Topsy turvy

Born Georg Kern in 1938, Baselitz adopted the name of his birthplace in Saxony, East Germany just after his definitive move to the West in 1958. Brought up in an atmosphere of gloom and social realism, he had been expelled from art school in East Berlin for ‘social-political immaturity’. He fared better in West Berlin and firmly grasped the fashionable nettle of existential angst while struggling with a whole raft of Western influences, from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. He developed his own brand of uncouth and aggressive figuration, making his trade-mark (from 1969) the upside-down motif. Baselitz paints his pictures flat on the floor, working all round them, but chose to exhibit them with the figurative elements the wrong way up in an attempt to disassociate subject from content. He wanted the formal abstract qualities of his pictures to be judged in their own right, irrespective of what they actually depicted.

I remember when Baselitz’s paintings started appearing in London after his first real introduction to this country in the RA’s groundbreaking 1981 exhibition A New Spirit in Painting. I was very struck by their size and the vigour of their brushwork, also by their lush colours. I remember encouraging the more sceptical to try to see these paintings with fresh eyes (this was what Baselitz was after, was it not?), for they could not fail to be moved if they abandoned their preconceptions and prejudices. His 1983 Whitechapel show was a further revelation, particularly in respect of his breakthrough into sculpture. So does all this enthusiasm of yesteryear survive today? Does Baselitz’s work still look good?

The visitor enters the show via the octagon, where one of the best sculptures (a figure falling over while doing a cod Nazi salute, which caused a furore at the 1980 Venice Biennale) is surrounded by eight mannerist ‘Hero’ paintings.