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Georg Baselitz

Visit from Hokusai

November 7–December 19, 2015
980 Madison Avenue, New York

Installation view Artwork © Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo: Rob McKeever

Works Exhibited

Georg Baselitz, Untitled, 2015 Ink pen, watercolor, and india ink on paper, in 2 parts; left: 26 ⅜ × 20 ⅛ inches (66.8 × 51 cm); right: 26 ⅜ × 20 ⅛ inches (66.9 × 50.9 cm)© Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo; Jochen Littkemann, Berlin

Georg Baselitz, Untitled, 2015

Ink pen, watercolor, and india ink on paper, in 2 parts; left: 26 ⅜ × 20 ⅛ inches (66.8 × 51 cm); right: 26 ⅜ × 20 ⅛ inches (66.9 × 50.9 cm)
© Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo; Jochen Littkemann, Berlin

Georg Baselitz, Untitled, 2015 Ink pen, lavis, and india ink on paper, in 2 parts; left: 26 ½ × 20 ¼ inches (67.2 × 51.3 cm); right: 26 ⅛ × 20 ⅛ inches (66.4 × 50.9 cm)© Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo; Jochen Littkemann, Berlin

Georg Baselitz, Untitled, 2015

Ink pen, lavis, and india ink on paper, in 2 parts; left: 26 ½ × 20 ¼ inches (67.2 × 51.3 cm); right: 26 ⅛ × 20 ⅛ inches (66.4 × 50.9 cm)
© Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo; Jochen Littkemann, Berlin

Georg Baselitz, Untitled, 2015 Ink pen, watercolor, and india ink on paper, in 2 parts; left: 26 ⅛ × 20 inches (66.3 × 50.8 cm); right: 26 ⅛ × 20 ⅛ inches (66.2 × 50.9 cm)© Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo: Jochen Littkemann, Berlin

Georg Baselitz, Untitled, 2015

Ink pen, watercolor, and india ink on paper, in 2 parts; left: 26 ⅛ × 20 inches (66.3 × 50.8 cm); right: 26 ⅛ × 20 ⅛ inches (66.2 × 50.9 cm)
© Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo: Jochen Littkemann, Berlin

Georg Baselitz, Untitled, 2015 Ink pen and india ink on paper, in 2 parts; left: 26 × 20 ⅛ inches (66.1 × 50.9 cm); right: 25 ⅞ × 19 ¾ inches (65.7 × 50 cm)© Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo: Jochen Littkemann, Berlin

Georg Baselitz, Untitled, 2015

Ink pen and india ink on paper, in 2 parts; left: 26 × 20 ⅛ inches (66.1 × 50.9 cm); right: 25 ⅞ × 19 ¾ inches (65.7 × 50 cm)
© Georg Baselitz 2015. Photo: Jochen Littkemann, Berlin

About

A drawing is always naked.
—Georg Baselitz

Gagosian New York is pleased to present new drawings by Georg Baselitz.

Drawing has always been central to Baselitz’s art. Parallel to his cerebral yet impassioned paintings and roughly hewn sculptures, the practice of drawing is a test site for assimilation and disorientation in his oeuvre. In a new series of two-part ink drawings, Baselitz is “visited” by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), whose exquisitely controlled color woodblock prints epitomized the refined ukiyo-e genre in Japanese art and persist in the popular imagination today.

In each diptych, Baselitz pairs reconsidered motifs from his own work with iterations—in ink with blue, yellow, or green watercolor washes—of an intimate late work by Hokusai, a wry self-portrait sketched at the end of a letter to his print publisher in 1842. The letter accompanied a group of prints made forty years earlier, which the Japanese master described to his publisher as repetitive, unresolved, and immature. He signed it with his pseudonym of the day: “Sincerely yours, the eighty-three-year-old Hachiemon.”

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