The Friday after Thanksgiving is the newest U.S. religious holiday. Crowds are out in the streets long before dawn in the same way crowds gather outside churches for the feast of a patron saint in other countries with different notions of the pious. Here, the crowds are waiting for stores to open. Even though I am not planning to go shopping myself today, still I am participating. My email inbox is stuffed with ads from every online merchant I have ever patronized and from many I have never used at all. And I get sucked in – the same as everybody else. The German publisher Taschen, for example, successfully makes me crave their new big book about painter Neo Rauch (I talked about him in 2009 here).
Rauch's paintings suggest narratives but, in the words of art historian Charlotte Mullins, the storytelling is never straightforward: "Architectural elements peter out; men in uniform from throughout history intimidate men and women from other centuries; great struggles occur but their reason is never apparent; styles change at a whim."
Ah, yes – and as an aged child of the Sixties, I am a tremendous and willing sucker for anything resolutely anti-authoritarian. Especially if it is painted in candy colors with apocalyptic clouds eternally hovering. So, yes – I find myself craving the Taschen book in the online ad, even though it is vastly overpriced at $1,000. (That is the price of a copy from the regular edition – the special edition includes a signed lithograph and goes for $4,500.)
Neo Rauch turned 50 this year, a fact I discovered with some shock as I was exploring his career anew on the internet (in lieu of ordering the Taschen book).
It was a shock because in my mind Neo Rauch is the glamor boy of the art world – the youthful macho genius – as epitomized in the slick portrait below by Dieter Elkepoth.
I wonder if Neo Rauch worries about what he will be producing over the next few decades, now that he has reached the summit of his profession and the fulfillment of worldly ambition is a done deal. Probably the work itself is idealistic enough to carry him through.
