BASELITZ AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY

BASELITZ - a lot has been written about him recently. Did you see any of the reviews? I liked the article in the Financial Times on Saturday (22 September 2007)
I went to see the exhibition at the Royal Academy the previous Wednesday. First is a huge circular gallery, which prepares you for the size of his painting - they are usually huge. In the centre is a well-known wooden scupture with a raised right arm, much like a fascist salute. The canvasses have rough textures where the material is not covered, and I noted that the overall colours are reds, ochres, umbers and blacks. The Shepherd, painted in 1965, seems to have tits!
Later paintings to look out include Homage to Vrubel, because of the luscious pink and yellow paint, the figure squashed to the right of the canvas - a big brown space.
Ten paintings of feet, such large pink shapes, almost ultra realistic, suggested to me that Jenny Saville has had a good look at these works. These are the right way up. In fact I felt that although many of the paintings are upside down, this was not disturbing or even very incongruous. What was more disturbing was the way the heads on the male figures are painted very small, and seemingly feminine.
The woodcuts are something that I was very interested to see, being generally interested in printmaking.
These are described as continuing the German tradition, but actually they are chiefly of interest for their straightforwardness, colour and composition - filling the small rectangles completely in a satisfactory completeness.
The four pink heads called Oberon are a disturbing nightmare, the light coming from underneath the heads, illuminating the looming figures of terror as if lit by a nightlight.
Some pain tings are not in fact canvasses, but wood In Gallery 6 are works with a date of 1989. There are 20 paintings with inverted child-like heads ( I mean the heads look as if painted by a child). They have a strange self-importance, the heads are so 'all the same' yet different. I wonder if he worked on them all at the same time? He could only have done this if he had a huge studio. The project of these works is described as taking place on the 45th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The wood is slashed and gouged out all over the surfaces, as if they have been attacked with a machete.
Baselitz lived near Dresden as a child. This must have been terrifying, when the fire storm raged. Many thousands of children in German and England must have been similarly terrified by the bombs and fires raging round their homes. I consider that maybe the label of a traumatised victim of the war, which seems to have been attached to Bazelitz, might just be a convenient one that journalists have hit upon.
By the time you get to Galley 7, the works have become enormous, strange and repellent, in particular I noticed the inverted figures in Supper at Dresden, (a link to an alterpiece maybe?) There are the de Brucke artists and Munch without heads, in colours of red, blue, black and pink.
The whole exhibition must give Baselitz a great feeling of achievement, Here is a major collection of consistent work, and by no means all his output is here. He has continued to produce strong, assertive work throughout these years, and without doubt has seen and considered the influence of the art being done in America, and to a lesser extent in Britain, but here there are no hints of Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and all the other isms we have been battered with.
I admire these paintings and found the exhibition itself disturbing and thought-provoking. I shall certainly come back to have a second look.