GEORG BASELITZ

Paintings don’t bite, at least they don’t nip you in the calves as dogs do, but they do do something, they can turn your head. A motif, on the other hand, may well bite, come rain or shine. Paintings with a motif which is turned upside down force the viewer to do a somersault, if they are particularly good. Paintings hang securely on a hook, and whatever hangs down is a testimony to gravity. Whatever is depicted on such a painting, especially if it is upside down on it, doesn’t hit the ground, it is just more visible and hits the eye.

—Georg Baselitz

Dystopisches Paar (2016) is part of Georg Baselitz’s Remix series, which saw the artist revisit compositions from his earlier career. A self-portrait with his wife, the present work reinterprets Schlafzimmer (1975), a painting which was, in turn, inspired by Otto Dix’s Die Eltern des Künstlers II (1924). In the present work, Baselitz has characteristically inverted his subjects, a gesture begun in 1969 to subvert their reality. A veil of white over the dark ground gives their bodies a ghostly, “dystopian” impression. Baselitz has spoken of the work’s ambiguous status as both a “carefree outing and sombre farewell.”

GEORG BASELITZ
Dystopisches Paar
2015
Oil on canvas
118 1/8 x 114 3/16 inches (300 x 290 cm)
© Georg Baselitz