Lot 543 D

This painting is one of a series painted following the artist's studies at Berlin's Hochschule der Künste at the turn of the century, featuring pictures of boys and young men: with blond hair and blue eyes, relaxing on the beach, warming up for sport, wrestling, play-fighting, learning about companionship, playing music. A bright world with healthy bodies in glowing colours, a blue sky with white clouds over sandy dunes, a view over the distant landscape. Norbert Bisky irritates the viewer with his picture-world, suggesting a leap back in time to the happy everyday life of adolescents and young pioneers. A world of youthful heroes in the aesthetic of Leni Riefenstahl with set perspectives and modern uniformity from advertising and the fashion industry. “Fröhlich sein und singen” (Be happy and sing) implies playful training in the leisure community. The political teaching is hidden in the rhymes and choruses of the song. The singing boys' pride of belonging, to be superior for the future and achieve great things in an artificially beautiful world, is fascinating. Bisky shows us an ironic play on the memories of the myths rooted in our history and tells of an engineered, ideal world.