drawing
- Museum number
- 2015,7091.1.a-b
- Description
-
Ohne Titel ('Untitled'); from a series of ten paired works, each forming a diptych of two sheets with a seated elderly artist on the right, based on the late Hokusai self-portrait drawing of 1842 (Leiden, Netherlands Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde) pointing towards the drawn image on the left of a biomorphic form. 3 July 2015
Pen and ink, Indian ink and watercolour on paper
- Production date
- 2015
- Dimensions
-
Height: 659 millimetres (sheet a)
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Height: 661 millimetres (sheet b)
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Width: 502 millimetres
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Width: 503 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- The set of ten paired drawings take as their starting point a well-known self-portrait by Hokusai (1760-1849), the Japanese Ukiyo-e master. In the original ink drawing of 1842 (Leiden, Netherlands Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, 3513-1496), Hokusai depicted himself in a kimono as an old man at the age of 83. Hokusai attached his self-portrait drawing to a letter to his publisher with a volume of his earlier sketches made when he was a much younger artist of 'about forty-one or forty-two', with an ironical comment that some of them should be regarded as 'immature work from the past'. The Hokusai drawing and letter are held by the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden (Netherlands Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden. 3513-1496).
Identifying with the Hokusai figure, Baselitz, in his late seventies, points in this set of paired drawings to his own earlier work from the early 1960s. In 1963, his solo exhibition at Berlin was shut down by the authorities on the charge of offending public decency. His depiction of obscene and deformed body parts, a deliberate 'act of aggression', as he called it, provoked public outcry. The drawings from his 'Pandemonium' period, named after the provocative manifesto he co-wrote with fellow East German Eugen Schönebeck, are now regarded as some of the most influential works from the post-war years. Baselitz in the present series of drawings produces a reprise of his earlier style from the Pandemonium years when he was full of youthful angst and rage at a time when Germany, divided between East and West, appeared incapable of addressing the atrocities of its recent past.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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2017, 25 May-10 July, London, BM, G90a, 'Georg Baselitz, 'Ohne Titel', suite of ten paired drawings'
- Acquisition date
- 2015
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2015,7091.1.a-b
- Additional IDs
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Miscellaneous number: GB/Z 2015.07.03/1 (Georg Baselitz's inventory number)
