At the same time as the new realism, a new form of painting emerged in Germany that turned back to figuration. The abstract painting of Art Informel had previously abandoned the illusionistic depiction of figure and space. It wanted to avoid any ideological appropriation, such as by the Nazis or in socialist realism. The illusionistic depiction of figures was under general suspicion. In the 60s, however, the situation had changed. For the painters of the new figuration, abstract art was now suspected of repressing the crimes of the Nazis and their own complicity in abstraction and rendering them objectless, thus becoming an accomplice of the affluent society that had established itself with the reconstruction of the 1950s and that wanted to know nothing of the Nazi era. Long before the student unrest of 1968, the painters of the new figuration wanted to expose this lie of painting, which was also that of society. The reality of the image is thus reflected in this painting just as much as that of society. The capitalist realism of Gerd Richter and Sigmar Polke did this in a more conceptual way, artists such as Georg Baselitz and Markus Lüpertz in a more expressive and provocative way.
In Pandämonium, a manifesto that Baselitz published together with Eugen Schönebeck, you can see tortured figures wriggling out of informal, abstract lines. In his heroic paintings, monumental torn soldiers move through landscapes of ruins. Other paintings of the time show anthropomorphic lumps of flesh, as in "Acker". From the end of the 1960s, Baselitz painted his upside-down pictures in order to be able to separate content and form, figure and image in the picture. In the 90s, Baselitz fundamentally changed his style once again. The powerful use of earthy, dark color gives way to work with thin, light watercolor-like oil paint. The relationship between figure and space dissolves, so that the figures seem to float in space or on the surface of the paintings. In his remix series, he revisits his motifs from the early period in this way, which can be seen in large-format color woodcuts in the exhibition.
Markus Lüpertz took up abstraction at the beginning of the 1960s by creating grotesque figures from abstract forms reminiscent of Willem de Kooning in his Mickey Mouse series. In his dithyrambic paintings of the 70s, we see empty uniforms and, again and again, the steel helmet from the Second World War, which also appears in his recent series "Arcadia", shown in the exhibition, alongside classical antique sculptures in an idyllic landscape. "Et in arcadia ego" - "I am in Arcadia too" - is what comes to mind here in relation to the helmet, be it death or war, which cannot be suppressed.
The artists of the New Figuration only became famous and critically acclaimed with the painting boom at the beginning of the 1980s, triggered by the Neue Wilden. The Neue Wilden concentrated on the three centers of Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin. The Hamburg artists were close to political activism and, as students of Sigmar Polke, had a more intellectual and reflective approach to painting, while the Berlin artists were considered more expressive and spontaneous. In opting for painting, they both went against the established conceptual art that set the tone in the academies at the time and for which painting was a taboo. Conceptual art had also originally set out to question the reality of art and society. However, the objects of conceptual art had also ultimately become coveted collector's items and thus part of the system and conventions that they criticized. In a mixture of resignation, provocation and the desire for immediacy, which was directed against the intellectualism of conceptual art, the new savages threw themselves into painting. The painting of the Neue Wilde thus represented a break with conceptual art, which had become a convention. However, contemporary critics regarded the resumption of painting as a step backwards.
The painting of the Neue Wilde thus stands on the threshold between the idea of progress of Modern art and the "anything goes" of postmodernism. In contrast to Modern art , the resumption of something that already existed, figurative, expressive painting, represents a break. At the same time, the resumption is something new for the last time, something that causes a scandal. This step can no longer be repeated with the same provocative effect, and only then were artists free to mix the styles and genres of all times according to their own ideas, without any particular art form or style being excluded from the outset by critics or art academies. It is to the credit of the Neue Wilden that they overcame this restriction of art and thus ushered in a new era.
Even if the Neue Wilden, some of whom, like Salomé, were action artists themselves, did not start painting for the sake of painting itself, but out of protest against established conceptual art, they nevertheless quickly recognized the advantage of the medium, which, in comparison to elaborate installations, films or nonsensical concepts, could be implemented immediately and was just as perceptible. The Neue Wilden were therefore largely dilettantes and thus corresponded to the spirit of the times. In contrast to the music industry, the cheaper production of records and, above all, the use of cassettes meant that anyone could record and distribute their own music, which, like the fast images of the Neue Wilde, was correspondingly simple and crude. This was directed against the virtuosity of guitar rock, which had already become a cultural industry. The new possibilities for making music were particularly evident in the spread of the punk movement, with which the New Wild Ones shared a dislike of the system and the established alternative of the hippie movement and the '68ers. Punk and the Neue Wilde felt the same hopelessness and lack of alternatives. Pure cynicism prevailed, which was expressed in aggressive and provocative music and equally provocative images. At the same time, the fast, immediate painting of the Neue Wilde satisfied the demand and hunger for images and thus represented the first boom, which has been followed by many others to this day.
The point of contact between music and art was the club SO36 in Berlin, Kreuzberg, which Kippenberger, who was actually one of the Hamburgers, ran for a time, but where Berliners Salomé, Middendorf, Fetting and Zimmer from the Galerie am Moritzplatz around the corner also frequented and whose atmosphere they captured in some of their paintings. Painting here also serves to capture and help shape a certain attitude to life. In this respect, it is no longer a matter of autonomous painting for painting's sake. The male bodies, concerts in strobe light and wall paintings are a continuation of gay activism, sexually charged action art and the lives of Salomé, Fetting and Middendorf. With this art of living, the Berliners in particular represent the avant-garde of a new subjectivity: The ideal of the executive employee, who strives for status and expresses it through status symbols, is replaced around 1980 by the creative subject, who strives for self-realization and in whom the ideals of the counter-movement of the 60s and 70s and the creativity of artistry and entrepreneurship merge. This is the ideal subject of neoliberalism, which became strong around the same time.
It was ultimately the professionalization of the dilettantes from 1982 onwards that caused the Neue Wilde to dissolve as a group phenomenon. Many of them now seriously occupied themselves with painting as a medium for its own sake, most famously Albert Oehlen. In this context, the exhibition shows Salomé's water lily paintings, in which a figure swims through patches of paint and thus literally dives into the picture, or rather into the paint, which is both picture and matter. Like the late Baselitz, he thus analyzes painting through the relationship between figure and ground.
Kai Schupke
