"I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens"
About this Quote
Postwar German art is haunted by the problem of inheritance: what does it mean to love German tradition when that tradition has been contaminated by nationalism, mythic purity, and the aesthetic packaging of power? The blonde woman is a loaded shorthand for “Germanness” as fantasy - not just a person, but an emblem. Baselitz’s move is sly because it makes admiration inseparable from projection. He isn’t copying portraits; he’s showing how reverence turns artists into icons, and icons into gendered, racialized allegories.
The subtext also cuts through the macho mythology of the artist. These are “German artists whom I admire,” a lineage of fathers, yet the result is feminized. That slippage reads like both desire and displacement: the painter can’t face the father-head-on, so he reroutes the image into a safer, seductive symbol. “Oddly enough” is doing heavy lifting, performing bafflement while exposing compulsion.
In Baselitz’s broader practice - inversion, distortion, the refusal of stable viewing - this isn’t a quirk, it’s a method. He stages how history leaks into the hand, how the “why” of an image is often the part the artist can’t admit without implicating himself.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Artforum: “Goth to Dance” (Baselitz/Kuspit) (Georg Baselitz, 1995)
Evidence:
I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens (p. 76 (Artforum International, vol. 33, no. 10, Summer 1995); reprinted in 2010 book on p. 242). Primary/original appearance: the interview “Goth to Dance: Georg Baselitz in conversation with Donald Kuspit” in Artforum International (Summer 1995). This interview is then republished in Detlev Gretenkort (ed.), Georg Baselitz: Collected Writings and Interviews (Ridinghouse, London, 2010), where the same interview is included; multiple secondary market/auction citations specifically point to p. 242 in the 2010 book for Kuspit’s “Goth to Dance” material. I was able to verify the earlier (1995) publication venue and general page location for the Artforum interview from third-party references (e.g., Wikipedia’s citation to Artforum 33(10) Summer 1995 p. 76, and other sources referencing “Goth to Dance”). However, I could not access a scan/full text of the 1995 Artforum issue or the 2010 book page to independently confirm the quote’s exact placement on that page, so the quote text itself is verified only as widely reproduced, and the bibliographic trail strongly indicates “Goth to Dance” as the origin. |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Baselitz, Georg. (2026, February 21). I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-paint-german-artists-whom-i-admire-i-paint-121592/
Chicago Style
Baselitz, Georg. "I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens." FixQuotes. February 21, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-paint-german-artists-whom-i-admire-i-paint-121592/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens." FixQuotes, 21 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-paint-german-artists-whom-i-admire-i-paint-121592/. Accessed 13 Mar. 2026.
