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Lot Essay
‘The Orangenesser… initially have something to do with my encounter with Dresden painting, which I understand as a visual model that was realised and taught best by Kokoschka, who was a professor in Dresden. The image consists of colourful, thickly applied paint and leaves the edges free. In Dresden the abstract art that developed as a result of Bauhaus was encountered with a certain reserve. It was practiced using clowns and checked patterns as motifs. The second reason for creating the Orangenesser was that I was suddenly surrounded by the ‘new images’ of a younger artistic generation that was taking up German expressionism, in all innocence, as a spontaneous experience, if you like. They really painted and drew like the Brücke artists, only fresher, with more invention, and often worse. The Orangenesser were my reaction to both. It’s like clowning’ (G. Baselitz, quoted in R.M. Mason, ‘Image and Painting’, in Georg Baselitz: Painting and Sculpture 1960-2008, exh. cat., Salzburg, Museum der Moderne, 2009, p. 37).
‘At the moment, a number of my paintings are defined by what I would call a certain reflective sentimentality. In my left hand I now hold a photograph or a picture and in the right one a brush. It was different in the ‘80s, when I was painting works like ‘Orangenesser.’ Then I was boxing with both hands, so to speak’ (G. Baselitz, quoted in ‘Georg Baselitz talks to Pamela Kort - ‘80s Then – Interview’, in ArtForum, April 2003).
‘In the early 1960s he chose to paint objects, and to counter Tachism with a marked formal discipline… ‘Orange-Eater’ and ‘Drinker’ [are a response to the] wild painters of the late 1970s and early 1980s. For all their vivid colour, they draw their pungent effect from a formal transparency and solidity that sometimes quite intentionally are exaggerated into a crystalline rigidity. The object represented derives its presence and power from the formal syntax. Within the rigid matrix of the vocabulary, the banal motif becomes an assertion of artistic identity: it takes on a visionary absoluteness’ (A. Franzke, Georg Baselitz, Munich 1989, pp. 155-156).
Towering before the viewer in a visionary blaze of fiery red and yellow, Orangenesser is one of the largest works of an important series of paintings made by Georg Baselitz in the early 1980s. Rendered with primal and visceral brushstrokes, the inverted figure appears as if transfigured through a blaze of transcendental fire. Bringing an orange to his lips, the man evokes the Christian iconographic Adam eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Encircling the fruit in blood red paint and purposefully leaving its centre as unpainted, the raw canvas emphasizes the significance of the motif for the artist. Cast as the fallen man, Baselitz’s flaming figure reflects the increased sense of psychological tension that pervaded much of his work at this time. Painted in 1982, this painting dates from the same year as Baselitz’s participation in Documenta 7, Kassel. Further works from the series include Orangenesser III (Sammlung Froehlich, Stuttgart) and Orangenesser IV (Pinakothek der Moderner, Munich).
Painted between 23 February and 3 March 1982, the freshness of the paint and the immediacy of the brush strokes are palpable when confronting the monumental canvas. Painted upside-down in order to become closer to the medium of paint itself and distanced from the compositional imagery, in the present work the violent traces of the brush create the rudimentary features of the figure. In this way, Baselitz’s impulsive, tactile working method takes on a new meaning, at once appearing more abstract, creating a dynamic and almost animate surface. Extending the theatrical quality, the heightened use of colour evolved into a completely new direction. Indeed, as art historian Andreas Franzke identifies, ‘these works spring more directly from the use of paint and are more expressive, and above all more colourful, than Baselitz’s previous painting. Many are dominated by a positively aggressive colour scheme of reds and yellows. The individual brush stroke is emphasized: it not only structures the pictorial layout, it also contributes substantially to the increasing forcefulness with which the thematic idea is handled and the individual motif developed and varied’ (A. Franzke, Georg Baselitz, Munich 1988, pp. 155-156).
Following his exhibition of inverted paintings at the Venice Biennale in 1980, Baselitz pushed his own practice further toward the primeval, with the resulting works standing as some of the artist’s most expressive. By 1982 the artist had morphed into a more fully developed style in two figurative series: the Orangenesser and the Glastrinker (Glass Drinkers). Speaking of the inception of the Orangenesser, the artist recalled, ‘Many of the works I made around this time represent my reactions - sometimes amused but often extremely serious - to pictures by the Brücke artists. For example, the Orangenesser series from the early ‘80s were small-format pictures, which for me was really unusual... Changes in style result from intellectual processes. I continually try to find something new so that I can change. I still do it today... At the moment, a number of my paintings are defined by what I would call a certain reflective sentimentality. In my left hand I now hold a photograph or a picture and in the right one a brush. It was different in the ‘80s, when I was painting works like ‘Orangenesser.’ Then I was boxing with both hands, so to speak’ (G. Baselitz, quoted in ‘Georg Baselitz talks to Pamela Kort - ‘80s Then – Interview’, ArtForum, April 2003).
Reflective perhaps of Baselitz’s own sense of isolation as a former East German now living in the West, his totemic anti-hero recalls to some extent the ‘New Types’ and ‘Heroes’ which wandered the post-war wasteland in his work of the mid-1960s. Completed at a time when Baselitz was being championed as the leading exponent of Neo-Expressionism, the Orangenesser both pays homage to his German Expressionist forefathers and establishes fundamental distance from these predecessors. Looking to the religious paintings of Emil Nolde, such as Pentecost, 1909, Baselitz’s refreshed the composition, inserting an orange at the centre of his own epic painting Supper in Dresden. In his reconceptualization of the motif, the orange assumes a latent symbolism unique to Baselitz. Speaking of this influence, the artist suggested, ‘The Orangenesser… initially have something to do with my encounter with Dresden painting, which I understand as a visual model that was realised and taught best by Kokoschka, who was a professor in Dresden. The image consists of colourful, thickly applied paint and leaves the edges free... The second reason for creating the Orangenesser was that I was suddenly surrounded by the ‘new images’ of a younger artistic generation that was taking up German expressionism, in all innocence, as a spontaneous experience, if you like. They really painted and drew like the Brücke artists, only fresher, with more invention, and often worse. The Orangenesser were my reaction to both. It’s like clowning’ (G. Baselitz quoted in, R.M. Mason, ‘Image and Painting’, in Georg Baselitz: Painting and Sculpture 1960-2008, exh. cat., Salzburg, Museum der Moderne, 2009, p. 37).
Baselitz’s intensely-worked and imposingly statuesque figure also reflects the wounded intensity of some of the large single-figure wooden sculptures that Baselitz he had begun to make at this time. As Franzke explains, ‘”Orange-Eater” and “Drinker”... for all their vivid colour, they draw their pungent effect from a formal transparency and solidity that sometimes quite intentionally are exaggerated into a crystalline rigidity. The object represented derives its presence and power from the formal syntax. Within the rigid matrix of the vocabulary, the banal motif becomes an assertion of artistic identity: it takes on a visionary absoluteness’ (A. Franzke, Georg Baselitz, Munich 1989, pp. 155-156). Standing in stark contrast to his recent experiments carving large totemic figures in wood, in his new religiously-themed paintings, Baselitz employed colour and brushstroke in a similarly chiselled and gestural manner. Like the inverted motifs of Baselitz’s painting, which aimed at ‘separating a subject from its associations’, here, form, style and colour have been used in this series of paintings to shatter and counter any conventional assumptions about the painting’s apparent subject. As such, the traditional iconography of such motifs evaporates and no longer exists.
‘At the moment, a number of my paintings are defined by what I would call a certain reflective sentimentality. In my left hand I now hold a photograph or a picture and in the right one a brush. It was different in the ‘80s, when I was painting works like ‘Orangenesser.’ Then I was boxing with both hands, so to speak’ (G. Baselitz, quoted in ‘Georg Baselitz talks to Pamela Kort - ‘80s Then – Interview’, in ArtForum, April 2003).
‘In the early 1960s he chose to paint objects, and to counter Tachism with a marked formal discipline… ‘Orange-Eater’ and ‘Drinker’ [are a response to the] wild painters of the late 1970s and early 1980s. For all their vivid colour, they draw their pungent effect from a formal transparency and solidity that sometimes quite intentionally are exaggerated into a crystalline rigidity. The object represented derives its presence and power from the formal syntax. Within the rigid matrix of the vocabulary, the banal motif becomes an assertion of artistic identity: it takes on a visionary absoluteness’ (A. Franzke, Georg Baselitz, Munich 1989, pp. 155-156).
Towering before the viewer in a visionary blaze of fiery red and yellow, Orangenesser is one of the largest works of an important series of paintings made by Georg Baselitz in the early 1980s. Rendered with primal and visceral brushstrokes, the inverted figure appears as if transfigured through a blaze of transcendental fire. Bringing an orange to his lips, the man evokes the Christian iconographic Adam eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Encircling the fruit in blood red paint and purposefully leaving its centre as unpainted, the raw canvas emphasizes the significance of the motif for the artist. Cast as the fallen man, Baselitz’s flaming figure reflects the increased sense of psychological tension that pervaded much of his work at this time. Painted in 1982, this painting dates from the same year as Baselitz’s participation in Documenta 7, Kassel. Further works from the series include Orangenesser III (Sammlung Froehlich, Stuttgart) and Orangenesser IV (Pinakothek der Moderner, Munich).
Painted between 23 February and 3 March 1982, the freshness of the paint and the immediacy of the brush strokes are palpable when confronting the monumental canvas. Painted upside-down in order to become closer to the medium of paint itself and distanced from the compositional imagery, in the present work the violent traces of the brush create the rudimentary features of the figure. In this way, Baselitz’s impulsive, tactile working method takes on a new meaning, at once appearing more abstract, creating a dynamic and almost animate surface. Extending the theatrical quality, the heightened use of colour evolved into a completely new direction. Indeed, as art historian Andreas Franzke identifies, ‘these works spring more directly from the use of paint and are more expressive, and above all more colourful, than Baselitz’s previous painting. Many are dominated by a positively aggressive colour scheme of reds and yellows. The individual brush stroke is emphasized: it not only structures the pictorial layout, it also contributes substantially to the increasing forcefulness with which the thematic idea is handled and the individual motif developed and varied’ (A. Franzke, Georg Baselitz, Munich 1988, pp. 155-156).
Following his exhibition of inverted paintings at the Venice Biennale in 1980, Baselitz pushed his own practice further toward the primeval, with the resulting works standing as some of the artist’s most expressive. By 1982 the artist had morphed into a more fully developed style in two figurative series: the Orangenesser and the Glastrinker (Glass Drinkers). Speaking of the inception of the Orangenesser, the artist recalled, ‘Many of the works I made around this time represent my reactions - sometimes amused but often extremely serious - to pictures by the Brücke artists. For example, the Orangenesser series from the early ‘80s were small-format pictures, which for me was really unusual... Changes in style result from intellectual processes. I continually try to find something new so that I can change. I still do it today... At the moment, a number of my paintings are defined by what I would call a certain reflective sentimentality. In my left hand I now hold a photograph or a picture and in the right one a brush. It was different in the ‘80s, when I was painting works like ‘Orangenesser.’ Then I was boxing with both hands, so to speak’ (G. Baselitz, quoted in ‘Georg Baselitz talks to Pamela Kort - ‘80s Then – Interview’, ArtForum, April 2003).
Reflective perhaps of Baselitz’s own sense of isolation as a former East German now living in the West, his totemic anti-hero recalls to some extent the ‘New Types’ and ‘Heroes’ which wandered the post-war wasteland in his work of the mid-1960s. Completed at a time when Baselitz was being championed as the leading exponent of Neo-Expressionism, the Orangenesser both pays homage to his German Expressionist forefathers and establishes fundamental distance from these predecessors. Looking to the religious paintings of Emil Nolde, such as Pentecost, 1909, Baselitz’s refreshed the composition, inserting an orange at the centre of his own epic painting Supper in Dresden. In his reconceptualization of the motif, the orange assumes a latent symbolism unique to Baselitz. Speaking of this influence, the artist suggested, ‘The Orangenesser… initially have something to do with my encounter with Dresden painting, which I understand as a visual model that was realised and taught best by Kokoschka, who was a professor in Dresden. The image consists of colourful, thickly applied paint and leaves the edges free... The second reason for creating the Orangenesser was that I was suddenly surrounded by the ‘new images’ of a younger artistic generation that was taking up German expressionism, in all innocence, as a spontaneous experience, if you like. They really painted and drew like the Brücke artists, only fresher, with more invention, and often worse. The Orangenesser were my reaction to both. It’s like clowning’ (G. Baselitz quoted in, R.M. Mason, ‘Image and Painting’, in Georg Baselitz: Painting and Sculpture 1960-2008, exh. cat., Salzburg, Museum der Moderne, 2009, p. 37).
Baselitz’s intensely-worked and imposingly statuesque figure also reflects the wounded intensity of some of the large single-figure wooden sculptures that Baselitz he had begun to make at this time. As Franzke explains, ‘”Orange-Eater” and “Drinker”... for all their vivid colour, they draw their pungent effect from a formal transparency and solidity that sometimes quite intentionally are exaggerated into a crystalline rigidity. The object represented derives its presence and power from the formal syntax. Within the rigid matrix of the vocabulary, the banal motif becomes an assertion of artistic identity: it takes on a visionary absoluteness’ (A. Franzke, Georg Baselitz, Munich 1989, pp. 155-156). Standing in stark contrast to his recent experiments carving large totemic figures in wood, in his new religiously-themed paintings, Baselitz employed colour and brushstroke in a similarly chiselled and gestural manner. Like the inverted motifs of Baselitz’s painting, which aimed at ‘separating a subject from its associations’, here, form, style and colour have been used in this series of paintings to shatter and counter any conventional assumptions about the painting’s apparent subject. As such, the traditional iconography of such motifs evaporates and no longer exists.