After his decision to incorporate the lessons of weaving into his art, however, Bayrle’s work changed, deepened. The industrialised society was still there, but his mixed feelings about it – “always 50/50”, he is fond of saying – became more emphatic. In the variably coloured Bügelman (Coat Hanger Man, 1970) series of screenprints, a human head is made up of innumerable hangers. “The Bügelman is in a big store selling coats, waiting for the next customer,” Bayrle explains, “and after a thousand times of selling the coat, he only sees the hanger. I saw this boringness of the profession, but I didn’t comment on it like the left, to fight against it – I saw a sad poetry in it. A pessimistic dream: this is my life, I’m a clerk at the warehouse. It was very important to me not just to criticise. We all suffer, somehow, and have nice days and bad days. For the left, it was not consequent enough.” I ask him if he sees, in the same way as counting rosary beads, a kind of transcendent boredom in such a job. He agrees, and augments: “Awfulness is necessary for our comfort. I worked a lot with leftist groups and students and they always said, you are a reactionary, and it’s been like that since. You never fit, but I didn’t want to fit. I wanted to still give a chance that this so-called capitalism has also some good sides. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t follow it

 

https://artreview.com/april-2016-feature-thomas-bayrle/