The quarrel with expressionist art is at base a political one: art that places supreme value on individual enterprise is, ultimately, reactionary. While the expressionist stance is confrontational, it is as often based on an effete snobbism as on real understanding of or sympathy with the oppressed classes. And, moreover, whether of the right or the left, it can too easily be characterized as merely rebellious—as safely contained, easily explained, and therefore in complicity with the standards that it seeks to overthrow, be they moral, political, or esthetic. It is art that sets out to eradicate the idea of distance, and in doing so insures that it cannot exercise a truly critical function. The latest expressionist manifestation to surface in New York comes from Berlin—four artists so far: Luciano Castelli, Rainer Fetting, Helmut Middendorf, and Salomé. Their work shares several characteristics with similar work being done in Italy and America, notably an impulse to borrow images and motifs from art of the past, particularly a national past. It is not yet clear if they also share an extremely fashion-conscious, anti-intellectual elitism.
What is unusual about this new group is that they are students of an already existing German school of neo-expressionists—Georg Baselitz, K. H. Hödicke, Markus Lüpertz, et al. Thus their mannerisms are to be understood as being at a further remove from the original expressionist impulse. It is this enforced distance which allows their work the chance of being more interesting than a simple return to self-expression would be, insinuating the possibility that it is profoundly anti-expressionist. Since it also appears to have a sense of critical distance, the work of Salomé and Castelli seems substantially different from that of other neo-expressionists such as Sandro Chia, Rainer Fetting, and Julian Schnabel. They all revel in the use of clichés of one sort or another, but while the latter group enjoys them with what amounts to a camp sensibility, Salomé and Castelli appear to be doing something beyond that. Two factors serve to warn the viewer that all may not be as it seems: Salomé and Castelli often paint together, as equal partners; and they are fascinated by transvestism. Possessed of this preliminary information, with hints of unexpected levels of duplicity, one is obliged to confront the obviously mannered style of these paintings as something more than bad art.
The paintings are deceitful. Dressed to kill they ultimately cannot, or will not, deliver what they promise. They set up expectations of expressionist verities—bright, angry color; frenzied brushwork; raunchy, indecorous subject matter. But it is all calculated to look that way. The angst is deliberated; not even personal, but shared. These paintings acknowledge, with a wry humor, that the most liberated, individual utterance is nevertheless bound by the conventions that articulate it. They thrive on convention; like the fantasies of the cross dresser, they are made possible only by strict adherence to rule: the rule of appearances.
The issue is authenticity, that touchstone of modern art since the Romantics. Put simply: is it still possible to make an authentic statement, when the means at hand are hopelessly implicated in a history and an ideology to which one may feel only the weakest attachment? Salomé and Castelli seem willing to try, making the most of the dusty old hand-me-downs that are the crutches of the painter’s trade, bravely facing off the problem by working sincerely in a by-now suspect, and therefore insincere mode.
It is an attention to the workings of received ideas and methods, and to their ability to stop intelligent discourse cold, that marks the best art being done currently.
—Thomas Lawson
