Mae West

A scrapbook

Rita McBride’s public sculpture for Munich’s Effnerplatz, a beautiful 55-m high architectonic structure in the form of a rotated hyperboloid, made out of twisted carbon tubes, is one of Germany’s most controversial and debated public artworks. While local politicians have attacked and condemned the sculpture as an “egg cup” or a “wastepaper basket,” art experts and Munich inhabitants love the work, the planning of which started in 2003 and went through several changes until its installation in January 2011. The “Mae West,” as the sculpture has been named after the burlesque American actress, who, as a symbol of early feminism combined deliberate language and sexy curves, has become a real landmark in Munich’s city landscape.

The book accompanies the project from the early drafts to the final engineering and sheds some light on the political process behind it. Simply put together as a scrap book, files from Rita McBride’s archive reflect the complicated relationship between art and public/political opinions, and provide an uncommented insight into the various mechanisms and difficulties of the development of one of Germany’s largest public sculptures.

The publication is part of the series of artists’ projects edited by Christoph Keller.