Georg Baselitz: Devotion
Gagosian is pleased to announce Devotion, new paintings and works on paper by Georg Baselitz.
A pioneering Neo-Expressionist, Baselitz employs raw, painterly gestures to create visceral compositions with an intense emotional charge. By continually reinterpreting artistic precedents鈥攈is own previous works included鈥攈e has returned the figure to a central place in painting while expanding the very definition of abstraction.
Baselitz鈥檚 interest in portraiture emerges from his fascination with memory and its inconsistencies, as well as his observation that every painting鈥攅ven a portrait of another person鈥攊s the artist鈥檚 self-portrait. At the Kunstmuseum Basel, he saw Henri Rousseau鈥檚 The Muse Inspires the Poet (Marie Laurencin and Guillaume Apollinaire) (1909) and assumed that the depicted couple was Rousseau and his wife鈥攐nly to discover later that the painting shows the poet Apollinaire and his muse, painter Laurencin. This realization gave rise to a new line of inquiry for Baselitz. Over the past year, he has intensified his ongoing engagement with images of the past, producing paintings and drawings based on artists鈥� self-portraits. As he works, in paint or ink, he recalls the effects of each portrait and captures them in his own unique style.
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Gagosian is pleased to announce Devotion, new paintings and works on paper by Georg Baselitz.
A pioneering Neo-Expressionist, Baselitz employs raw, painterly gestures to create visceral compositions with an intense emotional charge. By continually reinterpreting artistic precedents鈥攈is own previous works included鈥攈e has returned the figure to a central place in painting while expanding the very definition of abstraction.
Baselitz鈥檚 interest in portraiture emerges from his fascination with memory and its inconsistencies, as well as his observation that every painting鈥攅ven a portrait of another person鈥攊s the artist鈥檚 self-portrait. At the Kunstmuseum Basel, he saw Henri Rousseau鈥檚 The Muse Inspires the Poet (Marie Laurencin and Guillaume Apollinaire) (1909) and assumed that the depicted couple was Rousseau and his wife鈥攐nly to discover later that the painting shows the poet Apollinaire and his muse, painter Laurencin. This realization gave rise to a new line of inquiry for Baselitz. Over the past year, he has intensified his ongoing engagement with images of the past, producing paintings and drawings based on artists鈥� self-portraits. As he works, in paint or ink, he recalls the effects of each portrait and captures them in his own unique style.
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Georg Baselitz believes every work of art is a self-portrait. Whether it鈥檚 a Mondrian colour puzzle or a Warhol printed tin, what we are looking at 鈥� and, Baselitz suggests, the subject we are really interested in 鈥� is the artist.
Many times over the course of five decades, Georg Baselitz has explained why, in 1969, he began to paint people, places, and things upside down, and he did yet again when I spoke with him on the morning in late January that his current exhibition, 鈥淒evotion,鈥� opened at...
Georg Baselitz takes on other artists鈥� self-portraits; Vivian Browne鈥檚 鈥淟ittle Men鈥� is a blast from the past; Enrico Riley鈥檚 鈥楴ew World鈥� paintings; and Pamela Colman Smith, beyond the tarot cards.
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