Heldenteile

Right on time for the 2018 football world cup, Volker Renner is bringing out his riposte to the conventional collectible card album. His artist’s book Heldenteile pays homage to the multipart posters that ran in the German magazine BRAVO and to the format’s heroes, the only humans to deserve life-size depiction on the walls of teenagers’ bedrooms everywhere.
For the 1974 world cup, the first to be held in Germany, BRAVO featured the German team’s star players— Günter Netzer, Jürgen Grabowski, and, needless to say, Franz “The Emperor” Beckenbauer. Renner’s volume brings them back in all their glory: bulging calves, divine hands, unruly manes, and man’s greatest treasure, all neatly dissected, as in a collection of ancient sculptures or at the supermarket meat counter.