reviews GeorG Baselitz
GeorG BAselitz,
23. JAnuAr 1938/
JonAthAn Meese,
23. JAnuAr 1970
Contempor ary Fine arts, Berlin
24 January – 8 m arCh
At Contemporary Fine Arts, the gallery has brought together two
of its biggest stars: Georg Baselitz and Jonathan Meese. Baselitz’s
paintings occupy the upper gallery, and the hang illustrates the
painter’s newest and most significant strategy. Since 2005 Baselitz
has been returning to his own body of work, selecting specific
paintings and remaking them. So four major works from 1966 are
paired with four works completed in 2007. The earlier paintings
include Erstes Frakturbild – Der neue Typ (Maler im Mantel) (1966),
one of Baselitz’s first ‘fractured images’, which divides a figure in two,
offsetting the two parts horizontally. In Moderner Maler (1966), the
same character, our protagonist and clichéd modern painter, squats
on the ground, his hands buried. The four works depicting painters or trees, or painters transforming
into trees, all characteristically evince the artist’s expressionist look and are heavy with his dirty tertiary
colours. Next door, his recent ‘remixes’ revisit these works. However, this time round the modern painter
has mutated into a Hitler caricature with cowboy boots, and the colours are lighter, neon or monochrome.
What are we to make of this emergence of the dictator in his work? And what is behind these strange
revisions? Engaging in painting’s endgame, Baselitz has suggested that it is a sort of rebellion, serving to
intensify and confirm, to examine the nature of painting and his own creative process, and to apologise
and improve.
Similarly complex rebellions and remembrances are enacted downstairs in the 12 paintings and 5
bronze sculptures by Meese, the wannabe enfant terrible of German art. Like the Meister above, Meese’s
practice returns to Germany’s problematic past, but his perverse and performative work prefers to
violently regurgitate it, wallowing in the abject and transgressive. Meese’s series of paintings – all black,
white and red – mine the same rich vein as Baselitz; in a series of self-portraits, the figure is returned to
repeatedly. But Meese’s works are also loosely based on Laurel and Hardy’s The Devil’s Brother (1933),
and the comic forms, and titles such as Vampirblut ‘Lustige Revolution’ (Jonathan im Glück) (2008), play
with devils, horns, military attire, swastikas, medals, vampires, Vikings and dictators, with Meese’s Adidas
stripes occasionally surfacing. These works are guarded by the artist’s bronze busts: a motley crew of
absurd decorated generals, all debris, machinery and a plasticine-like finish, with his triple-winged mutant
eagle Totaladler, Baby-Chef der Kunst (das Ei des Columbussy) (2007) taking centre stage.
Why did CFA decide to show Baselitz and Meese together? Well, apart from the obvious
commercial success and popularity of both, the coupling was justified because they also happen to
have the same birthday. Such a trite and rather self-congratulatory idea might lead you to think this
is a very superficial exhibition. Paradoxically, what results is an incredible show that manages to pose
a billion questions about the relationship between German art and cultural memory – the nature of
Georg Baselitz, Drei Streifen
parody, performance and identity in terms of national and personal symbolism, and the culturally
Mantel (Remix), 2007, oil on
canvas, 300 x 250 cm. photo:
specific experience of fascism as it mutates into the decadent and the absurd – across two very different
Jochen littkemann. Courtesy
Contemporary Fine arts, Berlin generations. Sarah James
Artreview 140
REVIEWS_April_P2.indd 140 5/3/08 14:09:51
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