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Lot Essay
‘His decision in favour of the extraordinary circular format ultimately resulted from the situation in which Neo Rauch found himself: it reflects a “circling in” on potential pictorial solutions, a circular development in search of a new approach’ (Holger Broeker)
‘…the images in that dream were like communications from the deepest realms of my being. They were the direct source of the tondo pictures that I made at the time. They amounted to a sort of synthesis that I hadn’t managed upon until that point’ (Neo Rauch)
Rendered on a dramatic scale, spanning nearly two metres in diameter, Lage a rare circular work by Neo Rauch, executed at the dawn of his oeuvre. It is one of only nine works on paper created in this remarkable format between 1993 and 1995, examples of which are held in the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, the Museum Junge Kunst Frankfurt, the Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht and the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. With its shape reminiscent of a Renaissance tondo, the present work inaugurates the dreamlike conflation of imagery that would go on to define Rauch’s practice. Combining paper collage with a subtle wash evocative of sepia photography, it presents an armed military figure surveying an apocalyptic industrial landscape. Rivulets of paint stream down the length of the picture plane, obscuring his face. The work’s title – translating to ‘location’ – is emblazoned in diverse typefaces, as if cut out from a newspaper, whilst a curious metamorphic structure in the upper left hand corner spells out the word ‘Urteil’ (‘judgement’). As Rauch himself has affirmed, these early circular works represent the birth of his artistic language. Drawing together influences from the East German propaganda posters of his childhood, as well as the currents of Western art and advertising to which he was exposed following the fall of the Berlin Wall, they mark his first attempts to translate his conflicted subconscious visions into art. As Holger Broeker has observed, ‘His decision in favour of the extraordinary circular format ultimately resulted from the situation in which Neo Rauch found himself: it reflects a “circling in” on potential pictorial solutions, a circular development in search of a new approach’ (H. Broeker, ‘The Touchstone of Painting: Neo Rauch’s Pictorial Concept and Work Development’, in Neo Rauch. Neue Rollen. Paintings 1993-2006, exh. cat., Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2006, p. 21).
Though Rauch had experimented with a number of idioms during his studies, it was not until 1993 that his language and methods began to crystallize. He has spoken in this regard of a vivid dream he had during this period, subsequently identified as the source for many of his early circular paintings. ‘Before 1993 the magnetic needle was swinging all over the place’, he explains. ‘Discovering my position was complicated, because there were so many artistic points of reference. I was overwhelmed by all of the possibilities coming into my studio from thousands of different directions. My work displayed violent mood swings from abstraction to figuration, and this was just one of the many internal conflicts I faced at the time. Had it not been for an extraordinary evocative dream that brought me to my sense at exactly the right moment … But the images in that dream were like communications from the deepest realms of my being. They were the direct source of the tondo pictures that I made at the time. They amounted to a sort of synthesis that I hadn’t managed upon until that point’ (N. Rauch, quoted in interview with R. Ayers, Artinfo.com, 6 June 2007). Since that moment, Rauch has placed great importance on the mechanics of dreaming. He views himself as a medium through which unprocessed imagery filters onto canvas, colliding in strange formations. Though allegorical in appearance, the results ultimately elude interpretation, subservient to an unknown pictorial logic. The present work’s circular format amplifies this sense of lost meaning, evoking a historical artefact laden with indecipherable symbolism. Rauch would return to the tondo format once again in the early 2000s, in works such as Regel (Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg) and Weid (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York). In Lage, it forms a vortex-like arena in which Rauch begins to mine the depths of his own psyche.
‘…the images in that dream were like communications from the deepest realms of my being. They were the direct source of the tondo pictures that I made at the time. They amounted to a sort of synthesis that I hadn’t managed upon until that point’ (Neo Rauch)
Rendered on a dramatic scale, spanning nearly two metres in diameter, Lage a rare circular work by Neo Rauch, executed at the dawn of his oeuvre. It is one of only nine works on paper created in this remarkable format between 1993 and 1995, examples of which are held in the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, the Museum Junge Kunst Frankfurt, the Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht and the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. With its shape reminiscent of a Renaissance tondo, the present work inaugurates the dreamlike conflation of imagery that would go on to define Rauch’s practice. Combining paper collage with a subtle wash evocative of sepia photography, it presents an armed military figure surveying an apocalyptic industrial landscape. Rivulets of paint stream down the length of the picture plane, obscuring his face. The work’s title – translating to ‘location’ – is emblazoned in diverse typefaces, as if cut out from a newspaper, whilst a curious metamorphic structure in the upper left hand corner spells out the word ‘Urteil’ (‘judgement’). As Rauch himself has affirmed, these early circular works represent the birth of his artistic language. Drawing together influences from the East German propaganda posters of his childhood, as well as the currents of Western art and advertising to which he was exposed following the fall of the Berlin Wall, they mark his first attempts to translate his conflicted subconscious visions into art. As Holger Broeker has observed, ‘His decision in favour of the extraordinary circular format ultimately resulted from the situation in which Neo Rauch found himself: it reflects a “circling in” on potential pictorial solutions, a circular development in search of a new approach’ (H. Broeker, ‘The Touchstone of Painting: Neo Rauch’s Pictorial Concept and Work Development’, in Neo Rauch. Neue Rollen. Paintings 1993-2006, exh. cat., Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2006, p. 21).
Though Rauch had experimented with a number of idioms during his studies, it was not until 1993 that his language and methods began to crystallize. He has spoken in this regard of a vivid dream he had during this period, subsequently identified as the source for many of his early circular paintings. ‘Before 1993 the magnetic needle was swinging all over the place’, he explains. ‘Discovering my position was complicated, because there were so many artistic points of reference. I was overwhelmed by all of the possibilities coming into my studio from thousands of different directions. My work displayed violent mood swings from abstraction to figuration, and this was just one of the many internal conflicts I faced at the time. Had it not been for an extraordinary evocative dream that brought me to my sense at exactly the right moment … But the images in that dream were like communications from the deepest realms of my being. They were the direct source of the tondo pictures that I made at the time. They amounted to a sort of synthesis that I hadn’t managed upon until that point’ (N. Rauch, quoted in interview with R. Ayers, Artinfo.com, 6 June 2007). Since that moment, Rauch has placed great importance on the mechanics of dreaming. He views himself as a medium through which unprocessed imagery filters onto canvas, colliding in strange formations. Though allegorical in appearance, the results ultimately elude interpretation, subservient to an unknown pictorial logic. The present work’s circular format amplifies this sense of lost meaning, evoking a historical artefact laden with indecipherable symbolism. Rauch would return to the tondo format once again in the early 2000s, in works such as Regel (Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg) and Weid (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York). In Lage, it forms a vortex-like arena in which Rauch begins to mine the depths of his own psyche.