Standing at two and a half meters tall, Georg Baselitz’s Eagle, 2009, impresses upon the viewer an almighty sense of grandeur and austerity. A remarkable tactility is bestowed on the work by the union of forged bronze, copper and black-painted stainless steel. Residual marks on the surface of this majestic eagle provide evidence of the artist at work. The rough edges and irregular shapes that form the wings and heads reveal his trace as he cut through the metal, whilst the bronze base has a palpable earthiness, as if molded from clay. This handmade, primeval quality is cleverly countered by an official air, evoked by the undeniable symbolism of the eagle in the history of Western Civilization.

Like many other German artists of his time, the legacy of Post-War Germany meant that Baselitz had a great theme forced upon him: what it was to create art in the aftermath of the Second World War. In this context, the eagle can be understood as a latent symbol for many of the issues he faced. And yet, despite the emblematic significance of the eagle in both German and Western history, Baselitz refuses to accept any narrative or political interpretations. As Michael Glover points out ‘he has no truck with ideologies. Nor is he a cheap storyteller. In short he is his own man’ (M. Glover, Between Eagles and Pioneers, London, 2011, p. 6). It is, however, almost impossible not to read storytelling into this mighty, prideful bird, whose black painted surface and noble profile mirrors the eagle that has long decorated Germany’s coat of arms. Not only is the eagle an important emblem for Germany, but it also holds symbolic meaning with its association with both the Roman and Byzantine Empires.

Strikingly juxtaposed with this emblem of Western Civilization is a primeval quality, demonstrating Baselitz’s fascination with primitive sculpture that he believes bears the mark of high culture. Following the legacy of Picasso, Braque and Kirchner, his sculptural practice can be similarly read as a departure from reality. Eagle’s distilled form and totemic stature is particularly resonant of this aesthetic. He is ‘not interested in adopting the elevated cultural vantage-point of European sculpture and making use of all its sophisticated refinements in order to improve on anything’ and regards Western sculpture as always being made against something, against a sculpture that someone has already made (Interview with the artist, January 1983). Instead, he turns to the art of primitive peoples in which, he argues, this does not arise. In Africa, he says ‘there are sculptures that people have been making for several thousand years and which are constants […] To them the father, the ancestor, is not an enemy’ (Interview with the artist, January 1983).

By representing such a powerful symbol of Western civilization as primitive and raw, Eagle acts as a kind of affirmation of German and European history whilst asserting the fall of civilization and the innate qualities of man. As Norman Rosenthal states Baselitz ‘has striven constantly to confront the realities of history and art history, to make them new and fresh in a manner of that can only be described as heroic; heroic because his art has gone against the grain of fashion, while always remaining modern’ (N. Rosenthal, ‘Why the Painter Georg Baselitz is a Good Painter’, in Baselitz, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2007, p. 15).