When you walk out of the main station in the ´dorf, there’s a guy on top of a pillar who takes your photograph. I saw him the first day I arrived here when I wandered out on to the small square, my life on my back, gulping intrepidly at the air of my new town. He was up there above me, crumpling his blue suit as he leaned over his camera, left eye squinting into the view finder, his forefinger adjusting the lens. Turned out he was a sculpture, but I did double take. A few weeks later I encountered my second sculpture on a pillar — a man carrying a small boy on his shoulders. They eyed me as I rode past on my way to my new job. Since then it’s been a treasure hunt to find all of the elevated life-like sculptures around the ´dorf. There are nine all together and each one surprises you when you round a corner or step off a tram and stumble across a new one. I recently had the buzz of watching on as a mate from Oz did a double take at a couple kissing above a main road.
They are ordinary people, doing ordinary things: A woman carrying a child on her hip on the riverfront; a couple holding hands and surveying the main square; a man striding over the city to work with his briefcase swinging; and a woman called Marlis gazing up at the sky. Just the other day I stumbled across a holiday-maker at a tram stop with his towel and flippers. And my favourite arrived on her pillar in 2006. She’s a lonesome bride in a windswept lane.
Once you know where they are, you get acquainted with them more intimately. You recognise their profiles from a distance, outlined against the sky, or sliding into view from behind a building. And then you get more familiar with their details up close — the way the lump in Marlis’s throat sticks out because she is craning her neck so far back; the yellow flowers on the mother’s dress; the happy, lost look on the bride’s face; and the way the whole torsos of the kissers are pressed tightly against one another.
They are the Düsseldorf Sylites, each one created in polyester and acrylic. The series is a work in progress by artist Christoph Pöggeler, who was born in Münster in the north and studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts in 1977-85. He now lives and works in the ‘dorf. He won the City of Düsseldorf Art Award in 1993 and the Rhineland Art Prize in 2008.
The project began on June 7th, 2003 with the experimental “Stylites – live” exhibition, in which real people climbed on top of five advertising pillars around the centre of Düsseldorf. Individuals of different ages and backgrounds had their time on top of pillars to rap, rave or simply stare back at the curious spectators below. Among the various stylites were a manager, a homeless person, a housewife and a Turkish adolescent.
Suddenly it was not famous contemporaries or historically important figures on pedestals; it was just anybody on a pillar. And the artist turned them into sculptures.
Apparently we’ve been lured to climb on pillars for centuries. It’s thought that St Simeon the Elder was the first guy to get up on a stone column in Syria in the 5th century AD. Apparently he wanted to be closer to god so he prayed, fasted and meditated up there, given food and other necessities by admirers and passers-by. A really determined guy, he stayed up there until he died 37 years later. He attracted audiences of kings as well as commoners, and he was followed by a string of imitators. The word Stylite comes from stylos — Greek for column.
Another high-up art project is taking place this year on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, organised by sculptor Antony Gormley. “One & Other” envisions a different, randomly selected volunteer to occupy the plinth and do whatever they fancy for an hour, 24 hours a day for 100 days. There should be an interesting cross-section of Britain up there. A lot of ranting is expected and the artist admitted he will be very upset if nobody takes their clothes off.
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