''Tal'' is a 1999 painting by the German artist

Neo Rauch Neo Rauch (born 18 April 1960, in Leipzig, East Germany; ) is a German artist whose paintings mine the intersection of his personal history with the politics of industrial alienation. His work reflects the influence of socialist realism, and owe ...

. It depicts two men in boxing shorts and shoes who fight each other with long sticks. In the foreground is a red, wooden manger with the word "Tal", which is German for valley. It was sold through

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in New York in 2007 for US$768,000 and in 2013 for $749,000.

Reception

Gregory Volk of ''

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'' wrote in 2010 that the setting "could be any time in Germany: the late 1990s in some outlying district, the 1960s in the workers' and peasants' DDR, the 1920s before the rise of Nazism". He wrote that this ambiguity is typical for Rauch, whose subjects "might be triggered by details in and around Leipzig, or by childhood memories and, as he has occasionally indicated, dreams, but their reach is into a collective past and toward a speculative future". Volk wrote that the two bare-chested, battling men may be "meant as an ironic send-up of the former East German government's obsession with athleticism as a symbol of socialist prowess—but then again, maybe not. You sense that these two men are destined to battle each other in this idiotic and enervated masculine ritual—or that it's their implacable duty."

References

1999 paintings Paintings by Neo Rauch {{20C-painting-stub