“What passes for imagination today is often just a recontextualization of cultural signs,” David Salle observed in a recent issue of Artforum. When I read this, preeminent painter Neo Rauch immediately came to mind. His show “HeilstÃ¤tten,” or “a place of healing,” at David Zwirner comprises a bronze statue and several paintings, small to mural-sized. Each depicts a panorama of characters and symbols from pre-1960s East German propaganda.
As always, the paintings read as shadowy dreamscapes. Lifeless figures are posed in collaged studio spaces, barren landscapes, and provincial European towns. Steely surreal sculpture, gasoline jugs, paintings, owls and winged people, women in plain 1950s dress, remnants of World Wars, and men in military garb and posture appear in clusters throughout. Based on the compound-style buildings, Rauch's “place of healing” might refer to a sanitorium or a decrepit outpost. Often, something or some one is enveloped, either by overlapping compositions or costumes that seem mid-transformation: in Die Warte, for example, a landscape is swept up by a floating woman's green dress. Subjects are aware of their paintinghood; in Ware, 19th century academics examine prints in a dingy study. In Das Kreisen, paintings meld into the background of a studio space.
Gender and time are not ambiguous, just mixed-up. Das Kreisen, a large-scale painting on the back wall of the second gallery, contains a formidable bearded man whose knee-length skirt reveals smooth, bare legs; he is not androgynous, he is half-and-half. Figures wear specific period clothing from the early-mid 19th century and the 1950s. Time has stopped by 1961.
Rauch draws repeated criticism for his “lack of personal style,” but if anything, his show at Zwirner is very consistent: hurriedly painted, chalky, and lifeless. Take a wide view, and you see chunks of the same colors and tones, systematically overlayed with quick, sketchy details. They're utterly formulaic; Rauch might have instructed a group of hired workers to make a wall mural in a day. The smaller works resemble dime-a-dozen 1950s postcard paintings. His moldy skin tones and acid greens over murky purple are nauseating.
Ugly homogeny, though, serves Rauch well. The all-over quality and speed intentionally hides some of their weirdest moments, which one almost has to read aloud to notice. From my notes: “a fallen angel guy lies on the floor bound by legs and arms by something- hooks? lumps? There are meat chunks on a barbed wire in front of him that look tantalizing- a dog comes over.” This is only a minor event in Das Kriesen: the main stage is occupied by artists' models, flanked by smaller paintings– one landscape and one a family around a fireplace– both of which melt into the “real” space. A large, circular window reveal blowing treetops which replicate those of the painting below. The right half of the composition extends into a long, dark hallway, leading only to another empty doorway.
Suppressed sexuality pervades: in the mini-painting Pakt, thick, hasty brushstrokes reveal at closer inspection a sliver of paint which suggests a soldier's open fly, cupped hand resting below genitals. In the hallway of Das Kreisen, an older man invitingly lights the cigarette of another in short shorts. The artist's hand, which juts from behind a painting, points a denunciative paintbrush at them. A woman lifts up her dress, revealing only a flat shadow.
The act of viewing these is the same as undertaken by Rauch and his subjects: trudging through piles of historical information in order to resolve them. This is the task of any culture-maker who is confronted with chore of both understanding the present and moving forward. “HeilstÃ¤tten” does not present historical narrative, and the people are not intended to be life-like; this is what the present collective memory of East Germany might look like, and it's not pretty.
Whereas self-proclaimed conservativism works for Rauch, it bankrupts the adjacent show at Zwirner. Michaël Borremans's “The Devil's Dress” comprises a series of ocher-colored portraits, mostly solitary nudes in what is likely his studio. In scale, composition, figuration, and paint handling, these aspire only to something between mannerism and American impressionism. The Loan, a painting of a headless woman in black tights, black heels, and a black satin dress, is particularly evocative of the Belle Epoque. The swift and highly controlled marks aim for a Sargent or Richter-like elegance and ease; in The Devil's Dress, Borremans uses wider, looser, strokes to express an out-of-focus face, a shorthand technique employed often by both painters.
Contemporary cues are bare and arbitrary. Borremans adds something mundane to each painting to justify the bland set-up: one woman lies under a floating board. Another has length of red sheeting arranged like a cylindrical tent around his torso. A body in a party dress doesn't have a head.
While Rauch forces us to slog through conservative language in order to reach meaning, Borremans perpetuates conservative language to eliminate meaning: actively upholding complacence in a field best suited to broaden the mind. If the intent in showing these artists together is to elevate the latter, it only expounds the importance of slogging. Entering “The Devil's Dress” from Rauch's historical stockpile is like hitting “reset” on all of the intellectual struggle of the past century. Within ten steps' reach, it's as though nothing ever happened.