GEORG BASELITZ

Sigmund’s Cave

A dog is a dog is a dog—or is it? Renowned German neo-expressionist artist George Baselitz’s dog portraits of 1999/2000 continue his play with the notion of painting as an act of sublimation in which naked facts are dressed in signs, codes and ornaments. This well-illustrated exhibition catalog, with informative essay by Anselm Wagner, presents Baselitz’s large-scale upside-down frontal oil portraits of his dog that are fundamentally different from the artist’s other animal portraits. Painted in black and white, with brush strokes that look like drawings and often scribed with the name “Sigmund,” these are masks and codes of the Freudian universe, preparing the beholder for numerous hidden allusions. Made in response and homage to Sigmund Freud, who was also a dog lover, as he waited to escape the Nazi regime in 1938. Essay by Anselm Wagner.

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