Georg Baselitz

Channeling masculinity, the hunt, the wild, and northern Europe, Baselitz’s new imagery of the stag resonates with the prehistoric paintings of Lascaux, traditional reverse-glass painting of Saxony, kitsch woodland scenes, and the symbolic use of the animal by artists old and new. Likewise, the bed is a site with alternately erotic and restful associations that ultimately becomes the death bed; Baselitz’s stretched skeins of cloth evoke both blankets and funeral shrouds. In their consideration of these themes, these paintings echo the existential figuration of Philip Guston’s Painter in Bed (1973). With inverted gestures, Baselitz at once embraces and undermines these narratives.

The exhibition in New York shares its title with a panoramic 2022 canvas depicting four inverted stags in white on a black ground, their graphic intensity and the density of brushstrokes increasing from left to right. With energetic linear marks materializing the head and antlers of an inverted deer below and the textured layers of diaphanous fabric above, Hirschrobert (2022) offers a tribute to Robert Rauschenberg, whose iconic Bed (1954) is a wall-mounted combine of a quilt and pillow with applied pencil and splashed paint. Three more large-scale paintings feature the visceral forms of reclining figures positioned horizontally with adhered lengths of white or black fabric representing bedsheets, while Rechts oben ein Kilo zuviel and Miss Francis cha, cha, cha (both 2022) both pair four prone figures, their stocking-clad legs nearly touching. The title of the latter work alludes to Dadaist Francis Picabia with its play on words and gender.

An illustrated catalogue with essays by Brooks Adams, Catherine Lampert, and Andreas Zimmermann will accompany the exhibition.

Georg Baselitz: Sculptures 2011–2015 is on view at the Serpentine Galleries, London, from October 5, 2023, through January 7, 2024.