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Lot Essay
Painted in 2009, Segnung (Blessing) impeccably demonstrates Neo Rauch’s distinctive combination of figurative realism and narrative ambiguity. Here, a cast of characters, isolated in an alien landscape, inhabit a world of enigmatic allegorical theatre, enacting a religious rite in a familiar yet decidedly fictional world. Rauch’s protagonists are frozen in the midst of some kind of blessing ritual: floating above a seascape, out of which a mysterious building resembling both a church and a factory seems to emerge, a reclining priest offers his benediction to a child who bows his head in silent reverence; behind, another boy hovers above him, next to a cryptic, amorphous shape that resembles a half-formed human figure. Robed in red, the priest resembles a holy, Christ-like vision descending from the sky, the gentle light of daybreak penetrating the scene over the horizon at the bottom of the painting; the pinkish clouds that fill the expanse of sky dominating the frame are illuminated with a heavenly glow. Despite the uncertainty of the scene, Segnung does possess a compelling internal structure, as Rauch carefully draws similarities between its characters and architectural motifs: the yellow wood of the bed matches the figures’ skin tone as well as the building’s towers, while the red robe is painted the same burgundy of the children’s trousers and shirt. Meanwhile, the pink of the clouds complements the bright colours of the upper half of the composition, whereas the lower half is mainly dominated by darker tonalities. The result is a surreal composition that is cohesive in colour, if narratively obscure.
Segnung feels somehow as if it exists on a threshold between dream and reality, but the work is also deeply informed by Rauch’s unique perspective on German history. Born in East Germany in 1960, Rauch is part of a generation of artists who flourished under the shadow of the Cold War, with his skill in figuration traceable to his training at Leipzig’s Art Academy, which emphasized traditional technical skills. In Segnung this training is clearly registered: the graphic quality of the work and its reduced colour palette, with its red and gold sharply evocative of Communist iconography. Yet the forceful figuration and propagandistic undertones of the style are muted by Rauch’s indecipherable composition, as its figures dissolve into a perplexing admixture of symbolic uncertainty. In all this slightly uneasy ambiguity, however, lies the rich pleasure of his work. His anachronistic, fragmented visual language not only challenges the ideologies that defined so much of twentieth century European history, but reimagines the utopian societies that they promised, imagining dreamscapes populated by the subconscious fantasies lying beneath the surface of Socialist Realism. Illustrating Rauch’s nostalgia for the hopes and dreams of the past, his paintings pay tribute to the artist’s youth beyond the Iron Curtain while addressing the fundamental question of what it means to be an East German painter in a contemporary Germany.
Segnung feels somehow as if it exists on a threshold between dream and reality, but the work is also deeply informed by Rauch’s unique perspective on German history. Born in East Germany in 1960, Rauch is part of a generation of artists who flourished under the shadow of the Cold War, with his skill in figuration traceable to his training at Leipzig’s Art Academy, which emphasized traditional technical skills. In Segnung this training is clearly registered: the graphic quality of the work and its reduced colour palette, with its red and gold sharply evocative of Communist iconography. Yet the forceful figuration and propagandistic undertones of the style are muted by Rauch’s indecipherable composition, as its figures dissolve into a perplexing admixture of symbolic uncertainty. In all this slightly uneasy ambiguity, however, lies the rich pleasure of his work. His anachronistic, fragmented visual language not only challenges the ideologies that defined so much of twentieth century European history, but reimagines the utopian societies that they promised, imagining dreamscapes populated by the subconscious fantasies lying beneath the surface of Socialist Realism. Illustrating Rauch’s nostalgia for the hopes and dreams of the past, his paintings pay tribute to the artist’s youth beyond the Iron Curtain while addressing the fundamental question of what it means to be an East German painter in a contemporary Germany.