‘Like being beaten with a bat’: Georg Baselitz on eye-opening art – and his true feelings about female painters

“In the GDR, all artists were state artists. You can see it in the results’ … Georg Baselitz in his studio in Ammersee. Photograph: © Martin Müller, Berlin

Georg Baselitz is talking about Tracey Emin. “She ate too much spaghetti at De Kooning’s restaurant,” says the German painter. I understand this as meaning her paintings are overly indebted to the abstract expressionist master.

“But he says it with admiration, yes?” explains the translator. “She has touched De Kooning. It’s joking, teasing her.”