「Look at the Picture and Talk about the Painting」Baselitz: Thereverse traveler in the ruins

Having spent half of his life in exile and wandering, being expelled from his school, having his works banned and being alienated from the mainstream, artist Georg Baselitz was born in the ruins of an order overturned by war. Despite being shackled by both the secular discipline and the prejudice of the art world, he still refused to construct a new art order that is so-called standard. Through his creation of deformed objects and rough brushstrokes, he broke free from the constraints of established aesthetics and returned to the most genuine spiritual core of painting.

With his signature inverted composition and distorted, exaggerated figure modeling, Baselitz severed the audience’s reliance on narrative content, revolutionizing the language of painting. Through decontextualized creation, he liberated painting from the shackles of content, allowing it to return to the tension of brushstrokes, colors and lines. He delved into cross-media creation in painting and sculpture, exploring the original spiritual expression of art. In an era when minimalism and pop art were prevalent, he, along with contemporaries like Kiefer, initiated the German Neo-Expressionist movement, returning to figurative creation and reclaiming the local cultural context. With his rough brushstrokes, he carried the emotions and ideological criticism of the times. His artistic concepts also profoundly influenced the development of Neo-expressionism in New York.

He never belonged to any school. He himself was an artistic symbol of an era. The master has passed away, and there will never be another Baselitz in the world. But the artistic spirit that grew out of the ruins will be forever engraved in the long river of contemporary art.

The tea for today is all gone. Next time, I’ll brew a fresh pot and enjoy art with you again.