Neo Rauch at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Evonne Fitzgerald
Chronicle Staff Writer

After presenting the work of Tony Oursler (2005), and Kara Walker (2007), the Met is continuing its series of artist in mid-careers, thereby following with Neo Rauch, “Para.” Mr. Rauch has painted fourteen paintings just for this exhibit; it runs from May 22, 2007 to Oct 14, 2007. The paintings are a series of independent allegories designed in the form of collages using figures and elements from such areas as advertising, design, film, architecture, comic strips, art history, German culture and history in general; imaginatively interconnect into several pictographic themes: social realism principally the German and Russian cold war era, religion, fantasy, pup fiction, magazine covers from the old industrial age, psychology by and large Fraud, the style is old world European, and if it sounds confusing it is.

Neo Rauch, (1960) was born in Leipzig, East Germany. He studied at Hochschule for Grafik und Buchkunst and at the Leipzig’s Academy of Visual Arts where he currently teachers. He has become quite the celebrity in his home town; actually he has become enormously famous all over the world to the extend where galleries are forced to bid for the privilege of showcasing his works. I paid two visits to the Met: first to have an overview of what all the hype was about and then again to be sure I hadn’t missed anything. Mr. Rauch’s paintings are massive, way too large for the space the Met has chosen for them, and that’s a shame; his work really needs to be viewed from a distance as they are large and extraordinary pieces. They are, however, extremely puzzling. Many of the figures populating the landscapes are out of whack in both proportion and scale; they don’t, in many instances, appear to be in the same world even though they are sharing the same canvas. They all are involved in some sort of activity but at the same time they are completely motionless. The objects that fill-out the landscapes come from many of the fields I mentioned earlier all painted in industrial like pigments: blues look gray, reds are burnt and yellows faded, only here and there a brush stroke or two of bright color; gold here is used as a positive affirmation for example. Neo Rauch states that they are extensions of his dreams, but they are in the form of allegories and as such they are asked to tell a story: to communicate something. While at the show, I kept asking myself what is it he is trying to say here, with out I’m sorry to say coming up with any definitive answer to my own question, I finally resigned myself to the uncertain conjecture that the paintings are not really meant to make sense in the commonly used meaning of the word, but instead are within limits open to individual interpretation guided by each viewers cache of universal perceptions. Whether I am right or not, I’ll leave up to you. The exhibition closes Oct 14, so don’t miss this one. I hope to see you there!

Neo Rauch at the Met: “Para” is organized by Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Curator in Charge of Metropolitan’s Department of Nineteenth Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art.