8/15/2018 Print movement page - Neo-Expressionism

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Neo-Expressionism

Started: Late 1970s

Ended: Early 1990s

Synopsis
KEY ARTISTS
Georg Baselitz Many artists have practiced and revived aspects of the original Expressionism movement its
peak at the beginning of the 20th century, but the most famous return to Expressionism was
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--------------- inaugurated by Georg Baselitz, who led a revival that dominated German art in the 1970s. By

Jean-Michel the 1980s, this resurgence had become part of an international return to the sensuousness of
Basquiat painting - and away from the stylistically cool, distant sparseness of Minimalism and
Conceptualism. Very different artists, especially in the United States, from Julian Schnabel and
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--------------- Francesco Clemente to Jean-Michel Basquiat, turned in expressive directions to create work

Philip Guston that a rmed the redemptive power of art in general and painting in particular, drawing upon a
variety of themes including the mythological, the cultural, the historical, the nationalist, and the
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erotic.
---------------
Julian Schnabel
Key Ideas
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--------------- The Neo-Expressionist artists depicted their subjects in an almost raw and brutish manner,
Eric Fischl newly resurrecting in their frequently large-scale works, the highly textural and expressive

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brushwork and intense colors that had been rejected by the immediately preceding art
--------------- movements.
Francesco
Clemente Because the work of the Neo-Expressionist artists was so closely linked to buying, selling,
and the commercial system of art with its galleries, critics, and media hype (typical of the
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Reagan era in the United States), some in the eld began to question its authenticity as art
---------------
that was as purely motivated as was, say, that of the Abstract Expressionists. Thus its
Anselm Kiefer
popularity was also the seed of its demise.
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--------------- Because Neo-Expressionism accepted and rejuvenated historical and mythological imagery
David Salle -- as opposed to the modernists' tendency to reject storytelling (witnessed especially in
Clement Greenberg's theories of art) - some scholars believe that Neo-Expressionism
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played an important role in the transition from modernism to postmodernism.
---------------

Beginnings
Origins in Germany

Neo-Expressionism arrived in Germany with great controversy when Georg Baselitz opened an
exhibition in West Berlin in 1963. The contents of the show were quickly con scated by the
State Attorney on the grounds of indecency; one painting portrayed a gure masturbating,

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while another depicted a male gure with an erection. His later exhibitions wouldn't attract
such extreme reactions, but the iconography of giant, primitive "heroes," and the use of
expressionistic guration in his early pictures, soon drew notice in an art world that seemed to
be moving away from such imagery, and even painting in general, judged by the popularity of
Pop art, Fluxus, and Minimalism.

By the late 1970s, Baselitz was at the head of a loose-knit group of German artists known as
Neue Wilden (the 'New Fauves'). Associated with the label were artists such as Anselm Kiefer,
Markus Lupertz, Eugen Schonebeck, and A.R. Penck. Taking as their inspiration the early
Expressionist works of George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Edvard Munch, the action
paintings of Willem de Kooning, and the late quasi-abstract gurative paintings of Pablo
Picasso, they together found a new vitality in gurative painting.

Precursors in USA

This period ushered in a revival of painting in the United States, as well. For many, it was
considered liberating to create art in this traditional manner, combining abstract and gurative
forms, and drawing on a range of earlier styles. An important precursor in the United States
was Philip Guston, originally an Abstract Expressionist, who returned to gurative work in the
late 1960s in a bold and raw expressive style. Guston was particularly in uential; in the late
1960s, he had become disenchanted with abstract painting and developed a style shaped in
part by cartoons, and in part by social realism. Historians have also pointed to the paintings of
Leon Golub (e.g. his Vietnam series from 1973) as a precursor to the Neo-Expressionists.
Golub addressed the socio-political upheavals in America in a similarly emotional and brutish
style.

As the movement expanded globally, a wide range of artists were associated with the stylistic
shift. Some older artists such as Francis Bacon were claimed as predecessors, while others
associated with American trends of the 1970s, such as "New Image Painting," were also linked
to Neo-Expressionism.

Concepts and Styles

Since the advent of Abstract Expressionism, painting had become increasingly less focused
on subject matter and more concerned with form. Pop art had re-introduced a concern with
subject matter of a particular kind, but Neo-Expressionism inaugurated a return to romantic
subjects. Some drew on myth and history, while others on primitivism and natural imagery.
The rst use of the term Neo-Expressionism is undocumented; however, by 1982 it was being
widely used to describe new German and Italian art, also happening to be a testament to the
end of United States domination of the postwar art world.

Neo-Expressionism in Germany

Baselitz moved to West Berlin from East Germany in 1956. Though he had been a rebellious
student in East Germany, Baselitz culled his subject matter from his East German roots. The
historian and art critic Edward Lucie-Smith notes that Expressionism became the o cial style
of East Germany after WWII because of the hostility shown by the Nazis to the original
German Expressionists. Both Baselitiz and A.R. Penck, who also hailed from East Germany,
were simultaneously pioneers and rogues within the movement. Both explored the "how" of
painting rather than the "why," in method rather than content. Penck created a language of
graphic signs that looked back to Picasso and forward to such Gra ti artists as Keith Haring.
In 1967, Baselitz started painting his gures upside down, more to point out how the painting
was done rather than what it meant (at least in any detailed way). Other members of the Neo-
Expressionist group used their work to examine Germany and the problems of its recent
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history. For these artists, the return to Expressionism was part of a more general shift in
society towards addressing the country's troubled modern history. In connecting with a style
that pre-dated World War II, Georg Baselitz and Markus Lupertz seemed to be trying to
overcome, at least to some extent, the legacy of the Nazis. However, the principle example
(and achievement) of transcending the Nazi years would be the work of Anselm Kiefer. Some
German Neo-Expressionist art was also openly political as in the work of Jorg Immendorf who
turned his attention to the problems of a divided Germany.

Neo-Expressionism in Italy

The Italian version of Neo-Expressionism is often referred to as the Trans-Avantgarde, a term

invented in 1979 by the Italian critic Achille Bonito Olivia. The idea, according to Bonito, was to
escape the sparseness of the Arte Povera movement in Italy. There is a strong element of
parody, which can be seen in the "mock-heroic" work of Sandro Chia, for example. Francesco
Clemente, is originally Italian, but left the country to divide his time between India and New
York, and absorbing speci c stylistic in uences from those settings. The most traditionally
Expressionistic of the group (and closest to the Germans in style) is Enzo Cucchi. Finally, the
work of Mimmo Paladino is described as more individual and more Italian, with works alluding
to ancient Italian sources.

Neo-Expressionism in the USA

By the early 1980s, American artists entered the Neo-Expressionist arena. The artists usually
associated with American Neo-Expressionism are the group of New York-based artists that
includes Eric Fischl, who emphasized human psychology, and Julian Schnabel, who
summoned historical imagery to create highly personal works. Sometimes associated with
Neo-Expressionism was the arrival of gra ti art in the galleries. This was particularly
signi cant in New York, where Jean-Michel Basquiat became known for his aggressive brush
strokes, broad splatters of paint and emotionally-charged subject matter. In many respects,
Basquiat - alongside Julian Schnabel - became the poster child for the Neo-Expressionist
movement of the 1980s: a self-styled primitive who was eagerly welcomed by the decadent
and upscale art world.

The 1980s was a time of great a uence and unabashed consumerism, when the New York
art market grew exponentially and the selling prices for contemporary art reached seemingly
absurd heights. Rather than reject this environment of commodi cation, or isolate themselves
from the art world, as had many Abstract Expressionists, Basquiat and Schnabel embraced
the glitter and the noise fully.

Later Developments
Neo-Expressionism dominated the art market in Europe and the United States until the mid-
1980s. However, there is some debate about the ways in which the later developments of
Neo-Expressionism played themselves out. Some think that through the artwork of Julian
Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, and others, Neo-Expressionism had become synonymous
with the more conservative trends in the art of the 1980s rather than with the avant-garde.
Even though many of the movement's artists incorporated political and cultural content, few
were interested in the leftist politics associated with a contemporary trend, critical
Postmodernism. They did not feel obliged to glorify the world or "tamper with reality," as
Clemente once put it, but simply to work with form and depict the world as it existed, in all its
harshness and ugliness. This led to vibrant discussions on the value and purpose of painting,
in which Neo-Expressionism was often held up as an example of all that was wrong with the
medium.

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Nevertheless, this criticism did little to dampen the style's success, and its decline was a resul
of the movement's over-production and the collapse of the market at the end of the 1980s.
Artists, critics, and the art market -- all intent on making money and/or reputations --
conspired to hasten its end. Scholars have not yet sorted out the exact placement of Neo-
Expressionism in the art historical narrative. Some see the movement as a kind of late
manifestation of modernism, while others see it as the end of modernism. Theorists Arthur
Danto and Frederic Jameson place it within the context of postmodernism with its self-aware,
surface-oriented banality and use of pastiche. And there are others who emphasize Neo-
Expressionism's role in the transition from modernism to postmodernism, pointing to the two
major artists whose work persisted through the collapse of the 1980s art bubble: Sigmar
Polke and Gerhard Richter. Both were able to simultaneously sustain multiple styles, including
the traditional application of paint, even if in tongue-in-cheek and thus more conceptually
based manner. In any case, enthusiasm for Neo-Expressionism was being steadily subsumed
by emerging discussions of, for example, the need for the inclusion of more female artists as
well as new directions in appropriation.

Important Art and Artists of Neo-Expressionism

The below artworks are the most important in Neo-Expressionism - that both overview the
major ideas of the movement, and highlight the greatest achievements by each artist in Neo-
Expressionism. Don't forget to visit the artist overview pages of the artists that interest you.

Adieu (1982)
Artist: Georg Baselitz
Artwork description & Analysis: Baselitz, who grew up in post-World War II East Germany,
was the earliest and most senior member of the group of Neo-Expressionists. His works were
distinctive in that he frequently painted his gures upside down as if to create a modern-day
counterpart to the 17th-century paintings of a world "topsy-turvy." Though the artist denied
ascribing any particular meanings to his works, he nonetheless contributed meaningful
gures that served as visual analogues to the upheavals of recent German history. The gures
here seem to have no point of origin and are suspended awkwardly between the top of the
picture and the empty space beneath their heads, existing in a sort of horrifying limbo. The
title of the picture also suggests a separation, con rmed by one gure moving away from the
other. Their bodies are sites of violence as indicated by the ferocious and expressive
brushwork, and their organic and vulnerable bodies contrast with the abstract geometry of the
background -- a background that re ects the gures' emotional states in its intensity of color
and paint handling, but which seems also to function in a way that suggests the indifference
of a universal pattern.
Oil on canvas - Tate Gallery, London

Café Deutschland I (1977-78)

Artist: Jörg Immendorff
Artwork description & Analysis: Jörg Immendorf was the Neo-Expressionist artist who most
directly sought to reconcile his art with social activism, wrestling with the political divide that
was Germany at the time. Though he was often frustrated, his paintings all seem to ask: what
can art and the artist do? Café Deutschland is a series of 16 paintings by the German painter,
of which this is the rst. This work demonstrates the in uence of earlier German
Expressionism (such as the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner) in the distorted perspective and
"primitive" characterizations of the dancers and fornicators in the left and right backgrounds.
The space is that of a nightmarish underground nightclub, where all the people and objects
refer to the divided Germany of the 1970s and 1980s. At the left, the eagle of the German
Democratic Republic grasps a swastika in its talons. The two diagonal columns in the
foreground seem to be made of wood and ice or stone; the wood represents part of the
primeval forest of the German homeland, but here is subverted toward political ends, and the
ice or stone is perhaps symbolic of the cold war. In the center of the painting is the artist
himself. Behind him is the re ective surface of another column in which we can make out the
silhouette of the Brandenberg Gate dividing East and West Berlin. The artist holds his
paintbrush in his left hand, while his right hand smashes through the "Berlin Wall," attempting
to connect to the other side. Can his gesture as an artist combat the East German political
gure gazing threateningly from the top right?
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Oil on canvas - Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

Athanor (1983-84)
Artist: Anselm Kiefer
Artwork description & Analysis: Athanor, the title of this painting, is also the name for the
digesting furnace (a kind of oven) that alchemists used to try to transform base metals into
gold. The building in the painting is based on Albert Speer's design for Hitler's Chancellery
building. Through the suggestion of the two buildings, and using an apocalyptic palette, Kiefer
brings together the themes of alchemy and the Holocaust. The alchemists and the Nazis,
each in their way, employed re to effect their transformations. The mottled and darkened
surface of Kiefer's work looks as if it has been subjected to re itself, and indeed it has -- the
artist as alchemist seeks to transform, through the act (the " re") of painting Germany's
terrible past. Kiefer also used materials other than paint - such as straw, lead, and sand - and
was particularly interested in their innate expressive characteristics, as in what happened to
those materials when they burned. In the case of this work, Kiefer utilized straw, which
becomes ash when burned. But the sheer scale (5 by 12 feet) and physicality of this work
imparts to the viewer at least small hope that the creative can emerge from the destructive.
Like other Neo-Expressionist painters, Kiefer summons mythic themes executed with
compelling methods and emotions in order to explore what is possible through art.
Oil, acrylic, emulsion, shellac, and straw on photo mounted on canvas - Toledo Museum of Art

Scissors and Butter ies (1999)

Artist: Francesco Clemente
Artwork description & Analysis: Clemente, pictured here in his usual variety of self-portraits,
was one of the few Italian painters who was a part of the international array of Neo-
Expressionist artists. Employing a highly sensual style that he assimilated during his many
stays in India, quasi-abstract forms combine with human and animal gures. Clemente mixed
elements of erotica (in uenced by his exposure to Indian culture) with red-hot anger
(in uenced by his exposure to the grittiness and violence he witnessed while in New York). As
was typical of his work, a metamorphosis takes place. In Scissors and Butter ies, these
metamorphoses occur between humans and animals, the feminine and the masculine, and
the violent and the sexual/spiritual. This inner con ict of existential expressiveness is often
found in Neo-Expressionism, but Clemente makes this the central focus of his art as he
engages all pictorial elements in the service of self as a way of experiencing the world.
Oil on linen - Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

King of the Wood (1984)

Artist: Julian Schnabel
Artwork description & Analysis: The subject of this painting has been identi ed by art
historian Gert Schiff as derived from James Frazer's The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and
Religion. The story conerns a pre-Roman priest-king who is murdered by his successor as par
of a fertility rite - in other words, the king is sacri ced for the good of the kingdom - was seen
as a more collective myth. According to the story, if someone removed a branch from the
sacred tree, that person could challenge the king. In this work, the spruce roots refer to this
tree in the sacred grove; the king prepares to defend himself with his sword against his
murdering successor, but he dies at harvest time and is reincarnated in the spring. The format
of the work is that of a triptych and thus aligns itself with the history of western religious
painting. The compelling centrality of the mighty gure as well as the scale of the work (over
20 feet long) contribute to Schnabel’s mythmaking. The underpinning of the plates that
Schnabel has made use of in his other works (directly in uenced by Antonio Gaudi's
expressive use of fragments in his architecture) suggests the potsherds and early bits of
civilization excavated by archaeologists, and therefore provide here an appropriate backdrop
for what is being depicted. Yet Schnabel's broken bits of crockery added something further to
Neo-Expressionism; they also allude to the cheap and mass-produced objects of
appropriation-conscious postmodernism. This was accomplished at the same time that the
Neo-Expressionist personal touch of the artist is visible in the bravura application of paint into
which the gure is, in turn, absorbed; the king seems to be simultaneously ready to die and
ready to come back to life.
Oil, plates, Bondo on wood, with spruce roots - Collection of the Artist

Bad Boy (1981)

Artist: Eric Fischl

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Artwork description & Analysis: Two gures occupy the same room, but exist in separate
psychological spaces. The light and shadow pattern of the blind creates a cage for the raw
animalism of the female gure. Conventional symbols include the fruit for abundance/fertility
and the open purse for a vagina; the adolescent boy steals something from the woman's
purse and, simultaneously, a glance - gazing upon the self-absorbed and sexually posed
woman (possibly his mother). In turn, the spectator looks at the boy, at the woman, and, of
course, at the picture. True to Neo-Expressionism, the artist employs a painterly technique
with urgent brushwork combined with the subject matter in order to communicate a feeling of
discomfort in the viewer. In a moment of realization, the viewer is caught up short with a
feeling of complicity in viewing a crime and being a voyeur, at the same time engaging in the
aesthetic act of viewing a painting. Fischl's brand of Neo-Expressionism distinguishes itself by
inserting human psychology and suggesting that the Reagan-era's "family values" had
somehow gone awry.
Oil on canvas - Private Collection, Zurich

Related Art and Artists

Street, Berlin (1913)

Movement: Expressionism
Artist: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Artwork description & Analysis: Kirchner is renowned for his many Berlin street scenes, and
this particular work is perhaps his most well known from that category, if not his entire
catalog. His jagged, angular brushstrokes, acidic colors, and elongated forms all charge the
street atmosphere on the canvas and achieve something very rebellious for its time and
exemplify the stylistic break with tradition that the members of Die Brücke sought. As a
founding member of the group, Kirchner set out to establish a new order of painting, one that
visibly renounced Impressionistic tendencies and the need to accurately portray gurative
forms. In Street, Berlin, Kirchner created a stunningly askew rendition of an alienated, urban
street procession. Without regard for realistic depiction of form, he bent and contorted his
narrow gures like they were blades of grass in a meadow. Another uniquely modern feature
of Street, Berlin was Kirchner's choice to position two prostitutes (identi able by their
signature plumed hats) as the painting's (somewhat off-center) focal point.
Oil on canvas - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Excavation (1950)
Movement: Abstract Expressionism
Artist: Willem de Kooning
Artwork description & Analysis: Excavation is one of Willem de Kooning's most renowned
works, and a true depiction of his Abstract Expressionist style. In it, we see a multitude of
outlined forms that are abstractions of familiar shapes right on the periphery of recognition:
shes, birds, jaws, eyes and teeth. De Kooning has said of his work, "I paint this way because I
can keep putting more and more things in - drama, anger, pain, love, a gure, a horse, my ideas
about space." After this frenzied pile up of imagery, de Kooning would then, with signature
chaos and deliberation, remove, scrape and add paint until he unearthed what he wanted. The
resulting piece presented a true excavation of the artist's mind and movements in the
moment.

De Kooning remains one of the most seminal gestural "action painters" who worked often with
broad brushstrokes and in light, pastel palettes. He sought authenticity of experience, not only
in the making of his paintings but also in the representation of the experience on canvas.
Oil and enamel on canvas - The Art Institute of Chicago

Bunnies (1966)
Movement: Pop Art
Artist: Sigmar Polke
Artwork description & Analysis: After Polke co-founded Capitalist Realism in 1963 in
Dusseldorf, Germany, with Gerhard Richter and Konrad Leug, he began to create paintings of
popular culture, evoking both genuine nostalgia for the images and mild cynicism about the

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state of the German economy. He began simulating the dot patterns of commercial four-color
printing (Raster dots) around the same time as Lichtenstein started replicating Ben-Day dots
on his canvases. In Bunnies, Polke uses an image from the Playboy Club depicting four of
their "bunnies" in costume. By recreating the Raster dot printing technique in this painting,
Polke disrupts the mass-marketing of sexual appeal, because the closer the viewer gets to the
work, the less they see. Bunnies and the rest of Polke's Raster dot paintings, do not invite a
deep, personal identi cation with the image but rather the images become allegories for the
self as it lost amidst the ood of commecial imagery. The dissonance between the inviting
sexuality of the appropriated image of the Playboy bunnies and the distancing effect of the
Raster dots echoes the interplay of feelings and emotions felt by the artist, both yearning for
the mass-culture advertised life and repelled by it at the same time. Polke's vision of popular
culture is far more critical than any of the New York artists, and is rooted in the skeptical
attitude held by the Capitalist Realists. Rather than the "cool" detachment of New York, Polke
cleverly critiques popular culture and how it affects the individual using the same mass-
market image-making techniques.
Oil on cavas - Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

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