My ol’ pal Ben Carter introduced me to Georg Baselitz, many, many years ago.
I’ve got a couple of other books on him. But they’re neither very big nor very comprehensive. And GB is, like Picasso (although not as Vesuvian), prodigious in his output.
Another thing GB has in common with Picasso is painting a lot of ostensibly ugly or cack-handed stuff.
But I think, in both instances, there are combinations of in-built and cultivated aestheticism, and skills – with line, colour, form, composition (even touch) – and thinking, all of which combine to give the artworks a kind of energy, and even beauty, that I really respond to.
So far I haven’t read much of the text. Basically I’ve thumbed through the whole thing once, mainly looking – in awe and wonder, for the most part – at the artworks. But what little text I have read, has mostly consisted of GB quotes.
These occasionally rather opaque aphoristic pronunciations remind me a bit of stuff folk like Guston and de Kooning (both artists I love) are alleged to have said. I’m not sure what I make of the verbiage?
Where such artists are most eloquent is in their art works. And what these say or mean to me may have little or nothing to do with what their creators might talk about. And frankly I don’t care about that.
Rather egotistically, perhaps, all that concerns me, is what these things mean to me.