Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Individual
Meant
Artist
Army
German
Others
Democratic
Republic
Another
Became
Soldier
Didn
Gave
Educated
Around
Follow
Former
Like
Possibility
Develop
Lines
Figure

More quotes by Georg Baselitz

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I don't see art as entertainment.
Georg Baselitz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Georg Baselitz
Image
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
Image
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.
Georg Baselitz
Image
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.
Georg Baselitz
Image
In a place like the Guggenheim, I would like to be a representative of arte povera. This would be my ideal.
Georg Baselitz
Image
Art is visceral and vulgar - it's an eruption.
Georg Baselitz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Georg Baselitz
Image
A painter doesn't need any talent. In fact, it's better not to have it.
Georg Baselitz
Image
I hang my work upside down to emphasize surface.
Georg Baselitz
Image
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.
Georg Baselitz
Image
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
Image
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