Anyone who travels frequently to New York City, or who is simply interested in the cultural goings-on in that great city, should subscribe to the free newsletter GermanyinNYC.org. Each month you will get a schedule of film, art exhibits, musical performances, public readings, etc. by German artists. German painting is very hot in New York City this June: there are exhibits by Georg Baselitz, Neo Rauch, Karl Althoff and the photographer Andreas Gursky.
It is the Neo Rauch exhibit at the Met that is generating the most buzz in the New York art scene. The exhibit, which runs until October 14, contains fourteen of Rauch's paintings - all completed in the past year. Rauch is the most famous proponent of what is known as the New Leipzig School of painting, an eclectic confederation of talented artists who thematically and structually would appear to have little in common with each other. That diversity is of little concern to the New York art dealers who are getting record prices for any piece remotely connected to the New Leipzig School.
What is the appeal of Neo Rauch? At first glance, he would appear to the most accessible of the Leipzig painters. Rauch was an apprentice painter during the last days of the East German regime, and he combines the Socialist Realist style with pop-surrealism. His paintings are vaguely reminiscent of Magritte. But where the violent juxtapositions of Magritte creat an aura of enigma, in Rauch the same technique comes across a little more than a clever trick - more like superimposing the illustration for one advertisement on another. Enigma implies there is some truth just out of reach of the viewer. In Rauch, there is only an epistemological cul-de-sac. But perhaps that makes Rauch the premier painter of our times and explains his enormous appeal to American collectors.
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