The final countdown of Georg Baselitz Strength is dwindling, genius makes up for it
Georg Baselitz continues to paint despite his physical ailments and shows new paintings in London and Salzburg. In this grandiose late work, weight and weightlessness are closer than ever.
Critics and tabloid journalists, the Parisian elite and the general public at the local theatre and dance festival, international collectors and city dignitaries: they all could not believe their eyes when they entered the Pontifical Palace in Avignon on 1 May 1970. The 88-year-old artist had christened the premiere of his late work, which had previously only been known to a few insiders, simply ‘Picasso’. Except that the expected euphoria failed to materialise.
In the face of all the quickly and broadly painted clowns and musketeers immersed in gynaecological contemplation, the general verdict seemed to be reached swiftly. This was clearly not the ‘Picasso’ one had expected. On the contrary: the latest paintings by the once untouchable master seemed to provide the final proof of his artistic collapse, accelerated by the lust of old age. Today, we know how wrong everyone was back then and have long seen the paintings as trailblazers for the Neo-Expressionists and appetizers for the new ‘hunger for pictures’, as proclaimed by the Royal Academy in London in 1981 with its show ‘A New Spirit in Painting’, which shaped an entire decade. Last but not least, they have become the centrepiece of another great late work, which in its mixture of radicalism and vulnerability is on a par with Pablo Picasso.
It was Georg Baselitz, of all people, who became an international star with ‘A New Spirit’, who named his 2014 Biennale appearance in Venice ‘Avignon’. Not because Baselitz's large-format, full-body self-portraits were modelled on Picasso's superficially sloppy, primitive late style - it was the idea of the late work itself, with all its pitfalls and challenges, for which ‘Avignon’ became Baselitz's cipher.
Anyone who met the painter at the time heard him talk about the final spurt, the beginning of the end times, the home stretch he was on. He had studied his heroes and their final battles in detail: From Picasso (‘the physical and the psychological are still in harmony’), to Munch (‘there are paintings where everything is fine and dandy, but there's a black spot in the middle’), to Dix (‘he literally collapsed, but didn't realise it’). According to Baselitz, the eternal child of war, you have to study the enemy in order to defeat him - the age-related collapse, the senile rippling out, the baseless self-persiflage.
As existential as that sounded, I found it difficult to take Baselitz's end-of-life mood seriously. He seemed too youthful to me, a sculptor who, at the age of 76, was still going at huge blocks of wood with a chainsaw, who still had his most important exhibitions ahead of him - from the Centre Pompidou in Paris to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna - and who showed no physical weaknesses apart from a slight limp. But if ‘Avignon’ was the beginning of the end times, where does Baselitz stand today, ten years after publicly starting to count his days? To use his own words: What bridges can he still cross; what hurdles are yet to take? Two exhibitions in London and Salzburg now tell of the latest frontlines in Baselitz's final battle - a battle that can now be confidently described as heroic.
