Baselitz’s final reckoning: a brutal, beautiful descent into darkness

Georg Baselitz’s latest exhibition, ‘Back Again’ at White Cube Bermondsey, isn’t a retrospective; it’s a visceral autopsy. It’s the artist’s final, chaotic statement, a desperate scramble away from the abyss – and it’s profoundly unsettling.

The weight of the chair

The gallery is dominated by a brutal honesty. Baselitz, confined to a wheeled chair, wielded a brush on a stick, creating canvases smeared with the evidence of his failing body. Each painting, a testament to decline, is a tangible record of time’s relentless erosion. The tracks left by his chair aren’t just marks; they’re a visible, mournful chronicle of his struggle.

Falling, flailing, fighting

The initial impact – a body plummeting through a pale blue sky – immediately establishes the exhibition’s core theme. But it’s the subsequent reactions that truly grip you. Unlike the serene descent, the canvases opposite depict figures engulfed in violent, panicked thrashing. Limbs extend grotesquely, faces contort in silent screams – a desperate, almost reptilian attempt to resist the inevitable. These aren’t elegant depictions of death; they’re a primal, chaotic rejection of it. Think spiders desperately clawing their way out of a bathtub – a truly horrifying image repeated across multiple works.

Golden decay

The final room offers a strange, unsettling shift. Massive canvases, awash in gold, present figures that, while diminished, are almost saintly. Baselitz has transformed his and Elke’s bodies into Byzantine icons, a deliberate act of self-canonization. It’s a poignant, almost unsettling gesture: a desire to transcend mortality through art, to become a permanent fixture in the gallery of remembrance. The fragility of these figures, rendered in shimmering gold, is simultaneously beautiful and deeply unsettling – a final, desperate plea for immortality.

A bitter farewell

I’ve always found Baselitz’s upside-down paintings a calculated affectation, a stylistic quirk. But confronting this body of work, knowing it’s the last he’ll ever produce, changes everything. There's a raw, unflinching emotion here that transcends any stylistic preference. It’s not a polished farewell; it’s a brutal, messy, and ultimately unforgettable reckoning with the end. Baselitz didn’t offer easy answers, or comfortable resolutions. He just presented the truth – a truth rendered in paint, sweat, and the unmistakable weight of a life nearing its close. A painfully sad goodbye, indeed.