Exhibition: Georg Baselitz

My mother used to serve us what she called an upside down cake. However, since it had a topping I never really understood the term: sure it was baked upside down, but what you got on the table was an upright cake. My adolescent preference for symmetry and correct arrangement led me to determine the value of something in its result, but not how it was made. It took me quite a while to accept any imbalance (even the golden ratio was one for me) in a work of art, but over time I learnt to develop a taste for disorderliness and the aethetics of the ugly, aspects, I think, that are necessary to understand modernism. This said, I guess it's understandable that I've always had a problem with the artist Georg Baselitz and his upside down paintings. First of all, it doesn't matter to me that he paints them the way they are presented (and not upright, then turning them around); they are still slightly abstracted figurative art presented the other way around as an afterthought, a joke. Secondly, he is one of those artists I call "Hofmaler des Kapitals", capitalists' court painters, whose works are bought by banks, industrialists, multi-millionaires, etc at absurd prices. I don't consider their work to actually be the current vanguard of art, since it has become part of the big business system.
The exhibition in Munich's Haus der Kunst titled "Back then, in between and today" implies an overview of his complete œuvre, but consists of a handful of older works and the majority is all more recent. Meanwhile his upside down 'technique' has become only one aspect of his production, but he still utilizes it. I found his series of large scale paintings "Schwarze Bilder" (Black Pictures) the most intriguing, since they are very dark abstract paintings which reveal their nuances only over a longer time of viewing. They also may have been more interesting, if they had been presented in a different lighting. In this case they were in the largest hall with bright light. For the first time I got to see some of his (quite large and black) sculptures - upright for obvious reasons. Another aspect of his work are the partialized works: paintings created in stripes that in the sum seem to visualize different perceptions or visions of a theme. Finally, I did begin to appreciate the upside downs, too, if taken with a grain of humor, but I'm not sure, if they were intended to be seen that way.