The Snowman as Modern Art

Anyone who has been to art school knows the groundbreaking work of the Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss, whose titillating Rube Goldberg-esque videos often wake students from their lecture-room slumber. Recently, Fischli, dressed in all black, stood on the chilly roof of the Art Institute of Chicago along with two museum employees and a snowman. Everyone was smiling—thanks to Fischli, who has been changing the snowman’s facial expression daily.

“Snowman” is the museum’s newest installation, and it has travelled a long way; it was first displayed at a power plant in Germany, in 1990. After the Chicago exhibit ends, in October, the snowman’s journey continues to San Francisco, and then to MOMA, in New York City. It’s another delightful example of Fischli and Weiss taking everyday objects and creating something arresting and whimsical. I flew to Chicago to see the installation because I happen to be a snowman expert, the author of “The History of the Snowman.” Snowmen are among humanity’s oldest forms of folk art, and some of the greatest artists sculpted with snow, including Michelangelo. More recently, the British artist Gary Hume has followed in the footsteps of Fischli and Weiss by presenting the snowman as art.

Framing the snowman as modern art brings the snowman back to its deservedly lofty status, after about a century of degradation in alcohol ads (which I refer to as the “Dean Martin Years”) and in the unfortunate “Frosty the Snowman” movie. Those bland, anodyne cultural moments obscured the snowman’s colorful history of sex and violence, including scandalous happenings like the Miracle of 1511, in Brussels, where snowmen and snowwomen were shaped into politically charged and pornographic scenes, and the Schenectady Massacre of 1690, in which many colonists were killed when nothing but a pair of snowmen were left to guard the gates of Fort Schenectady.

Fischli’s own history with making snowmen is admittedly limited to those encased in life-support refrigerators. He came up with the idea for “Snowman” in conversations with his partner, Weiss (who passed away five years ago), in 1987, and the idea was executed two years later. Fischli explained how the snowman-in-a-box concept works: “A copper snowman is used as a base, and filled with cooler liquid, and the box is filled with humidity and builds out after four or five days.” Basically, the condensed water ices up and makes a snowman.


Fischli is quick to point out that although some observers want to present his work as a poster snowman for global warming, this is not the case. “It was a commissioned piece,” he said. “They were looking for a piece for in front of a power plant. We decided it had to be something that was dependent on the power of the power plant. The snowman may be a metaphor for our climate crisis, but it’s running on electricity, so it’s a contradiction, because it’s also contributing to global warming . . . but the piece is about taking care of something and protecting it . . . and being dependent on something. Someone else has to take care of him. And the contradiction between artificial and nature, because I’m making snow from a machine.”

Later, during a public lecture at the museum, Fischli was asked if the snowman was melting and if the water outside the box hinted at a malfunction. He replied, “When I first brought him out, there was sun on his belly and I felt sadistic, but that was part of the fun. The puddles of condensation I especially liked . . . that there was an electrical wire running through the puddles.” We walked over those wires later, at the rooftop reception, where a large gathering hung out with the snowman, sipping champagne and, like the snowman, slowly froze in the cold air.


Sara Berman’s Closet
