Sunday, 16 January 2011

Masturbatory cipher


The Big Night Down the Drain (1963) by Georg Baselitz

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you know what the title of the work refers to?

Simon King said...

No, all I know is that it is a comment on the Nazi genocide.

It is pretty funny to see it in comparison to Hitler's own paintings. Deliberate attempts at 'prettiness' in contrast with deliberate attempts at 'ugliness'.

It definitely is was an audacious statement at the time, too.

Anonymous said...

I haven't seen any of Hitler's artistic work.

I'm sure the sexually explicit nature of it was a bit much at the time, but by that time I assume everyone hated the Nazis with all their heart, so I'm sure those who were offended on Hitler's behalf were few indeed. He's one of the few people in the world you could pour abuse on however much you want without meeting much resistance.

Simon King said...

I'm referring to the fact that in the following decades after the war Nazism was a taboo subject in Germany. Many people simply chose to ignore it. No-one talked about it. That's why Baselitz using Hitler as a figure is audacious, done at a time when there was little or no discussion about Nazism in the arts.