.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
‘In Malerei, the medium of painting makes an appearance as an armour-clad technoid giant who, shut away in a heavy frame, is denied all range of operation. Malerei resembles a museum dinosaur that gives a group of sunglass-wearing figures cause for discourse. But the speech balloon hovering above their heads remains blank. Feeling obliged to discourse, the figures fail to notice that their shadows - more the reflection of their bodies - are in the early stages of dissolution. Banished painting has its fun with the critics by dissolving the same in paint’ (H-W. Schmidt, ‘I don’t fit in your system, but you fit in mine’ in Neo Rauch, exh. cat., Museum der bildenen Kunste, Leipzig, 2010, p. 11).
Through complex use of symbols and imagery, Neo Rauch explores the notion of painting itself in Malerei. Throughout the artist’s work from this period, he frequently represented the struggle to grant painting a validity and authority. Just as the avatar here is trapped inside his frame, poised ready to paint but with no freedom to move or even access to paint itself, in SUB the avatar figure appears again – this time cast in yellow – and is separated by a glass wall from the artist himself. In these pieces, Rauch explicitly locates his work within the modern discourse on the nature of art itself, regarding both production and consumption. This is a dialogue that has emerged amongst many contemporary German artists in particular, extending ideas that been explored by Georg Baselitz, such as in his own Ein Moderner Maler (a Modern Painter), 1966.
The artist creates an ambiguous space through a carefully composed composition, cropping elements such as the speech bubble and the unidentifiable white form below it, and using the rippled reflection on the floor to create is a sense of unease. Through his unique painterly perspective, Rauch creates a fragmented space, a vision that delivers enigmatic statements about the cultural world in which we exist, and the position of painting within it. The artist has commented, ‘the most important quality features in painting for me are peculiarity, suggestiveness and timelessness’ (N. Rauch, quoted in Neo Rauch: Neue Rollen: Paintings 1993-2006, exh. cat., Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2006, p. 166). Rauch has injected Malerei with all of these qualities, to present the eternal struggle of artists in an evocative, ambiguous manner through the creation of a dream-like, disjointed atmosphere.
In Malerei, Rauch has simplified his palette to an arresting effect. The palette gives the impression of an Agitprop poster that the artist might have encountered in his youth gone awry. The artist became the leader of a ground-breaking group of artists who emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall with a new painterly vocabulary which amalgamated their Communist training in the East with their exposure to the culture of Capitalism. However, the incongruous elements at play here heighten our awareness that it is representation itself that is in question. The painterliness of the surface emphasises the artist’s gestural application, yet all this has been painted in a deliberately limited palette dominated by blue, green and yellow. These inclusions, emphatically painterly, reveal the artist exploring his own vocation upon the picture-surface through execution as well as subject matter. As the artist suggests, these elements invite us to acknowledge ‘the structure of the painting, and it is certainly possible that the things I do in the way of enriching the surface run counter to the effect of space, or are a hindrance to the telling of the story. In such cases, I still reveal myself as a painter. Ultimately, painting is the most important thing, even if it doesn’t seem that way at that moment’ (N. Rauch, quoted in K. Werner, ‘Conversation between Klaus Werner and Neo Rauch’, Neo Rauch: Para, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2007, p. 53).
Produced on a large scale, the looming figure of the avatar dominates the composition and represents the painterly expectations that are weighing heavily on the artist’s shoulders. The artist commented, ‘I still have the ongoing confrontation with the opponent in me who in some paintings emerges like an allegory. I constantly have to suppress the hesitant one, the pubescent one, the conservative one, and the virtuoso in me, or at least to attempt to balance out the antagonists appropriately. The allegorical qualities of these circumstances automatically head straight for the canvas’ (N. Rauch, quoted in A.M. Gingeras, ‘Neo Rauch: Correspondence with Alison M. Gingeras’, in ‘Dear Painter, Paint Me...’, Painting the Figure since Late Picabia, exh. cat., Centre Pompidou, Paris 2002, p. 100). Describing his entire oeuvre as the continuation of the dream, in this piece it is clear that, in a highly personal manoeuvre, it is Rauch’s subconscious anxieties that come to the fore.
Through complex use of symbols and imagery, Neo Rauch explores the notion of painting itself in Malerei. Throughout the artist’s work from this period, he frequently represented the struggle to grant painting a validity and authority. Just as the avatar here is trapped inside his frame, poised ready to paint but with no freedom to move or even access to paint itself, in SUB the avatar figure appears again – this time cast in yellow – and is separated by a glass wall from the artist himself. In these pieces, Rauch explicitly locates his work within the modern discourse on the nature of art itself, regarding both production and consumption. This is a dialogue that has emerged amongst many contemporary German artists in particular, extending ideas that been explored by Georg Baselitz, such as in his own Ein Moderner Maler (a Modern Painter), 1966.
The artist creates an ambiguous space through a carefully composed composition, cropping elements such as the speech bubble and the unidentifiable white form below it, and using the rippled reflection on the floor to create is a sense of unease. Through his unique painterly perspective, Rauch creates a fragmented space, a vision that delivers enigmatic statements about the cultural world in which we exist, and the position of painting within it. The artist has commented, ‘the most important quality features in painting for me are peculiarity, suggestiveness and timelessness’ (N. Rauch, quoted in Neo Rauch: Neue Rollen: Paintings 1993-2006, exh. cat., Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2006, p. 166). Rauch has injected Malerei with all of these qualities, to present the eternal struggle of artists in an evocative, ambiguous manner through the creation of a dream-like, disjointed atmosphere.
In Malerei, Rauch has simplified his palette to an arresting effect. The palette gives the impression of an Agitprop poster that the artist might have encountered in his youth gone awry. The artist became the leader of a ground-breaking group of artists who emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall with a new painterly vocabulary which amalgamated their Communist training in the East with their exposure to the culture of Capitalism. However, the incongruous elements at play here heighten our awareness that it is representation itself that is in question. The painterliness of the surface emphasises the artist’s gestural application, yet all this has been painted in a deliberately limited palette dominated by blue, green and yellow. These inclusions, emphatically painterly, reveal the artist exploring his own vocation upon the picture-surface through execution as well as subject matter. As the artist suggests, these elements invite us to acknowledge ‘the structure of the painting, and it is certainly possible that the things I do in the way of enriching the surface run counter to the effect of space, or are a hindrance to the telling of the story. In such cases, I still reveal myself as a painter. Ultimately, painting is the most important thing, even if it doesn’t seem that way at that moment’ (N. Rauch, quoted in K. Werner, ‘Conversation between Klaus Werner and Neo Rauch’, Neo Rauch: Para, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2007, p. 53).
Produced on a large scale, the looming figure of the avatar dominates the composition and represents the painterly expectations that are weighing heavily on the artist’s shoulders. The artist commented, ‘I still have the ongoing confrontation with the opponent in me who in some paintings emerges like an allegory. I constantly have to suppress the hesitant one, the pubescent one, the conservative one, and the virtuoso in me, or at least to attempt to balance out the antagonists appropriately. The allegorical qualities of these circumstances automatically head straight for the canvas’ (N. Rauch, quoted in A.M. Gingeras, ‘Neo Rauch: Correspondence with Alison M. Gingeras’, in ‘Dear Painter, Paint Me...’, Painting the Figure since Late Picabia, exh. cat., Centre Pompidou, Paris 2002, p. 100). Describing his entire oeuvre as the continuation of the dream, in this piece it is clear that, in a highly personal manoeuvre, it is Rauch’s subconscious anxieties that come to the fore.