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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.

Georg Baselitz

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Georg Baselitz
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: January 23
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Painter
Printmaker
Sculptor
University Teacher
Hans-Georg Kern
Georg Dern
G. Baselitz
Hans-Georg Baselitz
Georg Kern
Hans Georg Kern
Artist
Army
German
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Democratic
Republic
Another
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Soldier
Didn
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Possibility
Develop
Lines
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Meant

More quotes by Georg Baselitz

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Art is visceral and vulgar - it's an eruption.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz
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I hang my work upside down to emphasize surface.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz
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A painter doesn't need any talent. In fact, it's better not to have it.
Georg Baselitz
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You dig in and you find something.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz
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The reality is the picture, it is most certainly not in the picture.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz
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An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz
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Women don't paint very well. It's a fact. There are, of course, exceptions. Agnes Martin or, from the past, Paula Modersohn-Becker.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz
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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.
Georg Baselitz