George Baselitz: Coming to Terms…

George Baselitz - Georg Baselitz - Dresdner Frauen-Karla - 1990 - Wood and tempera - Staatliche Kunstsammlungen (click photo for larger image)German artist George Baselitz (born 1938) was enormously influential in showing a generation of German artists (and people) how they might come to terms with issues of art and national identity, in the wake of the Second World War. 

Briefly trained in the officially sanctioned social realism of Communist East Berlin, he soon moved to West Berlin and encountered abstract art. Ultimately, however, he was to reject both approaches. At a time when others turned to Conceptual art, Pop Art, and Arte Povera (“poor art”) a return to simple objects and messages, Baselitz revived the German Expressionism that had been denounced by the Nazis, and returned the human figure to a central position in painting.

Working in nearly every artistic medium, Baselitz has established himself as a visual artist of international stature. His work confronts the gut realities of history, and the tragedy of being German in a post World War II era. He was best known for his inverted, or upside-down paintings that shift emphasis from subject to the properties of painting itself, creating not just a painted canvas, but a nearly sculptural object. The anamorphic quality of his heroic and rebellious figures has had a powerful and international influence on Neo-Expressionist artists.

The work featured here is one of a series of eleven monumental sculptural busts of women, which commemorate the destruction of Dresden at the end of World War II. Baselitz grew up not far from the city, and remembered its destruction vividly. He wanted to pay homage to what he called the "rubble women," who he believed embodied the reconstruction efforts of a broken city. The rough portrayal but penetrating gaze of the figure suggest a person terribly scarred by war, but simultaneously defiant and determined to survive it.

Eric Fischl: The “Bad Boy”

Eric Fischl - A Visit To / A Visit From / The Island - 1983 - Oil on canvas - 84 × 168 in. (213.4 × 426.7 cm) - Whitney Museum of American Art, NY. (click photo for larger image)“Neo-Expressionism” refers to an art movement that developed in the early and mid-1980s. A reaction against the remote and highly intellectual art produced by the Minimalists and Conceptual artists, the Neo-Expressionists returned to portraying the human body and other recognizable objects. Their styles were diverse and they came to dominate the art market.

“In the 1970s and 80s, Eric Fischl (born 1948) became Neo-Expressionism's noted bad boy with his psychologically charged depictions of American suburbia.”  Raised by a severely depressed and alcoholic mother, Fischl’s work was heavily influenced by his dysfunctional childhood. He explores the darker sides of human behaviors and relationships that exist beneath the manicured facade of society. “I vowed that I would never let the unspeakable also be unshowable. I would paint what could not be said.”

The diptych featured here juxtaposes two polar scenes in comparable settings. On the left, a family enjoys a sunny day by the sea. in the companion scene on the right, a group of poorly clothed men and women frantically cross the shore as dark waves crash upon it. “Fischl confronts the irony of island resorts, locations sought out by vacationing families while simultaneously fled by native groups.”

Anselm Kiefer: Monumental and Confrontational

Anselm Kiefer - Everyone Stands Under His Own Dome of Heaven - 1970 - Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on joined paper - 15 3/4 x 18 7/8in. (40 x 47.9cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (click photo for larger image) Anselm Kiefer's powerful canvases were groundbreaking at a time when painting was considered all but dead as a medium. Kiefer (born 1945) is most known for his subject matter dealing with German history and myth, particularly as it relates to the Holocaust. These works forced his contemporaries to deal with Germany's past in an era when acknowledgment of Nazism was taboo. Kiefer incorporates heavy impasto and uncommon materials into his pieces, such as lead, glass shards, dried flowers, and strands of hay, many of which reference various aspects of history and myth, German and otherwise. He diverged from Minimalism and abstraction to develop new representational and symbolic languages.

The work featured here “re-imagines the now-miniscule figure of the artist in a green military coat in the midst of a vast, snow-dusted field.” It is part of a series of watercolors related to the photographs Kiefer staged in 1969, reenacting the Nazi salute.  Kiefer has said, "Each man has his own dome, his own perceptions, his own theories. There is no one God for all."

Neo-Expressionism: An Affirmation of the Redemptive Power of Art

Georg Baselitz - Man of Faith - 1983 - Oil on canvas - 97 1/2 x 78 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYMany artists have practiced and revived aspects of the original Expressionist movement, as it existed at its peak at the beginning of the twentieth century. 

The most famous return to Expressionism was inaugurated by Georg Baselitz (born 1938) who led a revival that dominated German art in the 1970s. By the 1980s, this resurgence had become part of an international return to the sensuousness of painting - and away from the stylistically cool, distant sparseness of Minimalism and Conceptualism. Baselitz was enormously influential in showing a generation of German artists how they might come to terms with issues of art and national identity in the wake of the Second World War.. Briefly trained in the officially sanctioned social realism of Communist East Berlin, he soon moved to West Berlin, and encountered abstract art. Ultimately, however, he was to reject both options. While others turned to Conceptual Art, Pop Art, and Arte Povera, Baselitz revived the German Expressionism that had been denounced by the Nazis, and returned the human figure to a central position in painting. The figures in his art often appear upside-down.

Baselitz has always been influential and controversial. "I begin with an idea, but as I work, the picture takes over. Then there is the struggle between the idea I preconceived... and the picture that fights for its own life.”

I’ll be teaching a single-session class on Neo-Expressionism THIS Thursday (11/9), at the Larchmont Temple. Click HERE to register.

Francesco Clemente: Idiosyncratic and Arresting Images

Francesco Clemente - Moon - 1980 - Gouache on twelve sheets of paper with fabric - 96 1/4 x 91 in. - Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY (click photo for larger image)Acting as a dark shaman of the post-modern era while reacting against the dominance of increasing abstraction in preceding generations, Italian artist Francesco Clemente (born 1952) helped reinvigorate painting by using recognizable human figures as his primary subject. In idiosyncratic and arresting images, he uses Neo-Expressionist techniques to represent late twentieth century people and their psychological conditions - fundamentally questioning what is real and what is of value to the human spirit.

By the 1980s, this resurgence had become part of an international return to the sensuousness of painting - and away from the stylistically cool, distant sparseness of Minimalism and Conceptualism.

"Collaboration is part of my work because the assumption of my work is that our identities are fragmented identities, that we're [each] not just one person but many persons.” - Francesco Clemente