Markus Brüderlin

This book is an in-depth study of this major theme in 20th century art history. It begins with the innovative pictorial conception of Philipp Otto Runge, whose early 19th century paintings featured the last genuine form in the history of ornament, the arabesque. The arabesque had an influence via Symbolism (Maurice Denis, Paul Gauguin) and Art Nouveau (Henry van de Velde, Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann) on painting's move towards abstraction (Vasily Kandinsky, Frantisek Kupka, Adolf Hoelzel), which resulted on the one hand in a non-figurative, geometric structure of lines (Mondrian), and on the other, in the swirls of Matisse and Jackson Pollock. Side by side with the "royal way" of Cubism, arabesque abstraction therefore opens up a second doorway to the world of non-figurative art.
Significant influences also result from the modern artists' preoccupation with the ornamentation found in distant cultures, such as Matisse with the Orient and Oceania, Ad Reinhardt with Asian culture, and American painting with pre-Columbian ornament (Josef Albers, Barnett Newman). Referring also to Minimalism, new media, digital technology, the Renaissance and the Rococo, the book celebrates the impact of ornament on abstract art, as well as showcasing a remarkable array of masterpieces.… (mais)

In a lakeside scene, a man leans on a graphic of an arrow as if it were a rake handle in the garden; tentacles rise from the shoreline and rectangular speech bubbles hang empty in the yellow sky. In a Dali-esque interior, the corner of a comforter drips off a bed. This major new overview of the work of the Leipzig painter Neo Rauch makes, once again, the case that he is one of the most important artists of his generation. He remains committed to putting brush on canvas in an age when digital media are gaining ground, and among a crowd of similarly dedicated colleagues, he stands out at the forefront. While his work of the 1980s was influenced by Expressionism, his more recent portfolio revels in a new take on Socialist Realism, clearly shaped by the experience of growing up in the former East Germany. Rauch riffs on the once-mandated styles of his youth and on western abstraction from the second half of the twentieth century, all in coloration and figuration that directly allude to the Socialist past. Between cartoon styling and historic technique, he has found a distinctive style, palette and concept. These dreamlike sequences feel both timeless and deeply rooted: Rauch gathers figures from the past in surreal landscapes and interiors to tell enigmatic stories about the present.… (mais)