10 - Neo Rauch

Neo Rauch Die Kunde 1999 Oil on canvas 64 x 55 cm. Signed, dated and titled 'DIE KUNDE RAUCH 99'. - Traces of studio and minor traces of age. Provenance Directly from the artist; private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia Literature Brussels 2013 (BOZAR, Palais des Beaux-Arts), Neo Rauch, Selected Works 1993–2012, p.111, with col.illus “Yet, in truth, Rauch’s paintings are pictures to be read. They do not depict things, but symbols, or rather, symbolic objects, and they do not depict people, but representatives. Through his painting style alone, Rauch makes it clear that he wishes to operate squarely within the realm of signifiers. He attaches not the slightest importance to a painting coalescing into an illusion, or to it offering a cohesive visual whole that would make one forget one is looking at a painted surface. He generally dispenses with depth, favouring a flat mode of representation: outlines filled in with colour. Nor does he mind if the layers of the painting process remain visible as such and do not blend together. Here, too, there is a roughness, indeed almost a gesture against ideals of perfection, wherever they may originate.” Gernot Böhme, Nach-Bilder, Zum historischen Ort von Neo Rauchs Gemälden, in: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Ed.), Neo Rauch, Neue Rollen, Bilder 1993-2006, exhib.cat. Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Cologne 2006, p.47).