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Georg Baselitz

Georg Baselitz Quotes

Painter

German painter known for his unique artistic style and reflections on German history. Baselitz's works often blend abstract and representational elements, characterized by strong colors and bold compositions.

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Famous Georg Baselitz Quotes

“I dont want to create a monster; I want to make something which is new, exceptional, something that only I do...something that references tradition, but is still new.”

Want Stills Tradition Monsters Exceptional

Author:Georg Baselitz

“Art is visceral and vulgar - it's an eruption.”

Art Art Is Vulgar Visceral Eruption

Author:Georg Baselitz

“The idea of changing or improving the world is alien to me and seems ludicrous. Society functions, and always has, without the artist. No artist has ever changed anything for better or worse.”

World Ideas Seems Artist Change Changed Function Aliens Improving

Author:Georg Baselitz

“There is no communication with any public whatsoever. The artist can ask no question, and he makes no statement; he offers no information, and his work cannot be used. It is the end product which counts.”

Ends Used Artist Asks Information Products Communication Offers Statements No Communication

Book:Baselitz, paintings 1960-83

Source: Baselitz, paintings 1960-83

“My Paintings are Battles.”

Painting Battle Difficulty

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I hang my work upside down to emphasize surface.”

Surface Upside Down Exhibitions

Author:Georg Baselitz

“Women don't paint very well. It's a fact. There are, of course, exceptions. Agnes Martin or, from the past, Paula Modersohn-Becker.”

Wells Facts Past Courses Paint Gender Exception

Author:Georg Baselitz

“Museums collect what's important in their respective countries. In Berlin's National Gallery, however, this isn't the case. They're interested neither in me nor the other usual suspects. It's simply a German reality.”

Important Country Reality Cases Suspects Museums Usual Gallery Berlin What's Important

Author:Georg Baselitz

“In Germany, we often hear the absurd complaint that museums don't have the money to buy paintings. Of course, I'm not talking about me and my paintings. There are, after all, more popular painters in this country.”

Country Courses Talking Painting Absurd Painter Germany Museums Complaints Not Talking Talking About Me

Author:Georg Baselitz

“You cannot deny your origins: I love Kirchner more than Matisse, although Matisse was a greater artist. That isn't to do with nationality. It's a stronger feeling.”

Feelings Artist Greater Stronger Deny Patriotism Nationality Matisse

Author:Georg Baselitz

“Asked what role he believes art plays in society, Baselitz replied, 'The same role as a good shoe, nothing more.”

Believe Art Play Purpose Roles Shoes Good Shoes

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I begin with an idea, but as I work, the picture takes over. Then there is the struggle between the idea I preconceived... and the picture that fights for its own life.”

Ideas Fighting Struggle Life Struggle

Author:Georg Baselitz

“All German painters have a neurosis with Germany's past: war, the postwar period most of all, East Germany. I addressed all of this in a deep depression and under great pressure. My paintings are battles, if you will.”

War Past Painting Battle Painter

Author:Georg Baselitz

“As an artist, I have been a risk-taker. And I've done a lot of different things. I don't make it easy for people. Identification is difficult. One doesn't recognize my art right away.”

People Art Different Done Artist Easy Difficult

Author:Georg Baselitz

“No one who looks at my paintings can see whether a painting is upside down or not anymore. I've made or developed so many image models that some people have given up trying to keep track of me. But others have only one or two ways of doing things and are successful with that.”

People Trying Successful Painting Track Upside Down

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I don't paint over my paintings with black paint. I paint black paintings. It isn't because I'm sad, just as I didn't paint red paintings yesterday because I was happy. Nor will I paint yellow paintings tomorrow because I'm jealous.”

Black Painting Tomorrow Paint Jealous

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I think the defect actually lies with male artists. Male artists often border on idiocy, while it's important for a woman not to be that way, if possible. Women are outstanding in science, just as good as men.”

Thinking Men Important Lying Artist Idiocy

Author:Georg Baselitz

“A painter doesn't need any talent. In fact, it's better not to have it.”

Author:Georg Baselitz

“Talent seduces us into interpretation. My sister could draw wonderfully, but she would never have hit upon the idea of becoming a painter. I never had that extreme talent.”

Talent Painter My Sister Seducing

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I was always on the outside. It was the worst when I still wanted to be a professor, having to deal with colleagues and students, and having to listen to all that academic nonsense. It's really just a haze that keeps them busy. But all of that is fortunately over now, once and for all.”

Worst Students Busy Nonsense Academic

Author:Georg Baselitz

“Despite all the taxes people pay, there supposedly isn't any money in this country for art. Of course, this makes an artist ask himself: "Well, then, what are you doing with the 100 million I pay each year? What happened to that money?" And he doesn't get an answer.”

People Art Country Artist Taxes

Author:Georg Baselitz

“Spending money on art has always been frowned upon in this country - even earlier, when my and others' paintings cost almost nothing. Something is always more important. The people in charge are always peddling reasons that others seem to accept. Those who don't drink and aren't crazy, or who don't attract attention with how they behave in public, aren't noticed in art.”

People Art Important Country Reason Attention Accepting Crazy Painting Drink Behave Spending Money

Author:Georg Baselitz

“There's a market for art, and things are indeed going swimmingly, especially for German artists. But everything takes place in America and in London, where there are quite a few wealthy, engaged people. What motivates them to buy art is a different question, but they do.”

People Art Different Artist Art Is Wealthy

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I've painted, but I've also done graphics since as long as I can remember. So even people with little to spend could afford it. But even the graphic works are only bought by those who buy the big, expensive paintings. I think that's troublesome.”

People Thinking Long Done Remember Painting Graphic

Author:Georg Baselitz

“Alfred Schnittke was an important contemporary composer, and he lived in Germany, but no one here has heard of him. Everyone has heard of Mozart, and many believe that he can still be found in that little house in Salzburg, which is why people stand there in line. I think that our music and our art belong to our era. If the public doesn't show up, it must be stupid.”

People Thinking Believe Art Important House Stupid Art Is Composer

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I don't see art as entertainment.”

Author:Georg Baselitz

“Most of arts what comes from the States to Europe has something to do with entertainment. I can't imagine artists in the United States having the same kind of isolated position that we have here in Europe. I have a feeling one lives more publically in the States.”

Kind Art Feelings Artist Imagine

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I became an artist because of the possibility it gave me to develop in another way, because I didn't want to follow the same lines the others around me did. I was educated in the former German Democratic Republic, which meant that an individual figure had to be... like a soldier in the army.”

Artist Individual Possibility Army Democratic Soldier Educated

Author:Georg Baselitz

“That was in 1957. And there I found out that Germany is a kind of province. I didn't know anything about expressionism, about the Bauhaus and Dada and surrealism. I was uneducated, so to speak - and everybody else was more or less uneducated, too.”

Kind Speak Surrealism Uneducated

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I did not always trust my teachers, because I found them too weak. I was looking for something that could take me in a new direction, for things that I could admire. And because it was so hard to find this, I became a sort of outsider. That's why I began to identify with the insane, "outsider" artists.”

Artist Teacher Weak Admire Insane Outsiders

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I have always been aware of different movements and directions in art. But, in general, I'm always bored by any kind of generalization when it comes to artists. I think that there are just single individuals, who are valuable, and they work outside of any group.”

Thinking Kind Art Different Artist Individual Work Out Valuable Bored

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I have always had the feeling that other people are too stupid to discover interesting things. That's why I do it myself. I think of collecting as a way to show that I understand what's important better than others do.”

People Thinking Important Feelings Interesting Stupid

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I started collecting my artist friends, artists like myself who nobody had yet noticed. In everything, all I am collecting, so to speak, are my friends - artist friends.”

Author:Georg Baselitz

“Nowhere in my collection do I, say, have a Auguste Renoir painting. Because everybody knows that this is a good painter without me having to demonstrate it.”

Painting Painter

Author:Georg Baselitz

“When Michael Werner saw a painting of mine, such as Die grosse Nacht im Eimer, which back then nobody wanted and everybody thought was ridiculous, he realized that this was the right provocation, that it represented the feeling of the times in the right way.”

Feelings Painting Ridiculous

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I remember that Michael Werner told me about a famous collector, and Michael set up an appointment for us to meet. This man looked around the room and at my pictures. Then he said, "Young man, why are you doing these horrible things? Look out the window. There are nice girls out there. It's springtime. Look at how beautiful the world can be. You'll ruin your health by smoking so much and doing such tortured things."”

Men World Beautiful Remember Girl Nice Window Horrible Smoking Springtime Nice Girl

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I don't know who made up this sort of greatest-hits list for artists. If one artist isn't moving forward anymore, then it's assumed another one is going to take their place. With Francis Bacon's death, a whole genre of art died.”

Art Moving Artist Moving Forward

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I am not a representative of anything. When art historians or critics or the public put somebody in a drawer like this, it has a tranquilizing, paralyzing effect. Artists are individuals. They have ideas, and the conventions for one's self as an individual are not for a group. There are always those who follow the group, but they belong in the margins. I refuse to be placed within, or added to, one particular school.”

Art School Artist Individual Critics Historian

Author:Georg Baselitz

“When I began as an artist, I already did not like expressionism, or abstract expressionism, because abstract painting had already been done. I did not want to belong to any one group or the other, and I'm not one or the other.”

Done Artist Painting Abstract

Author:Georg Baselitz

“In the beginning, the energy involved to create came from my reaction to the work of other artists. The force behind this was aggression. The art that I saw was great, but I had to reject it, because I could not continue in the same direction. So I had to do something entirely different. It had to be so different, so extreme, that those who loved pop art, for instance, hated me. And this was my strength.”

Art Different Artist Energy Hated Aggression Pop Art

Author:Georg Baselitz

“In a place like the Guggenheim, I would like to be a representative of arte povera. This would be my ideal.”

Author:Georg Baselitz

“We have seen so many exhibits in recent years where the exhibition design was aesthetically beautiful. In this case, if someone wants to get something out of the exhibit, they must neglect the aesthetics and look at my pictures.”

Beautiful Design Neglect

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I do not have a philosophy about retrospectives. Of course, I cannot change what I have done. What I am doing today, this I can change, in view of whatever I have done before. My retrospectives are like a series of ghosts.”

Done Philosophy Today Ghost

Author:Georg Baselitz

“As a human being, I am a citizen, but as an artist, I am asocial.”

Author:Georg Baselitz

“A citizen sticks to conventions, does whatever is social. Artists, of course, must reject all conventions. I see no differently in reconciling the best of both of these worlds.”

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I would say for everyday I build buildings or houses like a bricklayer with canvas and paint.”

House Building Paint Everyday Canvas

Author:Georg Baselitz

“What counts most is finding new ways to get the world down in paint on my own terms.”

World Way Art Term My Own Findings Paint New Ways

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens.”

Art Ends Enough Happens Able Artist Hair Paint Work Out Admire Painter Portraits Blonde Blonde Hair Long Blonde Hair

Author:Georg Baselitz

“The reality is the picture, it is most certainly not in the picture.”

Author:Georg Baselitz

“The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is asocial... his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does.”

Doe Artist Social Attitude Responsibility Roles Responsible Social Roles

Book:Baselitz, paintings 1960-83

Source: Baselitz, paintings 1960-83

About the Author

Born: January 23, 1938
Known for: Painter
Quotes: 59

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Books & Sources

Georg Baselitz: Collected Writings and InterviewsRelated source material

Baselitz, paintings 1960-83Related source material

BaselitzRelated source material

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