The first major U.S. exhibition in more than 20 years of a living German artist ends next month at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum
More than 100 paintings, paper works, and sculptures by Georg Baselitz are on view, some for the first time in this country.
In celebration of his 80th birthday, the Hirshhorn, which hosted Baselitz in 1996, presents six decades of his works, "one of the most original and inventive figurative artists of his generation," the Hirshhorn says.
I'll say. What an understatement.
What stands in memory are the sordid, artificial mammals Baselitz makes. He wants to share his misery with you.
This is a horror show on walls. This is not a family fun house at the Hirshhorn. Take your children and Gramps at your own risk. I do not recommend it as a venue for a first date. I do not recommend it as a venue for the second date, and if you get to the third date and want to end it all, why this would be a good place! Pretend like you love the stuff and watch him/her flee!
"I proceed from a state of disharmony, from ugly things," Baselitz is quoted, but, judging on the presentation, he is stuck on "ugly things" with broad, heavy brush strokes, bold colors, and "in your face" depictions of somber human creatures, many, ready for suicide.
The display will not leave you in a romantic state of mind. It will not inspire or lift. It will leave you plummeting into Baselitz' pit of self-torture.
American abstract expressionists influenced Baselitz who has come to exercise his own command of contemporary American artists, the Hirshhorn says. He is frequently called a neo-expressionist which the Tate defines as " a reaction to the minimalism and conceptual art that had dominated the 1970s." In Italy, neo-expressionists are deemed part of "Transavanguardia" or "beyond the avant-garde." Ahem.
Baselitz attended art school in Communist East Berlin and studied the "officially sanctioned form of social realism" until he was expelled in 1957 for “sociopolitical immaturity.” He continued his studies in West Berlin and helped revive German Expressionism, a form the Nazis denounced.
Dramatically affected by post-World War II Germany, Baselitz sees everything with a jaundiced, negative eye and seeks to upend order. His works are testimony to that mantra. He was born in Deutschbaselitz, the name he adopted as his own in 1958 or 1961 (different years cited around the Web). His birth name was Hans-Georg Kern.
Several of his landmark "upside down" paintings, which earned him international recognition starting in 1969, are at the Hirshhorn.
Once he turned his first figures upside-down, Wikipedia says, Baselitz kept turning.
An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object, Baselitz is quoted in 1981. Some of Baselitz' works are unsuitable because they are unsuitable.
He frequently paints with his wife, Elze, to whom he has been married 56 years.
He was chosen to represent Germany in the prestigious Venice Biennale in 1980 where he took his first sculpture, "Model for a Sculpture," which was controversial because of its similarity to the Nazi salute.
Baselitz has a reputation for thinking poorly of women artists, an opinion he reiterated in 2015 in an interview with Kate Connolly of the Guardian and earlier, in 2013 when he told Der Spiegel: "Women don't paint very well. It's a fact. There are, of course, exceptions....Women simply don't pass the test. (...) The market test, the value test."
Artnet News investigated.
Until 2014 the most paid for a "'Mr. Upside Down'" was $7.45 million for his 1983 Der Brückechor (The Brücke Chorus).
This price fell short of the $44.4 million paid in 2014 for Georgia O'Keefe's 1932 Jimseed Weed/White Flower No. 1 or Joan Mitchell's Untitled which brought $11.925 million in the same year, or the $10.7 million paid in 2011 for Spider created in 1996 by Louise Bourgeois. (It may be the same Spider by Ms. Bourgeois, 1996, across the Mall from the Hirshhorn at National Gallery of Art's Sculpture Garden! See it here.)
And there are more women artists who outrank Baselitz in terms of money.
Artnet News and writer Brian Boucher combed auction records to find out just how high Baselitz ranked in 2015 monetary terms: 932.
Perhaps the next time he comes to town, the artist will visit the National Museum of Women in the Arts and check out the art and the value of its holdings. Baselitz could stand a little "pick me up."
Baselitz opened in Basel, Switzerland in January before coming to Washington.
Tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. the Hirshhorn's chief curator, Stéphane Aquin who has an essay in the catalogue, will lead an hour-long tour of Baselitz at the museum. Meet in the lobby.
Below is the cover of the big (200+ pages) catalog for Baselitz with an interview with the artist, essays, photos of him working, full page color reproductions of his works, and a timeline of his life. Like the show, the book is arranged chronologically.
The exhibition is co-sponsored by Fondation Beyeler, whose director, Sam Keller, and the Hirshhorn director, Melissa Chiu write in the foreword to the catalogue that Baselitz exhibitions in the U.S. and Switzerland "are a rarity." Quelle surprise!
What: Baselitz: Six Decades
When: Now through September 16, 2018, from 10 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. Open every day
Where: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on the National Mall at Independence Avenue and Seventh Street, S.W.
How much: No charge
Metro stations: Smithsonian or L'Enfant Plaza (Maryland Avenue exit)
For more information: 202-633-1000
patricialesli@gmail.com
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