.

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And I think this glass house which my parents
built

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and which we are still living in

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somehow wouldn't have been possible without
him.

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We had an incredible, beautiful relationship.

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I think the main influence was
he was very interested in Chinese philosophy

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and Laozi and Brancusi.

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When I was 15, I could remember by heart
all chapters of the Tao Te Ching.

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My favorite chapter was one, number one, and
number 25.

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This exhibition at Sperone Westwater,
the space is a very difficult space.

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It's not an easy space.

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It's a very interesting space.

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I think I found a very beautiful solution,
to use two floors with an old work, with beeswax

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ziggurats,

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and then combine it with new work,
with all these brass ships.

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This installation was for me the first time
I did something like this.

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Test the integrity of all this, it's like
one piece.

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My beeswax step pyramids which I made,
I give the title Ziggurat,

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which refers to Mesopotamian step pyramids.

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For me, it was always very beautiful
that you can do something today in the 21st

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century

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which is not an imitation
but which has a connection to art which is

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4,000 years old.

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Question: what is the boats actually made
out of?

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— Brass.
— Brass?

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— Brass, yeah.

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They actually brass boats?

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Brass, yeah.

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Okay.

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All right.

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Very simple brass.

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Right, right, right, right.

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Even the tips?

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Even like even like the tip?

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Yeah, yeah, it's one piece which I just folded.

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Oh, okay.

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It's not welded, nothing.

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Just like paper folding.

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Ah, got you.

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Oh, how did you get the brass to bend like
that?

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Yeah, I did that.

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You did it?

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Yeah, I made all the ships myself.

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Ah, got you.

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Once in in high school, I wrote like a 10-page
thing.

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It's about Brancusi, and it was about Laozi.

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And the teacher came, and in front of the
whole class,

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he said, "Wolfgang, you really cheat.

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You had the Laozi lying there under your table.

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I don't believe this."

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And then I got really upset,
and then he said, "And who is this Brancusi?

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I don't know who this is."

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(chuckles)

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"Who is this?

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I never heard about this man."

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And then I then I stood up
and somehow by heart, in front of the whole

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class,

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I recited the whole chapters out loud.

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I got so emotional.

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When I look back, it was already this very
strong strive

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for something totally different.

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Pollen is far from the other works,
but still, I feel in such a major exhibition,

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in a gallery,

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it's very beautiful to have the shelf of pollen
jars there.

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So this is beech.

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This is pine.

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This is hazelnut, the same which is now at
MOMA.

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And this is from moss, a very fine...

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It's an extremely fine...

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It's nearly like a liquid, so fine, it really
falls.

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It's also very good.

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Smell it.

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Yeah, my father had this incredible interest
in art,

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and then, towards his midlife, it was a real
crisis for him.

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He had begun to paint
and made really very beautiful white paintings.

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But then for him, of course,
it was impossible to become an artist,

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so there was a real tension.

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And for myself, I was then a teenager,
and not like a normal teenager who would oppose

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his parents.

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I was following everything what my parents
did.

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I think we only lived three years in this
glass house,

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and then there was this travel to Turkey.

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People in small villages invited us into their
homes,

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simple houses with rooms totally empty, with
some pillows,

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and my parents came home, and all the furniture
disappeared.

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The main thing was that we wanted to have
only the art

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in a space and not to be disturbed by anything
else.

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The beginning of the '60s,
my father saw these books about Indian tantric

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art.

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He was somehow so struck by the drawings,
which looked like a Mondrian, but were like

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400 years old.

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And then he said, "I want to see this country
where this is coming from."

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And this was actually the reason
for the first travel to India of my parents.

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And we, my sister and I, we were like 15 years
old.

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India is overwhelming.

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I mean, it's for everybody overwhelming.

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And I remember the first night in Delhi,
we arrived like five o'clock, and then we

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took a walk.

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You could not walk on the sidewalk.

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It was people were lying there, like one after
the next.

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It looked like a cemetery.

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My parents began to weep.

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So it was a real emotional experience on every
level

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and then seeing all this artworks and all
this architecture

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but also the human existence, which was even
much more...

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It was the deepest experience, I think.

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My parents began to support a village in south
India.

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I have this studio now there some years.

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People always think that I became a Buddhist,
which is not true at all.

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I chose not to enter a monastery.

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I became an artist,
and art is about not knowing where you are

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going.

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(tapping tub)

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I was very interested in art when I was in
high school.

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For me, artists were like semi-gods,
and when I met then some artists

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and it was for me such a shock (laughs)
and to the other way that I began to study

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medicine

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with all the ideals you can have as a doctor,
to save mankind and humanity.

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In German university, you can go to any lecture
you want,

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so I went to philosophy and psychology and
psychiatry,

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and I was searching, searching.

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I couldn't imagine to go write a thesis in
a lab.

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Then I found a professor who said,
"If you have really a good idea

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which is totally independent."

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Then I asked him if I could write a thesis
on the hygiene of drinking water in south India,

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which would give me a total freedom
from all this kind of thing.

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And he said, "Go ahead.

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If you do it well, there's no problem."

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And that's what I did.

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And then I went to all these villages
around the village which my parents supported

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and stayed there for half a year.

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And that was somehow when I came back,
it was such a intense experience that I...

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And I began to carve this brahmanda, this
egg.

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"Brahmanda" means "the egg of Brahma,"
so it's like a universal egg.

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The beginning of the universe, that was the
idea.

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I made this work in 1972.

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This was a boulder from nearby, from a quarry.

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It's a very hard stone, and I worked here
on top of this small hill near the forest

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for three months.

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It was a very intense time,
thinking of what I want to do with my life.

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Finally, when it was finished, just before
Christmas,

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everybody thought I would never come back
to the university.

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All my friends, they called, and,
"Where is Wolfgang?

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What is he doing?"

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Finally, when this was finished,
I said to myself and to my parents

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that I would not become a doctor.

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I really wanted to become an artist.

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But I would finish my medical studies,
which would take another two years.

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From 1972 until '74,
when I then finally left the university,

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these two years were so important for me,
was, I think, the most difficult time in my life,

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where all this tension built up,
and then, only like half a year later,

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I made the first milkstone.

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(milk pouring)

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The first milkstone was the direct answer
to what I had seen at the university and in

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the hospitals.

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I'm still amazed that I could give such a
direct answer

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with such an artwork.

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How temporary milk is and how 
eternal a stone is.

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Art is, for me, also that it can have these
connections

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over many centuries or thousands of years.

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I always thought about beeswax.

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It's very close to pollen.

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The first wax pieces were very small works.

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I wanted to have just only beeswax,
but then, of course, it's not stable really.

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It's not an easy, practical thing to do.

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I work from the inside, and somehow,
I had to have my head inside these small pieces,

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and I remember this experience
of just having only your head inside.

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What an incredible experience this was,
and I had really the idea to make a space

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which not only your head is inside,
that your body is inside,

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just surrounded by beeswax and nothing else.

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The beginning of the beeswax spaces I made
were for exhibitions, so it's a different

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technique

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where I made slabs which you can install.

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The one which I made now at the Phillips,
they can be permanent,

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so I put the wax directly on the wall,
and it's like one piece, and you cannot remove it.

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My smallest wax room I ever made.

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So it's a more intense experience.

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The aroma of the beeswax has a deep feeling.

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It's like going into a cave or going into
another world.

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If the beeswax is in the dark,
it doesn't have this golden glow,

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and it's a very simple way of having this
golden glow,

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with just a simple light bulb,

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because that gives this yellowish light on
the beeswax,

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which has a connection to the medieval paintings,

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the golden background.

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I began these works in this small village
in southern Germany for myself.

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I was 27 or so, and I had the first pollen jars.

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I had the first milkstones.

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I felt this is the most important thing in
the world.

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This will change the world.

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I was extremely naive.

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I had this strive to show this as soon as
possible

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to as many people as possible in the world.

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(visitors chattering)

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My idea of exhibitions in showing this was
about this.

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I felt this is the essence of life
and this is something which holds the world

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together.

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And it was not about becoming a famous artist.

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It was really, I felt, this is what I searched
in medicine

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and somehow I did not find it in the medical
science.

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I feel I never changed my profession.

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I did with these things what I wanted to do
as a doctor.

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(visitors chattering)

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(ambient electronic music)

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To learn more about "Art in the Twenty-First Century"

00:18:10.348 --> 00:18:12.164
and its educational resources,

00:18:12.164 --> 00:18:16.419
please visit us online at PBS.org/Art21

00:18:17.288 --> 00:18:20.564
"Art in the Twenty-First Century" is available on DVD

00:18:20.564 --> 00:18:26.135
To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS

00:18:26.135 --> 00:18:32.124
(ambient electronic music)