‘The treble clef, the lines of the staves, the notes, and things start dancing, round and round, up and down, spaced out, back and forth, shifting towards the edges…’ Georg Baselitz, 2015
White Cube have produced a collaboration with Glyndebourne Festival, starting with an exhibition of new works by the controversial German artist Georg Baselitz. The exhibition is the inaugural presentation of ‘White Cube at Glyndebourne’, a partnership which will provide the opportunity to show the work of internationally acclaimed artists to new audiences as part of Glyndebourne’s world renowned opera programme.
Born in 1938 in Saxony, Baselitz is a painter, printmaker, sculptor and draughtsman, whose distinguished career has spanned more than fifty years, during which he has created works that have consistently challenged the mainstream. Exploring collective, historical and personal themes, Baselitz’s works connect deeply to German history and literature, as well as to the iconography and rural landscape of his childhood.
For this exhibition, Baselitz has created a series of new paintings all of which focus on the leg and the foot. An important early motif which he has returned to and explored so often it also functions as emblematic self-portrait.
The Glyndebourne paintings should be seen as part of an evolution of this motif – a series of differently sized canvases on pale ground, enclosed in golden frames – mining and testing the motif again with stubborn insistence. Legs spin clockwise and counter-clockwise like mysterious turntables, while their cryptic titles accentuate this musical association by referencing Bach, Mozart and Wagner as well as hurdy-gurdy and folk music: these new paintings embody lightness, playfulness, expectation and musicality.
The exhibition is open to ticket holders during the Festival, which opens on May 21 and runs until August 30.
It will take place in the grounds of Glyndebourne, in a newly designed exhibition space created by award-winning architectural studio Carmody Groarke. The exhibition has been curated by Andrea Schlieker, Director, Commissions and External Projects, White Cube.
Georg Baselitz 21 May – 30 August 2015 Glyndebourne, Special Project
Photo: Courtesy White Cube Gallery