"What's right in front of you? Hands!" - George Baselitz
To St James's to see this rather moving exhibition of painted hands by Georg Baselitz. There is a tradition among artists of depicting the importance of hands as agents of the manifestation of their creative output, as symbols of comunication, and as signs of the human presence, be it in ancient cave paintings, Renaissance paintings and drawings, or more expressive, abstracted imagery. All express the power, dexterity and creativity of humankind through the hand. Baselitz adds to this tradition with this tightly focused exhibition of a series of vibrant, golden hands looming large out of their inky-black backgrounds. Being surrounded by this series of paintings and wall-mounted sculptures in the White Cube space at Mason's Yard is like being in a sacred space, surrounded by a series of religious icons. These paintings have an emotional, abstract weight about them. They are created on an ambitious scale which is heartening to see given Baselitz's advanced years. Their execution in gold lends them a certain gravitas, and adds to that air of the sacred. There are some wonderful painterly textures and mark-making which make some of the hands resemble the gnarled, calloused, surfaces of the hands of manual labourers. Less successful in my opinion were the gilded, bronze wall sculptures named after famous painters whom Baselitz admires, which hang rather flaccidly from the walls. Their saving grace were the actual visible traces of the hands of the maker with their rough surface textures, and evidential marks of the artists' fingers clawing out the clay. Through the paintings though Baselitz does an excellent job of expressing the potency of hands as the agents of creativity.
Darkness Goldness installation view
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