Product Description

In a lakeside scene, a man leans on a graphic of an arrow as if it were a rake handle in the garden; tentacles rise from the shoreline and rectangular speech bubbles hang empty in the yellow sky. In a Dali-esque interior, the corner of a comforter drips off a bed. This major new overview of the work of the Leipzig painter Neo Rauch makes, once again, the case that he is one of the most important artists of his generation. He remains committed to putting brush on canvas in an age when digital media are gaining ground, and among a crowd of similarly dedicated colleagues, he stands out at the forefront. While his work of the 1980s was influenced by Expressionism, his more recent portfolio revels in a new take on Socialist Realism, clearly shaped by the experience of growing up in the former East Germany. Rauch riffs on the once-mandated styles of his youth and on western abstraction from the second half of the twentieth century, all in coloration and figuration that directly allude to the Socialist past. Between cartoon styling and historic technique, he has found a distinctive style, palette and concept. These dreamlike sequences feel both timeless and deeply rooted: Rauch gathers figures from the past in surreal landscapes and interiors to tell enigmatic stories about the present.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #389357 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Released on: 2007-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

About the Author
Born in 1960 in Leipzig, Neo Rauch is a lifelong resident of Germany. He has shown his work at The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and in the past year alone at venues in London, Prague, Montreal, Santa Fe and Osaka. His work has been covered by the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and Artforum, and is in the collections of both The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim in New York.

Donald Kuspit is one of America's most distinguished art critics. He was the winner of the prestigous Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism and is a contributing editor at Artforum, Sculpture, and Tema Celeste, as well as editor of Art Criticism. He is a professor of art history and philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the author of more than 20 books, including The End of Art, The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist, and The Rebirth of Painting in the Late 20th Century.

Customer Reviews

Rauch the Original
Neo Rauch has single handedly saved the art world, yet the art world is too stubborn to admit it. The same people, (critics and directors) who accepted and propelled this genius into the spotlight and made him a "darling", are the very same people who scrutinize his motives and the substance of his work. It seems that the austere "Artworld" in all its naval-gazing bloated self-importance is chronically addicted to the act of building an Artist up to simply tear them down. What more is needed to prove that this Artist is raw unadulterated talent? It is probably best that the "Artworld" elders, critics and entitled elitists remain nameless and faceless much like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, less we discover how unqualified they truly are. It's been many years since the world has seen an Artist like Rauch, a genuine original committed to the task of painting with a solid work ethic. This book clearly shows his style progression and neatly fits the pieces together to explain how Rauch has arrived where he is today. When I first viewed a Rauch painting in 1999 I knew this painter was going to change the face of contemporary art, and not a moment too soon. I would also add the book "Neo Rauch" by Hatje Cantz to accompany this book if you can find it.

Endlessly and compellingly intriguing
I keep returning to this book over and over. I find Rauch's work endlessly and compellingly intriguing. A recent tribute to the late filmmaker Ingmar Bergman included the following description of Bergman that could easily apply to Neo Rauch: Kael had "observed that in much of his work 'the imagery derives its power from unconscious or not fully understood associations' that could cause Bergman to explain a scene by saying, 'It's just my poetry,'while leaving the viewer to wonder what he was trying to accomplish.'" With both Bergman and Rauch, you don't so much wonder "at" what they are trying to accomplish, as wonder "with" the artists at the mystery they've conjured.