Georg Baselitz

Galerie Joachim Becker, Cannes

Høvikodden, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Georg Baselitz - Paintings and works on paper, 1986

This work appears to be in overall excellent condition. A non disturbing very small and minor area of craquelure in the ocre colour of the hair right to the ear upper right. A non disturbing minor area of craquelure in the ocre colour of the hair right to the tree. A non disturbing very small and tiny spot of paintloss, approx. 0,8mm in the ocre colour of the hair centre left under a dark coloured stroke (visible in illustration).
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Having worked for many years against the mainstream of contemporary art, by the 1980s Georg Baselitz (born in 1938) had established an international reputation thanks to his influence on the Young German Neo-Expressionist painters referred to in Germany as the Neue Wilden.

Der Lasterbaum, painted in 1986, is one of the paintings with a religious subject, which Baselitz started around 1983 with paintings such as Kreuztragung and Nachtessen in Dresden (fig. 1). Both the image of a woman with a red tree growing from her forehead and the title of the present work refer to the Christian allegoric scheme Arbor Virtutum (Der Lasterbaum or the Tree of Vices) from the book Speculum Virginium.

By creating structured allegorical forms such as trees (fig. 2), medieval theologians provided theoretical insight into the essential nature of the virtues and vices and their relationship to one another. The Trees of Virtues and Vices offered schematic allegoric images of correct and incorrect spiritual paths to guide religious women, for example virginal nuns, to avoid sins.

The tree trunk embodies the moral lesson of the diagram that a life rooted in pride signifies the path leading to death. Each major vice is connected with immoral qualities and ends with Luxuria (in this context, what is meant by luxury is not the material, but rather a spiritual luxury). With the help of this categorical organisation, the reader was able to understand the hierarchical relationship between minor sins and greater vices.

Crucial to Baselitz's work is the inversion of the image in which the motifs are depicted upside-down, a feature that has been characteristic of his works since the end of the 1960s. The aim was to draw attention away from the content and towards questions of form and design. However, intentionally or unintentionally, by rotating the image Baselitz completely changes the subject matter of the Christian purpose; in the present work no longer is the spiritual gratification (Luxuria) the determination for virginal women, but pride.