Beschreibung:
Since the beginning of his career, Georg Baselitz has painted ?monstrous? hands and feet. His famous ?Heroes? series of the mid-1960s, for example, show battered figures with over- or undersize extremities standing in blasted landscapes. Their hands bear stigmata or hold tiny burning buildings or farm implements ? symbols, perhaps, of the cycles of destruction and regeneration in 20th-century Germany.00The ?Darkness Goldness? paintings either continue or disrupt Baselitz?s signature inversion of his subject matter, which he began in 1969 as another strike against naturalism. The artist does not comment on whether his new images are indeed upside down, since there is no proper orientation for the mobile human hand. He does, however, recognise their protean power, seeing in them a host of ghostly figures, including striding devils and flying spirits. By reconceiving the subject and distancing it from painting?s traditionally handmade nature, Baselitz conjures a fresh and surprising take on his characteristic dance between subject and style. Quite literally hand-prints, these images are at once familiar and fantastical, rich with uncanny bodily and painterly gestures.00Exhibition: White Cube Mason's Yard, London, UK (04.09.-14.11.2020).
