Lüpertz and Poussin

“This is why I concern myself with other artists at all, because they offer me a vocabulary that can lead me to new formations.”

Markus Lüpertz’s work is strewn with fragments and quotations of works by Nicolas Poussin; but not just Poussin, of course, but also Gustave Courbet, Hans von Marées, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Aristide Maillol, Eugène Delacroix, and many others, exhibiting an omnivorous enthusiasm for the great art that precedes him, from classical antiquity, modern masters, and cool classicism, to the fury of Expressionism. He slides between art historical moments and artistic styles with disconcerting ease and disregard of hierarchies. There is simultaneously a sense of profound meaning and indiscriminate interchangeability in the artist’s approach to Poussin.