Ballerina Clown

The sculpture in the courtyard of the Ludwig Forum looks like a grotesque mash up of features. A massive clown head sits atop the slender feminine body of a ballet dancer. He is wearing a red nose and hat, painted with full makeup (including tears on the cheeks), and has a five o’clock shadow. The figure is balancing on a wooden box in front of a corrugated metal wall. There is a white circle painted on the wall to look like a spotlight, although the clown doesn’t look very happy.
An electric motor gently moves the dancer’s bent leg back and forth while a golden ring projects forward on the end of a string she is holding with her left hand. At regular intervals, a tape recorder plays Frank Sinatra’s famous song “My Way,” which is sung by the artist in a hollow, monotone voice.
The artist’s use of his own voice makes the work self-referential and it can be seen as both a self-portrait of the artist and a general reflection on the role of the artist in society. The defining characteristic here is not only the ambivalence between male and female features, but also between tragedy and comedy, human and machine, individuality and stereotype.
The first version of the Ballerina Clown was created in 1983 and can be found in Venice, California today. In 1990, the Aachen version originally served as a starting point for the Metropolis exhibition at the Gropius-Bau in Berlin. There, it was symbolic of the Maschinenmensch (machine person) from Fritz Lang’s famous silent film.

Additional information: www.ludwigforum.de/sammlung/altmaterial/schwerpunkte/skulpturenhof/borofsky.html

Further reading:
Stichwort Gegenwart. Die aktuelle Bestandsaufnahme. Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst. Ed. Harald Kunde. Texts: Annette Lagler, Harald Kunde … Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2007, pp. 40–41.
Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst. Gemälde, Skulpturen, Installationen. Auswahl aus dem Bestand der Sammlungen. Ed.: Gabriele Uelsberg. Aachen 1992, pp. 64–65.