Head, 1963

About the Work

Baselitz’s ‘Head’ shows a slimy yellow mass with blood-red patches. It is misshapen, repellent, almost revolting. Only gradually does one recognise a tongue, an eye, an ear, and a penis instead of a nose: grossness, disjunction and fleshy physicality culminate here, and the inside seems to have been turned out. The picture narrates nothing, but what it shows is painfully unfathomable. Particularly against the background of Art Informel of the late 1950s, Baselitz’s violent, brutally deforming painting was absolutely outrageous and, in the best sense, disturbing.