According to Socrates, to be in dialogue means to create a common reality. One's own habits and those of others are examined and weighed in direct conversation with one another, and one's own knowledge and that of the other is brought to light. According to its Greek roots "diá" (through) and "légein" (to tell, to talk) the dialogue is understood as a "flow of words", translated from the Greek "diá-logos". However, the literal exchange that creates relationships with the other in its here and now can also be a figurative one: Where the spoken word reflects the attitude of its speaker, the work of art can visually express the inner frame of its creator. When two artists are brought into direct juxtaposition with each other, this can miraculously produce an exchange, a "conversation" between colors, techniques, and styles that may even be considered equal to the spoken word.
The exhibition “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner & Georg Baselitz in Dialogue” explores precisely this fruitful moment that can arise from the juxtaposition of two artists—a moment that holds a surprising number of new perspectives. Through their bodies of work—created at different times—Kirchner (1880–1938) and Baselitz (*1938) have shaped and continue to shape entire generations of artists, paving the way for an art that is colorful, provocative, and consistently rebellious against tradition, while developing new forms of expression. The often divergent results of this creative work, to which both artists dedicated their lives, will nevertheless reveal one thing to visitors through their dialogue: a shared reality.
Amid the diverse experiences during and around the years of the First and Second World Wars, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s work bore witness work an individual’s attitude toward life and the hope of an entire generation. Like no other, Kirchner nude the carefree spirit of his Dresden subjects and the entertaining, even happy, days in Berlin in vibrant metropolitan scenes—against cheerful variety-show backdrops, with people playing by the lake, or nude moving freely in nature. With the same conciseness, however, he also depicted his own inner turmoil during his conscription in 1915 and its dramatic consequences in melancholic, somber self-portraits. Kirchner ultimately found an inspiring new beginning in the seclusion of the Swiss mountains around Davos, which offered him a refuge until his death and inspired the development of his “New Style” in the 1920s.
What unites Kirchner’s paintings, drawings, woodcuts, and sculptures is a unique approach to color—or rather, a “richness of color”—that, in contrast to naturalism, renders what he saw in highly abstracted form using expressive reds, blues, and yellows, and later often in shades of pink and brown. Rough, woodcut-like forms, the dissolution of traditional perspective, and an emphasis on the fleeting nature of the moment not only became Kirchner’s stylistic hallmark but also unfolded political potential at the time: “With faith in progress, in a new generation of creators, […] we want to secure freedom of action and freedom of life for ourselves in the face of the well-established, older forces.”[1] The birth of German Expressionism coincides with the founding in 1905 of the artists’ associationBRÜCKEby Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and his friends Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. This marked a radical shift in artistic production, breaking with conventional modes of representation and placing personal experience at the forefront.
As a radical avant-gardist of European Modern art , Kirchner Modern art his rebellion against the establishment early on in theBRÜCKEmanifesto and remained true to it throughout his “aggressive deformations” of reality. What Kirchner demonstrated in terms of unconventional artistic approaches—reflecting the spirit of the times—ultimately culminated in Baselitz’s “Kunstlosigkeit” (lack of art), a rebellion against “good taste” that takes expressive art to the next level.
Georg Baselitz is regarded as a polarizing artist who, in the mid-20th century, contributed to a radical upheaval in art history with his artistic form, thereby offering a way out of contemporary abstract painting. Even classifying his style proved difficult; opinions wavered between Surrealism and Expressionism, and shortly thereafter his art was categorized as “Neo-Expressionism,” a term that carried rather negative connotations. Thus, the artist has always resisted being labeled a Neo-Expressionist, just as Kirchner refused to be called an Expressionist.[1]
It is not only this rejection of "pigeonhole thinking" that unites the two artists, who are separated by half a century. Georg Baselitz, actually Georg Hans Kern, was born in Deutschbaselitz in Saxony in 1938, the same year Ernst Ludwig Kirchner died in Davos.
In fact, Georg Baselitz did not become acquainted with the works of Kirchner and theBRÜCKEuntil later, after his youth, since these works had been banned from all exhibition spaces due to the Nazis’ iconoclasm. It was not until 1983 that direct references toBRÜCKEartist group began to appear in work . But as Günther Gerken had already put it: “[…] should the Brücke Brücke as an engagement with the Expressionist painting of Brücke , or merely as a reminiscence of the group in the search for a model for a new form of expressive figurative painting?”[2] Ultimately, it is not so much Kirchner’s style that impresses Baselitz, but rather his attitude as an artist and as a human being, his outsider status, and, not least, his loneliness. With regard to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s work, this affinity can be traced throughout Baselitz’s own oeuvre over the years.
Thus, work parallels between the two artists can be seen in work , although, as Günther Gercken notes, their intentions differ fundamentally because, unlike Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s art, Baselitz’s is not representational, and he “develops the drawing as a structure that absorbs the motif from within itself. In this process, the variation in form—unlike the condensed visual language of the Expressionists—ranges from the most extreme reduction of pictorial symbols to mannerist ornamentation and overlading.”[3]
The drawings of both artists are determined by the spontaneous grasp of sensory impressions, of what is observed and felt, and especially by the speed of the working process. This is equally evident in Baselitz's drawing "Bushes" from 1969-70 as in Kirchner's "People under Trees (Blühende Bäume)" from 1909.
A common technique of the two artists is found in the woodcut. While this was one of Kirchner's most important means of expression in graphic design, especially the "BRÜCKE" artists, Baselitz revived the 16th-century Clair-Obscur color woodcut, unusual for the time, in 1966.
Meanwhile, the motifs of the two also seem to overlap: man in the focus of creation. However, while nature occupies an almost equal position in Kirchner's work, Baselitz's motifs are mostly created by destroying existing images. The artist does not even stop at his own images, as the series "Remix" shows, in which he revisits past motifs from his œuvre and turns them into a kind of representation of an interaction with his own past.
Despite the many stylistic transformations that Georg work has undergone over the decades, a cohesive, unmistakable body of work has emerged that, with its individuality, uniqueness, and—above all—its innovation, is entirely in keeping with that of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
The dialogue between Georg Baselitz and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is complemented in the exhibition by sculptures by Daniel Spoerri (*1930). His heads and animal forms, created from assemblages, establish a thematic connection within the bodies of work of all three artists while simultaneously offering a new perspective on the works of Georg Baselitz and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
Susanne Kirchner and Katharina Sagel
