All Photos By Gail

For many artists working in the 1960s and ’70s, ideas often superseded the physical making of art. These ideas were typically ideological, structural, and philosophical in nature and conveyed in the form of words, grids, and graphs. By the 1980s, Thomas Schütte and other artists ushered in a return to representation, which some critics described as a response to a “hunger for images.“ Around this time, cherries, watermelon, and other kinds of comestibles became motifs in his work.

On view here is one of Schütte’s most ambitious Installations, Melonely (1986), whose title combines the words melon and lonely. The title also calls to mind melancholy, a psychological state incommensurate with the lighted watermelon slices. The artist anthropomorphizes the scattered sculptures of fruit, drawing out a tragiccomic quality from the otherwise simple forms.

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan as Part of the 2025  Exhibit,  All In Order.