Although so-called art experts regularly proclaim the death of painting, the medium defiantly lives on, constantly evolving and responding to an ever-changing art scene and the often-troubled world beyond.
More trendy kinds of art such as video, installation and conceptual work frequently take center stage, yet paintings still can be a viable creative vehicle for even the most daring artists.
For proof, viewers need look no further than the vanguard work of a dozen or so young artists in painting’s new hotbed – the unlikely eastern German city of Leipzig, which is still shaking off the effects of Soviet domination.
A little more than five years after five recent graduates from the Leipzig Art Academy held their first exhibition, the New Leipzig School, as the expanded group is known, has become an international sensation, with museums lining up to buy works and prices skyrocketing.
SITE Santa Fe, an influential contemporary art space in the Southwestern cultural center, is one of six stops for a nationally touring exhibition spotlighting seven of these Leipzig artists – Tilo Baumgärtel, Tim Eitel, Martin Kobe, Neo Rauch, Christoph Rückhäberle, David Schnell and Matthias Weischer.
The show, which was organized by MASS Moca in North Adams, Mass., features more than 60 works drawn from the respected Rubell Family Art Collection in Miami. Mera and Don Rubell first visited Leipzig in the fall of 2003 and quickly became among the artists’ earliest and most ardent champions.
This show, one of the largest and most important looks at these artists so far, and another held at the Cleveland Museum of Art, were featured last year on the cover of the June/July issue of Art in America – a major indicator of the stir surrounding these young innovators.
The New Leipzig School has been called the “21st century’s first bona fide artistic phenomenon,” and perhaps it is. But the bigger question is whether anybody will remember or care in 10 or 20 years.
What is refreshing in a contemporary art world drunk on superficiality and gimmickry is the substance that undergirds these works. Because the Leipzig artists know the history of painting, they can both draw on and subvert it.
They are masters of the basic elements of painting, such as color, composition and perspective, and they understand the mechanics of manipulating and deploying paint, using a brush and sometimes other less-genteel means.
A prime example is one of the show’s star selections – Schnell’s “Bretter (Planks)” (2005). In this breathtaking, 10-foot-wide canvas, he thrusts viewers inside a ramshackle, planked building, using extreme, angled perspectives to create an off-balance sense of three-dimensionality.
Equally impressive is Schnell’s mix of virtuosic brush work and deliberate crudeness – still-visible underdrawing and carefully errant splats and marks- as he skillfully evokes light streaking through the slits between the planks and offers tantalizing glimpses of the surrounding landscape.
Each of the Leipzig artists possesses a distinctive, easily identifiable style, yet certain qualities run through much of their work, including unlikely, often discordant colors and a sense of detachment. The latter is particularly evident in Eitel’s hermetic, unnatural realism in pieces such as “Container” (2004).
Also important is the narrative sense that pervades these works, especially Rauch’s enigmatic, often disconcerting tableaux, such as “Demos (Demonstrations)” (2004). Born in 1960 and slightly older than the other artists, he has been a kind of mentor and leader.
It is easy to wonder whether these artists would have drawn nearly so much attention if they had been lost among the thousands of artists at work in, say, New York City, but it is impossible to deny their context, which is an integral part of their work.In the decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when thousands of people were fleeing to the West, these artists chose to attend the Leipzig Art Academy, which for decades was bound to socialist realism. They then remained in the backwater city, a decision that inevitably has brought a certain idiomatic quality to their work.
Although their paintings share some qualities with their West German peers, there is little of the expressionism or overtly sociopolitical elements and almost none of the grandeur or heroism of Anselm Kiefer.
Leipzig has become the frontier of contemporary painting, and it is an exciting place to be.
“Life After Death: New Leipzig Paintings
From the Rubell Family Collection”
THROUGH JUNE 4|Art exhibition|SITE Santa Fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe|$8|$4 for students, teachers and seniors; free for museum members|10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Fridays; noon-5 p.m. Sundays; 505-989-1199 or sitesantafe.org
