Säule mit Totenkopf

The installation “Pillar with Skull” was made in 1970 and then expanded and adapted over subsequent years. This is the first time that the pillar motif occurs in Gironcoli’s work. On this pillar there is an allusive death’s head made of gypsum. The pillar is made of bulky rings, and it first tapers off, but then becomes larger again at the top. It looks like an anthropomorphous form. Its irregular shape and clumsy execution can be explained by knowing how it was made. Gironcoli wanted to use a template to shape this work freely with his hands, working directly on the wet gypsum. He said: “This work, which in truth was a failure, greatly inspired my imagination. (…) This form playfully brought me to the idea of a backbone that was so decayed and destroyed (…), and that reminded me of the skull with which I crowned it by quickly adding it to the gypsum.” Other elements of the installation are a table that looks like a monumental altar with various tools on it, and hook-like instruments are in an open wooden box on the wall. The ceremonious feel is enhanced by the bowls, ready to take in liquid. This setting with raw materials is full of ruptures, “mistakes” in the casting and manufacturing processes, and the whole indicates potential action, a space where cult rituals might take place, with its altar and skull. In this installation we see a laterally reversed swastika for the first time in Gironcoli’s work, and the artist described the making of this as follows: “And when I saw it all put together (…), it was not dramatic enough for me. I then had the idea of adding a swastika. (…) this is reversed left to right, and it was this suddenly so political gesture that gave my figure its meaning.” On accompanying works on paper from this period there are also irritating swastikas, some even on flags with a red background, in which the repression of the past is again and again made visible in an obsessive scenario. Like the death’s head, or the figure of the Madonna in his later works, Gironcoli uses the swastika motif (usually reversed) as a kind of empty formula for pathos. In the light of Catholic Austria and its role in the Nazi period, Gironcoli uses such clearly recognizable images as revenants, empty signs that nonetheless are charged with uncanny significance and emotion.