Born 1938 in Deutschbaselitz, Saxony, Georg Baselitz is one of the world’s most prolific living artists. The Serpentine Gallery is hosting a stunning FREE exhibition of his work, which features 10 sculptures plus a monumental nine-metre-tall sculpture, Zero Dome, just outside the gallery.
Zero Mobil (Zero Mobile) by Georg Baselitz (2013 to 2014) © Georg Baselitz 2023. Photo: Jochen Littkemann, Berlin
In the 1960s Baselitz became well known for his figurative, expressive paintings. In 1969 he began painting his subjects upside down in an effort to overcome the representational, content-driven character of his earlier work and stress the artifice of painting. Drawing from myriad influences, including art of Soviet era illustration art, the Mannerist period and African sculptures, he developed his own, distinct artistic language.
In the 1980s Baselitz continued to explore the tensions between the figurative and the abstract through his crude approximations of figures and body parts carved from wood. The Wikipedia entry at one point uses the word ‘unfettered’ and that struck a chord with me. He doesn’t care. What comes over is a lack of concern or intimidation by the Western Tradition, and the freedom to express himself as he wants. The video accompanying the exhibition shows him taking a chainsaw to huge chunks of wood to carve out extremely rough and rugged sculptural shapes.
View of the exhibition © Georg Baselitz 2023. Photo: Hugo Glendinning 2023.
As well as the 10 wooden sculptures – which have never been exhibited before – there are 68 related loose, inky drawings’ rendered in pencil, pen and ink. They also partake of the clenched, heavy, contorted power of the sculptures though obviously, as per the medium, are more fluid and flexible.
Untitled by Georg Baselitz ( 2014) © Georg Baselitz 2023. Photo: Jochen Littkemann, Berlin
The curators’ aim in combining the drawings and sculptures is to give visitors insights into the artist’s studio work and ‘how his sculptural undertaking relates to his two-dimensional practice, to shed light on how the artist considers different approaches to the central themes in his work.’
This is, perhaps, an advanced ambition for those of us not particularly familiar with Baselitz’s work in the first place. More accessible is the idea that these ten wooden sculptures were not originally intended for public exhibition, as they were made as maquettes for bronze works. Each one is carved from a single tree trunk, reduced by using power saws, axes and chisels. This method gives form to solid, impactful figures while maintaining the materiality of timber with distinctive incisions and notches on its surface.
Baselitz in the studio, 2012 © Elke Baselitz 2023
The accompanying drawings were made not as preparatory sketches for the maquettes, but during the sculpting phase. Together, the drawings and maquettes highlight the synthesis of Baselitz’s two and three dimensional ways of making and explore the possibilities and impossibilities of translating from painting to sculpture, and from sculpture to drawings. Baselitz is quoted as saying:
‘Sculpture is a thing like a miracle. It is built up, decked out, made arbitrary not as the sign of thoughts but as a thing within the limits of the shape. Even if a sculpture is hung from the ceiling, it remains a thing.
‘My carvings are best described by Immanuel Kant: ‘Out of the crooked wood of humanity, nothing entirely straight can be built. It is only the approximation of this idea that nature imposes upon us.”‘
Outside on the grass of the Royal Parks stands the biggest work, Zero Dome 2021, a nine-metre-tall patinated bronze sculpture on a plinth (we can see its corresponding raw maquette inside the gallery). Made from five carvings in the form of legs, it references Baselitz’s fascination in the foot motif.
Zero Dome 2015/2021 by Georg Baselitz © Georg Baselitz 2023. Photo: Hugo Glendinning 2023
I loved it. And it’s FREE. But you better get your skates on – it’s only on till 7 January.
Related link
- Georg Baselitz: Sculptures 2011 to 2015 continues at the Serpentine Gallery until 7 January 2024
- Georg Baselitz Wikipedia article
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