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Lot Essay
Spur was painted in 1998, and retains the deliberately bleached palette that characterised many of Neo Rauch's greatest pictures from the time: it recalls faded packaging, cheap advertising, propaganda posters made on a budget, meaning that Spur appears to be some artefact from a lost, impossible past, or the memory of a dream that never materialised. Casting our eyes across the vast panorama of Rauch's Spur, a host of details come to our attention, rendered with the artist's painstaking attention to detail. Machinery that seems to be both agricultural and militaristic is being driven through a large, flat landscape which has been industrialised in the foreground yet which recalls the countryside of large swathes of Germany in the background. A factory, with its twin chimneys rising like horns to the sky, is shown to the left, behind a viewing area reminiscent of sporting events, or indeed of political and military displays.
The political aspect of Spur is made more explicit by its title, which is written in large letters at the back of the seating area. While the stadium-like appearance may introduce the idea of sport, the word Spur in German in fact means trail or track. This implies some sense of the wake left behind, perhaps by the machinery shown in the picture, perhaps as the collateral side-effect of the relentless march towards progress formerly enshrined in the German Democratic Republic, where Rauch lived until reunification. While the idea of the trail and of progress is an intriguing notion, hinting at the directions pointed by the arrows in the diagram bubbles and at marks or improvements left by the moving industrial machinery, it also recalls the act of painting itself, as the artist leaves his own trace across the expanse of the canvas.
The emblazoned title Spur within a painting by a prominent and erudite German artist recalls the activities of the Gruppe SPUR, which came to prominence in the late 1950s and first half of the 1960s, comprising Lothar Fischer, Heimrad Prem, Helmust Sturm and Hans-Peter Zimmer. This group, which later was aligned with the Situationist International spearheaded by Guy Debord and artist Asger Jorn, was a form of revolutionary front which aimed to use culture to change the world. Some of their proclamations chime well with the atmosphere within and intentions of Rauch's own universe, for instance their declaration in their 1958 Manifesto:
'Basic research is purely scholarly and practical research purely technical. Artistic research is free and has nothing to do with the scholastic nor with the technical. We oppose the present trend to turn art into a pseudo-science, an instrument of technological stupefication. Art draws from an instinct, from the elemental creative forces. These wild, unharnessed forces urge ever on to the creation of new, unexpected forms - much to the annoyance of all intellectual spectators' (Spur Manifest, reproduced at www.infopool.org.uk).
The flawed and ultimately destructive nature of science is underscored in Spur by the presence of the factory against the pastoral backdrop, and by the picture bubbles that float above the main landscape. These show other scenes, other landscapes, and each is articulated with a ribbon-like arrow, implying that there is some diagrammatic logic to their presence, that there is a lesson to be learned or a point to be proved. And yet to the viewer, they remain inscrutable and opaque, always defying our understanding, as though written in a language that we only quarter understand. That lack of translation, that lack of resolution, hints at Rauch's frustration at the fact that increasingly, the artist is not seen in the West as a force for change or progress; here, he differs from the Gruppo SPUR who optimistically insisted in their 1961 January Manifesto: 'All veritable artists are born to transform their environments' (January Manifesto, reproduced at www.notbored.org).
It is the irresolvable dimension visible in Spur that enshrouds Rauch's world in enigma and renders it so perpetually fascinating. This reflects his working methods, by which he allows the pictures in part to suggest themselves, to emerge like, and indeed through, dreams and half-glimpsed scenes, capturing disparate poetic fragments as though seen, as he has said, from the corner of one's eye. Rauch's paintings present a dream-like vision that is often racked with nostalgia for a world that could have been. The vision we see here is the disjointed promise of an industrial utopia, recalling the GDR's claim that it was the first 'Workers' and Farmers' State' (Arbeiter- und Bauernstaat). The machines which trundle in procession in front of the empty spectators' enclosure embody that ethos, carrying out their specific yet mysterious labours as though also on display. In this way, Rauch appears to have tapped into the faded hopes dangled tantalisingly before the populace of the East Germany of his youth. At the same time, this half-industrialised landscape recalls the area in which Rauch himself works, a factory-strewn hinterland in the outskirts of Leipzig, anchoring the picture, albeit loosely, in the real world of today.
Intriguingly, the central picture bubble in Spur, which features a mooring bollard, resembles an artist's palette, revealing the degree to this is a picture about painting, and about seeing. This is emphasised by the various levels within the picture: there are the bubbles, which form part of the large landscape; yet this itself appears to be an excerpt, viewed like a cut-out in a scrap-book with its off-white border, another perpendicular fragment of landscape peeking out to the left as though pasted over and largely hidden. This recalls the early Photo Paintings of Gerhard Richter from the 1960s, which often showed the appropriated image with a border around it, sometimes including a fragment of the caption, for instance in Schärzler or Ferrari, both of 1964.
Richter used that to bring attention to the artifice of the image, and of its source, throwing the nature of representation into question. Similarly, Rauch's paintings often use similar devices to explore various means of representation and of viewing, for instance in repeated images, in windows through which one views the scene or in the cut-away view of Nachtarbeit (1997, Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden); similarly, another composition using the device in Spur, with the main image as an off-set fragment of the whole painting, was used in Staudamm from the Deutsche Bank collection. Rauch introduces various removes which throw the nature and authority of his painting and his images into question, as demonstrated by the picture bubbles here - pictures within a picture (within a picture). Bringing attention to these effects, he deliberately undermines our suspension of disbelief, ensuring that, 'It is really about the structure of the painting.' As he has explained, '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' (Rauch, quoted in K. Werner, 'Conversation between Klaus Werner and Neo Rauch', pp. 53-55, loc. cit., p. 53).
The political aspect of Spur is made more explicit by its title, which is written in large letters at the back of the seating area. While the stadium-like appearance may introduce the idea of sport, the word Spur in German in fact means trail or track. This implies some sense of the wake left behind, perhaps by the machinery shown in the picture, perhaps as the collateral side-effect of the relentless march towards progress formerly enshrined in the German Democratic Republic, where Rauch lived until reunification. While the idea of the trail and of progress is an intriguing notion, hinting at the directions pointed by the arrows in the diagram bubbles and at marks or improvements left by the moving industrial machinery, it also recalls the act of painting itself, as the artist leaves his own trace across the expanse of the canvas.
The emblazoned title Spur within a painting by a prominent and erudite German artist recalls the activities of the Gruppe SPUR, which came to prominence in the late 1950s and first half of the 1960s, comprising Lothar Fischer, Heimrad Prem, Helmust Sturm and Hans-Peter Zimmer. This group, which later was aligned with the Situationist International spearheaded by Guy Debord and artist Asger Jorn, was a form of revolutionary front which aimed to use culture to change the world. Some of their proclamations chime well with the atmosphere within and intentions of Rauch's own universe, for instance their declaration in their 1958 Manifesto:
'Basic research is purely scholarly and practical research purely technical. Artistic research is free and has nothing to do with the scholastic nor with the technical. We oppose the present trend to turn art into a pseudo-science, an instrument of technological stupefication. Art draws from an instinct, from the elemental creative forces. These wild, unharnessed forces urge ever on to the creation of new, unexpected forms - much to the annoyance of all intellectual spectators' (Spur Manifest, reproduced at www.infopool.org.uk).
The flawed and ultimately destructive nature of science is underscored in Spur by the presence of the factory against the pastoral backdrop, and by the picture bubbles that float above the main landscape. These show other scenes, other landscapes, and each is articulated with a ribbon-like arrow, implying that there is some diagrammatic logic to their presence, that there is a lesson to be learned or a point to be proved. And yet to the viewer, they remain inscrutable and opaque, always defying our understanding, as though written in a language that we only quarter understand. That lack of translation, that lack of resolution, hints at Rauch's frustration at the fact that increasingly, the artist is not seen in the West as a force for change or progress; here, he differs from the Gruppo SPUR who optimistically insisted in their 1961 January Manifesto: 'All veritable artists are born to transform their environments' (January Manifesto, reproduced at www.notbored.org).
It is the irresolvable dimension visible in Spur that enshrouds Rauch's world in enigma and renders it so perpetually fascinating. This reflects his working methods, by which he allows the pictures in part to suggest themselves, to emerge like, and indeed through, dreams and half-glimpsed scenes, capturing disparate poetic fragments as though seen, as he has said, from the corner of one's eye. Rauch's paintings present a dream-like vision that is often racked with nostalgia for a world that could have been. The vision we see here is the disjointed promise of an industrial utopia, recalling the GDR's claim that it was the first 'Workers' and Farmers' State' (Arbeiter- und Bauernstaat). The machines which trundle in procession in front of the empty spectators' enclosure embody that ethos, carrying out their specific yet mysterious labours as though also on display. In this way, Rauch appears to have tapped into the faded hopes dangled tantalisingly before the populace of the East Germany of his youth. At the same time, this half-industrialised landscape recalls the area in which Rauch himself works, a factory-strewn hinterland in the outskirts of Leipzig, anchoring the picture, albeit loosely, in the real world of today.
Intriguingly, the central picture bubble in Spur, which features a mooring bollard, resembles an artist's palette, revealing the degree to this is a picture about painting, and about seeing. This is emphasised by the various levels within the picture: there are the bubbles, which form part of the large landscape; yet this itself appears to be an excerpt, viewed like a cut-out in a scrap-book with its off-white border, another perpendicular fragment of landscape peeking out to the left as though pasted over and largely hidden. This recalls the early Photo Paintings of Gerhard Richter from the 1960s, which often showed the appropriated image with a border around it, sometimes including a fragment of the caption, for instance in Schärzler or Ferrari, both of 1964.
Richter used that to bring attention to the artifice of the image, and of its source, throwing the nature of representation into question. Similarly, Rauch's paintings often use similar devices to explore various means of representation and of viewing, for instance in repeated images, in windows through which one views the scene or in the cut-away view of Nachtarbeit (1997, Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden); similarly, another composition using the device in Spur, with the main image as an off-set fragment of the whole painting, was used in Staudamm from the Deutsche Bank collection. Rauch introduces various removes which throw the nature and authority of his painting and his images into question, as demonstrated by the picture bubbles here - pictures within a picture (within a picture). Bringing attention to these effects, he deliberately undermines our suspension of disbelief, ensuring that, 'It is really about the structure of the painting.' As he has explained, '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' (Rauch, quoted in K. Werner, 'Conversation between Klaus Werner and Neo Rauch', pp. 53-55, loc. cit., p. 53).