Fertile Desert

The story behind artist Hannsjörg Voth’s imposing magnum opus in the middle of the Moroccan desert, where photographer Annemarieke van Drimmelen shot model Kiki Willems for the fashion portfolio “Fantastic Voyage.”

By Stephen Wallis

December 2018/January 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-scenes-of-wsj-s-couture-photo-shoot-1544191284

THE MOROCCAN desert’s wide-open spaces and sheltering skies have long attracted dreamers and eccentrics. So it was with Hannsjörg Voth, a German artist known for grandly scaled sculptural works infused with existential and cosmic themes. Starting in the early 1980s, the Munich-based Voth spent 20 years creating his magnum opus, a trio of monumental edifices on the scorched Marha Plain in southeastern Morocco.

Drawing on a mix of mathematics, mythology, astronomy and ancient architecture, the structures include Himmelstreppe, a 52-foot-high triangular “stairway to heaven” that houses Voth’s sculpture of Icarus’s wings; the nautilus-shaped Goldene Spirale, based on the Fibonacci sequence, that sits over a well where the artist once installed a boat of pure gold; and Stadt des Orion, a citylike complex of observation towers patterned after its namesake constellation.

A rugged 90-minute drive from the oasis town of Erfoud, Voth’s works are defined by their remoteness. “When you’re out there you ask yourself, Why the hell, in the emptiness of a desert, do you have three very articulated, calculated architectural forms?” says Hans Brockmann, the German film producer (best known for The Usual Suspects) who now oversees the sites as founder of the Voth Maroc Aïn Nejma foundation. “It’s very strange.”

While the spiral is made of stone, the staircase and the Orion city were built using traditional rammed-earth construction, and initially Voth—now 78 and in declining health—was going to let the works disintegrate into the desert. “As death nears, apparently, we have a desire that something of us should stay,” says Brockmann, who also lives in Munich and first met the artist (“a pretty wild, difficult man”) in the ’90s through a mutual friend. Several years ago, after Brockmann started a Moroccan charity that’s building a school in an area near Voth’s projects, the artist reached out to him. “He said, ‘You’re down there. Take this—you have all the rights to it, and just make sure it’ll be taken care of,’ ” Brockmann explains. But rights to the sites themselves were sketchy at best. “It was nowhere land,” says Brockmann, “and it took me three and a half years to convince the government to make all of this legal.”

Thanks to the internet and social media, the works have become an increasingly popular destination. And while Voth remains something of a fringe figure in the international art world, his profile could rise with an exhibition slated for 2020 at Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne museum. There are plans for the show to offer a virtual-reality experience of ascending Voth’s Himmelstreppe and entering the chamber with the Icarus wings. “When you’re up there, on top of the staircase, you have this incredible view around you,” says Brockmann. “You are really tempted to fly away.”