“ We start with a very personal portrait
in the beginning,” says Holzwarth‚ who’s also designed tomes on Jeff Koons and Christopher
Wool‚ about the essay by Büscher on eating steaks with the artist and exploring the rustic setting
of Rauch’s studio practice in a former Leipzig cotton mill. “In this case‚ it’s really a feeling of
the neighborhood‚ the land‚ the city‚ the buildings; we really get a feeling he’s related to the
space where he’s living.”
Born in April of 1960—with both of his parents dying in a tragic rail accident a month later—
Rauch was raised by grandparents and enrolled in Leipzig’s Academy of Visual Arts shortly
after completing his military service. While Rauch says his early work suffered “mood swings
from abstraction to figuration” that aped the more academic bent favored by his Old Leipzig
School mentors‚ Rauch’s self-dubbed “incubation period” (1981-1992) allowed him to crack
his signature style‚ which arrived in a shamanistic dream that must have been a wild 20-car
pile-up of Pop Art references‚ advertising symbolism‚ his own place in art history‚ and the bitter
reality of the working man under East German socialism.
“It’s kind of an alter reality‚ like a play where you have extras wearing Biedermeier dresses or
whatever from the 19th century‚” says Holzwarth. “But the whole theme is a stage of our present
time. You have an idea of a narration‚ but it’s always fading out.”
What began in 1993 with the tondo‚ or circular paintings that relied heavily on stark color
contrasts‚ ironic 50’s era ad wordplay‚ and emotive graphic comic characters (for example‚
Ama and Plazenta), has evolved into a rich tapestry that reached its first apogee with the
dozen novelistic works in his landmark 2007 solo show‚ Para‚ created specifically for the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rauch toured the year prior with Gary Tinterow‚ drawing
inspiration from Warhol and Lucian Freud paintings, as well as the Costume Institute’s 2006
AngloMania exhibition on the evolution of British fashion from the mid-Seventies.
