Georg Baselitz at Michael Werner - New York - Brief Article

single of two rough-hewn sculptures raised upon simple pedestals, Georg Baselitz's towering Asian Thing (1995) appeared emblematic of the power and vulnerability of the human form at its greatest in quantity Gothic, a golem in the making. Its surfaces are overspreaded with a checkered, machine-loomed flannel, a astute polychromatic patchwork of nocturnal amethystine heather and black that enlivens the sculpture's truncated planes and the quiet space it occupies. make softed by the fabric, the plastic art is figured with painted scrawls of bright orange oil that circle its massive breasts, groin and facial features. Baselitz traced an arabesque across the lower back, like a signature of his engagement in the proces of its making. upon another pedestal, the blocky, bustlike head of Checkered Thing (1994) a little more than 40 inches tall, was overspreaded with a plaid of sky-colored red and black, placed to emphasize the planes of cheekbones, nose, boxlike ears and lavish jaws Both works reflect the artist's attraction to medieval and African woodcarving.

Ringing the gallery walls, 14 drawings are inscribed with the day, month and year (1998) of their making. Awash in subdu lyrical tints they suggest motifs of Eastern European folklore, with costum figures floating in embryonic ovals attended by means of decoratively placed reductive floral motifs. These works are of a piece with the drawings and paintings that have throw backed the artist's interest in Slavic decoration since 1997 In individual of the untitled drawings, a characteristically inverted robed figure, skirts ornamented with ink arabesques, topped with a hat, recalls the painted fables of Chagall. Floating in its be in possession of car-touche of a pale, of gold wash, the figure is accompanied by dint of another reminiscent of a putto, and intrepid rose-shaped elements, colored green.

Baselitz appear to bes to lay down a wash of color, locate figurative ultimate parts within it and confidently limn them in india ink. Elsewhere, figures or parts of figures--an arm, a head, a section of the torso with an arm--emerge from or are drawn into these pale washes. In several drawings, the roseate forms reappear, sometimes in the corners, sometimes elsewhere, and in single or two, the emblematic Baselitz eagle, right side up and upside down. Taken together, these absorbing drawings recall the population of a Tarot ornament with its hanging man, upside down as these figures in the way that often are, a sign of release, of vulnerability, of overturning priorities and the advanced in years order.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group