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GEORG BASELITZ (b. 1938) BIRKE signed and dated "G Baselitz 70" lower right; titled and dated aga...

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GEORG BASELITZ (b. 1938) BIRKE signed and dated G Baselitz 70 lower right; titled and dated aga...
GEORG BASELITZ
(b. 1938)
BIRKE
signed and dated "G Baselitz 70" lower right; titled and dated again "birke 1970"
on the reverse
oil on canvas in artist's frame
78 1/2 x 55 in. (199.4 x 139.7 cm)
executed in 1970 <p>PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the artist
Herbig Collection, MUNICH <p>EXHIBITED
MUNICH, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, BILDER OBJEKTE FILME KONZEPTE, April-May 1073, p. 7, no. 4
HAMBURG, Kunstverein, GEORG BASELITZ: BILDER UND ZEICHNUNGEN, April-May 1972
NEW YORK, Christie's, PAINTING OBJECT FILM CONCEPT: WORKS FROM THE HERBIG COLLECTION, February-March 1998, p. 66, no. 4 (illustrated) <p>LITERATURE
A. Franzke, GEORG BASELITZ, MUNICH, 1989, p. 120, no. 106 (illustrated)
The upside-down figure has become a hallmark of Georg Baselitz's style. Baselitz began experimenting with upside-down imagery in two early works: THE CROSS, 1974, and WOODSMEN, 1968. Yet, it was ultimately in 1969 when Baselitz brought his art into a new realm with upside-down imagery. Baselitz explains that, "The object expresses nothing at all. Painting is not a means to an end. On the contrary, the painting is autonomous. And I said to myself: if this is the case, then I must take everything which has been an object of painting - landscape, the portrait and the nude, for example - and paint it upside-down. That is the best way to liberate representation from content" (F. Dahlem, GEORG BASELITZ, COLOGNE, 1990, p. 88).
The upside-down image marks one of the most radical departures from painting conventions related to convention of perspective developed in the Renaissance. It is Baselitz's way, as it was for most twentieth-century painters, of breaking with tradition. Through this imagery, Baselitz challenges the illusion that the viewer of a painting sees an accurate reflection of the world. Instead, Baselitz forces the viewer to accept an inverted world as a new pictorial convention. Baselitz goes on to explain that, "The hierarchy which has located the sky at the top and the earth at the bottom is, in any case, only a convention. We have got used to it, but we don't have to believe in it. The only thing that interests me is the question of how I can carry on painting pictures" (F. Dahlem, ibid, p. 96). Moreover, by turning the image upside-down, the significance of the actual subject matter is nullifying - freed from gravity, the image becomes part of the artist's investigation into the nature of painting. In the early 1970s, Baselitz depended on the subject matter of landscape, bedroom scenes, and studio interiors. For Baselitz, these images are descriptive, yet devoid of specific narrative and content, and thus, they become neutral forms that give him the means to explore shape, color, and tactile surface.
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