Contemporary Art: Georg Baseliz: Devotion @ Gagosian New York

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - Do you like Georg Baseliz? I spotted an exhibition with new works by this "pioneering Neo-Expressionist" @ Gagosian on West 24th Street, New York. The show is a collection of portraits with the title"Devotion". The press release quotes the German artist: "There have always been portraits throughout art history. But more important than the subject has always been the artist himself. . . . I call this exhibition Devotion because the people I portray here are especially meaningful to me" (gagosian).  

The show collects "the monumental heads of Frank Auerbach, Cecily Brown, Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Otto Dix, Nicole Eisenman, Tracey Emin, Philip Guston, Erich Heckel, Joan Mitchell, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Arnold Schoenberg, Clyfford Still, Andy Warhol, and others".

Georg Baselitz explained why, in 1969, he began to paint people, places, and things upside down: As a young German art student in East Berlin during the mid-1950s, you could paint realistically or abstractly. Realism was linked to socialism while abstraction meant you supported capitalism.” By inverting his subjects and themes, Baselitz believed he’d found a third option. His work would occupy a middle road by simultaneously being both quasi-representational and quasi-nonobjective (artnews).

Anyway, I like Baselitz`s paintings because they are powerful and unique.

To be continued