World-Changing Rage: News of the Antipodeans - Paperback

by Georg Baselitz (Author), Alexander Kluge (Author), Katy Derbyshire (Translator)

An exploration by an artist and writer duo of a fundamental constant in the history of humankind: rage, and its impact on the world.

Rage and obstinacy are close relatives--and fundamental categories in the work of both Georg Baselitz and Alexander Kluge. In World-Changing Rage, these two accomplished German creators explore links and fractures between two cultures through two media: ink and watercolor on paper, and the written word.

The long history of humankind is also a history of rage, fury, and wrath. In this book, Baselitz and Kluge explore the dynamism of rage and its potential to rapidly grow and erupt into blazing protests, revolution, and war. The authors also reflect the melancholy archetype of the Western hero (and his deconstruction) against the very different heroic ethos of the Japanese antipodes. More powerful than rage, they argue, is wit, as displayed in the work of Japanese master painter Katsushika Hokusai. In this volume, Baselitz repeatedly draws an image of Hokusai, depicting him with an outstretched finger, as if pointing towards Europe in a mixture of rage, wrath, irony, and laughter, all-too-fleetingly evident in his expression. A unique collaboration between two of the world's leading intellectuals, World-Changing Rage will leave every reader with a deeper appreciation of the human condition.

Author Biography

Georg Baselitz is one of the world's most significant painters, sculptors, and graphic artists. In the 1960s, he became well-known for his figurative, expressive paintings. Since 1969, he paints his subjects upside down in an effort to overcome the representational, content-driven character of his earlier work and stress the artifice of painting. Alexander Kluge is one of the major German fiction writers of the late twentieth century and an important social critic. As a filmmaker, he is credited with the launch of the New German Cinema movement. Katy Derbyshire is a translator of contemporary German writing.