Executed in 2010, Georg Baselitz’s IMMER BEREIT FÜR DIE VERGANGENHEIT (ALWAYS READY FOR THE PAST) simmers with intense and raw immediacy. As a mature work, coinciding with the artist’s Remix series, the present piece is distinguished by a marked new expressive lightness and spontaneity. Described by the critic Sir Norman Rosenthal as “flashes of memory of a distant past”, Baselitz’s mature paintings are personal reflections on his oeuvre as well as an opportunity to reassess the history they deal with (Norman Rosenthal, ‘Upside-down world’, The Guardian, 22 September 2007, online). The thick imposing impasto of his earlier work is given up in favour of a lighter rendering as Baselitz’s thin oil resembles watercolour. The upside-down floating forms convey a surrealistic suspension of reality: rendered in brisk brushstrokes, the psychologically-charged painting is as potent as seminal paintings from Baselitz’s earlier bodies of work and as searing in its metaphorical allusions to the transience of mortal life.

Born in 1938 and aged seven at the end of the Second World War, Georg Baselitz once poignantly described the past that he inherited by saying, “I was born into a destroyed order” (Georg Baselitz in conversation with Donald Kuspit, ‘Goth to Dance’, ArtForum, Vol. 33, Summer 1995, p. 76). Defeated and devastated by the Second World War, the German nation was immersed in further anguish when it was carved up and divided into East and West. The West ‘Federal Republic’ and East ‘Democratic Republic’ forged a fractured arena in which the diametrically opposed ideologies of Western Capitalism and Soviet Communism met head-to-head. The dissection of Berlin itself embodied the schizophrenia of a split country, and the Berlin Wall, - erected in August 1961 and termed the ‘Antifascist Protective Barrier’ by the GDR after more than three million citizens had fled the East in mass exodus, - became perhaps the most powerful totem of the epoch. It was in this segregated city, which had already become the topographical epicentre of a tectonic ideological struggle, that Baselitz began to forge an artistic identity.

Moving from East Germany to West Berlin in 1958, Baselitz reacted against the constraints of the two contrasting artistic and political landscapes that he had traversed. Shifting from the dogma of Socialist Realism to the aesthetic hegemony of fashionable Tachism and Abstract Expressionism that dominated Western Europe at the time, Baselitz founded an entirely new visual mode of expression in order to liberate German painting from what he saw as the burden of its recent past: “When I make my paintings,” he declared, “I begin to do things as if I were the first, the only one, as if none of these examples existed” (Georg Baselitz cited in: Exh. Cat., Bordeaux, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Baselitz Sculptures, 1983, p. 18). In 1969 Baselitz began the most signature touchstone of his practice – the inversion of the image – a strategy that he would continue to employ to great critical acclaim over the next decades. In rejecting the contemporaneous inquiries of Abstract Expressionism, Conceptual art, Minimalism and Pop art, Baselitz revived a form of German Expressionism which impacted greatly upon the formation of the Neue-Wilden group in Germany during the later 1980s.

Throughout his prolific career, Baselitz’s practice followed a unique expressionistic path tied to his own biography as well as a steadfast belief in the potential of figurative painting in an age that had declared it obsolete. Attested to by his representation across the most significant international public collections, it is in this vein that Baselitz remains one of the most influential painters of his generation. Here in MER BEREIT FÜR DIE VERGANGENHEIT (ALWAYS READY FOR THE PAST), Baselitz recasts his referential system both backwards and internally, moving further away from the history he questions and further into concept of his own artistic process. He questions the basis of picture making, the nature of motif and the semiotic value of symbols by re-appropriating what was already his. In this profoundly post-modern framework, the artist is now influenced only by himself. Like with much of Baselitz’s work, which is deeply rooted in his personal identity and experience, these works respond to the impending whirlwind of change Baselitz and his wife, Elke, experienced whilst moving from their home of thirty years in Derneburg to Southern Germany. Produced over the course of this move, the series self-reflectively closes the circle on his earlier body of work in order to realise the chance to permanently begin anew.

《常為過去做好準備》創作於2010年，畫面醞釀著一股強烈而且直白的緊湊感。這幅臻熟之作與格奧爾格・巴塞利茲的「Remix」系列同屬一個時期，富於表現力的明快和一氣呵成使它在眾多作品中脫穎而出。正如評論家諾曼・羅森塔爾爵士形容，巴塞利茲成熟時期的畫作就像「來自遙遠過去的記憶閃回」，不但是藝術家對自己舊作的回顧，而且給人一個重新審視舊作所指歷史的機會（諾曼・羅森塔爾，〈上下顛倒的世界〉，《衛報》，2007年9月22日，網上）。巴塞利茲放棄早期作品中的厚塗法，轉而採用較為輕透的顏料處理方式，令油彩看上去有如水彩。頭下腳上漂浮著的人物帶出現實生活中具有超現實色彩的停頓，這幅飽含心理張力的畫作被藝術家施以簡煉的筆觸，與他早期的重要作品一樣震撼人心，在隱喻人生無常方面同樣切中要害。

巴塞利茲生於1938年，第二次世界大戰結束時年僅七歲，他曾經這樣滿腹辛酸地提及自己所繼承的過去：「我生於一個已遭毀滅的秩序」（格奧爾格・巴塞利茲與唐納德・庫斯比對談，〈從哥德到舞蹈〉，《藝術論壇》，第33卷，1995年夏，頁76）。德國在二戰戰敗後滿目瘡痍，國土一分為二的命運令舉國上下更加痛苦萬分。德意志聯邦共和國（西德）和德意志民主共和國（東德）成為西方資本主義和蘇維埃共產主義這兩種截然相反的敵對意識形態對峙的角鬥場。柏林自身的分裂是德國分裂的精神縮影；柏林圍牆在1961年8月開始修築——在三百多萬國民從東德逃到西德後，東德將之稱為「反法西斯防衛牆」——可能是那個時代最有力的圖騰。柏林成為意識形態博弈的地緣政治樞紐，而巴塞利茲的藝術家身份就在這個被強行分隔的城市中逐漸塑造起來。

他在1958年從東德移居西柏林，經歷過兩種彼此對立的藝術和政治氣候，難免對兩者的局限有所反思。他擺脫了社會主義寫實主義的教條，徜徉在當時風靡西歐的斑漬主義及抽象表現主義美學主流裡，最終找到一種嶄新的視覺表達模式，把德國繪畫從被他視為是負贅的過去中解放出來。藝術家表明：「我作畫時會假裝自己是第一人，也是唯一一人，前人的畫作並不存在」（引述自格奧爾格・巴塞利茲，載於展覽圖錄《巴塞利茲雕塑》，波爾多，當代藝術博物館，1983年，頁18）。1969年，巴塞利茲開始創作藝術生涯裡最具里程碑意義的倒置人物畫，並在隨後幾十年裡繼續運用這種標誌性手法，為自己贏得滿堂喝彩。他抵抗同期的抽象表現主義、概念藝術、極簡主義和普普藝術的衝擊，為其中一種德國表現主義形式帶來復甦，對1980年代後期德國「新野獸派」（Neue-Wilden）的形成影響巨大。

在成果纍纍的藝術生涯中，巴塞利茲沿著獨一無二的表現主義道路踽踽而行，這條道路與他的人生歷練以及堅信具象繪畫並非過時的信念息息相關。其作品藏於各大國際公共藝術機構，足證他在同輩畫家中地位依然舉足輕重。在本作《常為過去做好準備》裡，巴塞利茲透過回顧和內化舊作來鞏固自己的藝術體系，進一步遠離他所質疑的歷史，繼續在自己的藝術意念之路上前行。他透過挪用自己的舊作，對繪畫的基礎元素、主題的本質以及符號的價值提出疑問。在這個後現代框架中，藝術家所受的影響只是他本人而已。巴塞利茲的很多作品都深深根植於他的個人身份和經歷，這些作品也擁有相似的根源，也反映他本人與妻子艾珂（Elke）從居住了三十載的德內堡移居到德國南部期間所經歷的重大轉變。巴塞利茲在遷居期間創作了這個系列 ，藉此以自我省思的形式為早年作品畫下句點，以便騰出空間，製造重新開始的機會。