From the 22nd of September to the 9th of December 2007 the Royal Academy held a retrospective of the hugely prolific German painter, Georg Baselitz. A few months after my visit I tohught a quick ‘review’ was in order.
The Academy provided a brief synopsis of the show, which it will do no merit to rewrite:
”The first major UK retrospective of his work, this exhibition features over 60 paintings, together with a significant number of sculptures, prints and drawings. It provides a unique opportunity to view works produced over the five decades of Baselitz’s career, from his earliest paintings, dealing with his own existential problems within German society in the post-war period, to outstanding examples of his ‘Fracture’ and ‘Upside-Down’ paintings.
The exhibition also includes some of his most recent works, as Baselitz revisits themes explored in his early career, but this time using a newer, more lyrical style.”
Georg Baselitz, Mit roter Fahne (With a Red Flag), 1965. Oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm Private collection, Germany. Photo Frank Oleski.
Baselitz is best known for the inversion of his motifs. By turning them upside down he attempts to liberate them from the confines of their particular subject matter. It is this play with signs and their meanings along with his handling of paint that most interested me. The later of these provides part of what I would call a typically Germanistic tradition of paint handling. I openly admit that such a phrase is often an empty attempt at some kind of extensive knowledge of the various facets of the European paint aesthetic. I don’t. But I do have a gut instinct which says he is central to something specifically German, and I hope that comes from mroe than the fact that I know he is German and I know others have said such a thing. But its impossible to totally remove ourselves from such repetitive critical judgements. So, an honest but potentially empty point.
This upside down falling figure was a recurring motif in the exhibition. It is one of the times his ‘tactic’ works and transcends the self pastiche gimmicry is occasionally veers towards. When you are just inverting image for an attempet at shock, originality or becasue its your trademark then it is an empty gesture. When you are doing it because it is central to a pictures dynamic, then you are doing something worthwhile.
In this work a figure which might have been solid and stable, standing in space, becomes detached from this. Turned upsdie down it becomes isolted, lost, empty of its orginal context. It becomes a witty and tragic allegrocial motif. When he works like this we do question the nature of imagery, the mechanics of pictorial production and viewing, the manner in which symbols gain and lose meaning. He shows that through a simple act we can destablise a motif from its particular referent and make it become something else. When it works well it becomes an interesting emptying act. WHen it works at its best it is a wistful play between the orginal focus and the new focus, causing a kind of confusion in the viewing. Its this ‘unease’ which he is surely after. This slightly old school anarchic approach to image making.
Across a whole show, however, there were times that you get bogged down by it. What was a slightly provocative and edgey gesture becomes a kind of party trick. The kind your uncle might play and which you feel you have to keep laughing at and applauding. The problem, in the confines of a galleries snobbism, knowingness and grandeur (which projects a presummed greatness onto the work) we feel like the only one who is fed up with the trick.
This could all be down to my low attention span, which results in me now being more interested in a potential cup of tea than finishing this article. So take it with a pinch of salt (the comment, not the tea…one sugar with that please)
When Baselitz is at his best is the paint handling which is central. The germanic tradition, for me, is one in which a kind of arrogant and bullish handling of paint evokes powerful and evocative themes. It feel close to the Spanish tradition, but perhaps without the sexual emotive charge. It feels far less conservative and overly worked and consciously intellectual than the british tradition. It also seems to be less concerned with aesthetic flourishes and overt technical mastery than either the Italian or French tradition. I can’t justify this. But it seems to say, here is this mark, this is what it does and thats enough. I don’t need to justfy it through excess sweat, testosterone or creative twirls.
I am in danger of moving towards a dangerously Wofflin type analyse. A belief that the National spirit of a country is capture in the style of the art. I don’t know if I fully by into this kind of historical analysis, but I seem to be moving towards it here. I seem to be suggestive that Baselitz has a typically Germanic pragmatism in his handling, a kind of utalitarian approach to paint. Its a kind of raw, unfused effectiveness. German or not, this is true of his work.
Consider the work above. Postward German children, Nazi symbols and the inexcapable truth of recent German history are takcled head on in many similar works. The subject matter is brazenly open and crude, and the handling of paint does not shy away from this. Its crass, brash and captures a kind of troubling and tangible neurosis of identity, personal and national, in the very application.
It is interesting that Baselitz himself comments on the inescapability of his and his countries identiy:
“What I could never escape… was Germany, and being German.”
He provocation was, and to an extent still is, genuinelly shocking. We are bored of sensation now, we have been flooded with it in galleries, the media and the news. Seen cows cut in half and preserved, seen suicide bombers everyday, seen images of a post 9/11 world whilst munching coco pops. We are bored of it, dead to it. Yet it is in the tradition heavy, dull and restrained world of painting which Baselitz manages to court shock with a viscereal intensity.
The reason it hits home, when it works, is that it feels like more than shock for its own sake. For much of 90’s brit art seems to have a hangover from modernism that believes its enoguh to be shocking without reason. We don’t need to be a historian of Baselitz’s socio-historic context to appreciate his provocation comes from an unavoidable need. Its feels like these are demons he has to excavate.Rather than a business stratergy to be noticed by Londons uber cool art clique than motivates so many current artists.
Beyond the repeitive tricks of his work, therefore, lies something far more profound. There lies a wit, a strength and awarenss of how to use and manipulate imagery, an ability to handle paint and court the controversial, all brought together to capture an important and specicifc moment in the human condition. Its the most ghastly of hangovers from one of the darkest passages of European history, and his works seems to be a cathartic and visual equivalent to asprin.
Thats it, apologies for the splurge. This lacks coherence or structure, but I needed to get it out of me. Now, wheres that cup of tea. 
