Lot Essay
From 1969 on, the inverted portrait became the signature of Georg Baselitz's painting. Often the "subject" was a friend or family member, as in Blaüer Elkekopf (Elke refers Baselitz's wife, Elke Kretzschmar). But the real subject of Baselitz's portraits is not the person the artist sees, but the painting itself--the surface, the materials, the facture. By inverting the image, Baselitz forces the viewer away from the predominance of the sitter, from any psychological reading of an individual, and from the traditional mode of reading a figurative painting. Instead, the viewer is confronted by powerful brushstrokes and patches of brilliant color that animate the canvas. The emotional tenor is one of drama, of action; the impact is more immediate and visceral. As in the paintings of Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston (whose work he had seen in exhibitions while a student in Berlin in the 1950s), Baselitz's retention of a figurative image adds another dimension to his work, heightening the dramatic tension and the shock to the viewer's psyche.
'In developing his means and language Baselitz has looked hard at post-war abstract painting in Paris and New York and especially at the work of Fautrier, Pollock, Guston, and de Kooning. The breadth of reference is significant; Baselitz's conception of pure painting transcends the figurative/abstract polarity. His nominal subjects, the figure, standing, seated, or silhouetted against the window, a bird or tree, even a still life, are the subjects of traditional figurative painting. However, in the act of applying paint to the canvas matters of handling, colour, and composition become paramount, not fidelity or observation. What we perceive are not trivial objects suspended upside down, but painterly embodiments which touch the unconscious. They are powerful, shimmering and poetic images' (N. Serota, Foreword in Georg Baselitz: Schilderijen/Paintings 1960-83, London 1983, p. 7).
The body of the figure in Blaüer Elkekopf exhibits an attention to the sculptural qualities of the form. The slashing black strokes resemble the cutting marks made by a chainsaw in the wood of his first sculpture, Modell for eine Skulptur (Model for a Sculpture), 1979-1980, which was made just after the painting and exhibited at the Venice Biennale of 1980, where it created a sensation. The monumentality that was a signature of Baselitz's painting was concretized in wood, and further complicated our perception of his work.
'In developing his means and language Baselitz has looked hard at post-war abstract painting in Paris and New York and especially at the work of Fautrier, Pollock, Guston, and de Kooning. The breadth of reference is significant; Baselitz's conception of pure painting transcends the figurative/abstract polarity. His nominal subjects, the figure, standing, seated, or silhouetted against the window, a bird or tree, even a still life, are the subjects of traditional figurative painting. However, in the act of applying paint to the canvas matters of handling, colour, and composition become paramount, not fidelity or observation. What we perceive are not trivial objects suspended upside down, but painterly embodiments which touch the unconscious. They are powerful, shimmering and poetic images' (N. Serota, Foreword in Georg Baselitz: Schilderijen/Paintings 1960-83, London 1983, p. 7).
The body of the figure in Blaüer Elkekopf exhibits an attention to the sculptural qualities of the form. The slashing black strokes resemble the cutting marks made by a chainsaw in the wood of his first sculpture, Modell for eine Skulptur (Model for a Sculpture), 1979-1980, which was made just after the painting and exhibited at the Venice Biennale of 1980, where it created a sensation. The monumentality that was a signature of Baselitz's painting was concretized in wood, and further complicated our perception of his work.