Everyone has a type. The biker bad-boy, the starched executive, the wounded lone wolf, the self-deprecating comedian, the military hero – there’s always one we idolize, no matter how many times romantic practice cautions against it. This inner conflict between idolized imagery and personal identity inspired a fury of paintings by Georg Baselitz, one of Germany’s most influential post-war artists, on view now through October 22, 2017 at the Guggenheim Bilbao in a show entitled Heroes.
Baselitz’s frenzied, yet fragile figures are an energetic statement of the artist’s self assertion and identity that ran contrary to the prevailing artistic and ideological trends of his time. He found irregularities in the archetypically “ideal man” which he hadn’t previously considered; Heroes maps his exploration of what those gray areas implied. The men in his work sport tattered uniforms and clotted expressions. They seem eager to walk off the canvas with a wet, bloody limp, as though they would grab onlookers by the shoulders and plead for morphine or peace.
The beauty of Baselitz’s military saviors lives in their civilian identities – the shepherd, the painter, the hipster “new type” – and in their honesty. With that in mind, we invite you to take a look at these works from the show, and to question your own ideal type.
