GEORG BASELITZ | Mein Karren (My Cart)

Hartmut and Silvia Ackermeier, Berlin
Private Collection, Frankfurt
Christie’s, London, 4 December 1996, Lot 33
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

São Paulo, Museu de Arte; Porto Alegre, Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul; Rio de Janeiro, Paço Imperial and Recife, Centro de Convenções, 15 Artistas Berlinenses no Brasil / 15 Berliner Künstler in Berlin, December 1986 - April 1987, p. 19, illustrated in colour 
Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Nationalgalerie, Georg Baselitz: Bilder aus Berliner Privatbesitz, April - June 1990, p. 37, no. 10, illustrated in colour 
Milan, Galleria del Credito Valtellinese - Refettorio delle Stelline, Georg Baselitz, Opere dalla collezione Ackermeier-Berlino, May - July 1991, p. 20, no. 7, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although they are slightly lighter and more vibrant in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition and painted on a textured and unprimed hessian canvas. Extremely close inspection reveals a few scattered short and unobtrusive hairline cracks in places to the more impastoed glossy passages of paint, a few of which are associated to the left vertical stretcher member. Further very close inspection reveals two minute specks of loss in the lower left quadrant, one 10 centimetres from the bottom left corner and 5 centimetres up from the lower edge and another 20 centimetres from the lower left corner and 7 centimetres up from the bottom edge; there is a small spot of flaking to the paint on the extreme left edge, 10 centimetres from the lower left corner, and two associated minor spots of loss. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Referring simultaneously to the production and manipulation of images, the Fracturbilder rank among Georg Baselitz’s most important paintings. Drawing on a multitude of artistic sources ranging from nineteenth-century Saxon landscape painting to Cubist and Mannerist distortion, these works, of which Mein Karren is a superlative example, see Baselitz build upon the preceding series of Helden (Heroes) to create a form of distorted figuration which eventually resulted in the first inversions, or upside-down compositions, executed in 1969. The Fracturbilder therefore lie at the intersection between two keys strains in the artist’s oeuvre: the desire to produce work that confronts the legacy of the Second World War, and the need to find a new way of creating images that objectify and distort the subject without moving into the realm of pure abstraction. The resulting paintings are fractured in every sense. On the one hand, the legacy of Saxon landscape paintings by artists such as Ferdinand von Rayski, which the huntsmen and animals depicted in Baselitz’s works are drawn from, is complicated by the appropriation of those traditional works by the Nazis to nationalistic ends; on the other, the style of representation, a post-Cubist approach, refers to a movement deemed degenerate by the same political group. These are paintings of and about division made in a country that had literally been split in half, with fragmentary influences, contradictory historical and visual information, and a subject riven in two by the fracture that gives this series its name. In terms of its subject, like almost all the works Baselitz produced in the 1960s, Mein Karren refers to the notion of nationhood in the wake of World War II, juxtaposing the nostalgia of the pre-war era, symbolised by the huntsman and the wooden cart, with the horror of the war, which figures as a military jeep surrounded by flecks of red sanguine paint. Speaking in 2007, Baselitz observed that “the artist… must, ought to do all he can – to escape the Zeitgeist. But what no-one can escape, what I could never escape, was Germany, and being German” (Georg Baselitz cited in: Exh. Cat., London, Royal Academy of Arts, Georg Baselitz, 2007, p. 11). However, when he began painting in the early 1960s, Baselitz saw that every effort was being made to do just that, not to excuse, but to excise that portion of German history from the collective consciousness. Duly, Baselitz began to paint in a fashion that refused to ignore this legacy, that sought to remind the viewer of Germany’s defeat, to deliberately provoke the backlash that was immediately forthcoming with his first exhibition, where two paintings were confiscated on the grounds of offending public decency. These were works from Baselitz’s first mature series, Groβe Nacht im Eimer (Big Night Down the Drain), which revolved around the image of a flayed, masturbating man, culminating in the grotesque, provocative and masterful painting of the same name, now housed in the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. These works were followed by the Helden, which saw the artist draw upon Mannerist distortion to create images of defeated soldiers with titanic bodies and miniscule heads, holding brushes and flags as well as weapons, archetypes of the vanquished and depleted survivors of devastated post-war Germany. Finally, the ‘Heroes’ were transposed into the Frakturbilder, now figuring as huntsmen, surrounded by animals and tools of their trade, cut up and disfigured by the eponymous compositional scheme.

The present work epitomises Baselitz’s aesthetic and thematic concerns during this pivotal period. The subject’s body turns towards the handle of the contraption, but the head, separated by the fracture, turns furiously away, flanked by a tower of anonymous horizontal bars. Are these fractured repetitions of the handle of the cart, or something altogether more sinister? Perhaps they are in fact a jumbled stack of human arms, echoing the terror evoked by one of the most celebrated fracture paintings, B für Larry, where the central figure is torn apart and littered across the canvas. This ambiguity is pivotal and speaks to Baselitz’s entirely novel style of representation, one that reassesses modern German values through the lens of canonical painting. Provocative, challenging and of seminal importance, the Fracturbilder are the culmination of the aesthetic and conceptual tenets that define Baselitz’s painting from the 1960s, and the works that provided foundation for his production over the following fifty years. Evidencing his sheer mastery of this unique painterly style, Mein Karren is an exceptional painting that evinces a savage beauty as well as the conceptual rigour that characterises the very best of Baselitz’s work.