First the Feet
By Roberto Ohrt. Excerpt from the book 'Kippenberger'
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For the exhibition Peter 2, Martin Kippenberger had N.G.B. Hellblau (p. 141) made; an enchanting mural object that gets all its charm from the simple and cheap appearance of its material. In an approach similar to the Prize Pictures, but more far-reaching, it picks a fight with the voice of art judgment in the modern movement, with the veneration of the subtle color and light value melodies of the likes of Joseph Albers. Just like the discipline of the muted triad from the Bauhaus, it unfolds in variants, resonances, echo and counter-movement, in the alternation from exterior to interior, the exquisitry of the surface in the small. The classical context is immediately present or, rather, it is immediately negated in all its seriousness and falls away from the beauty of the checked kitchen towel like superfluous expenditure on conventions. The worn-out white and the imperfections in the stretched cloth, the simple transparency through to the wall and the banality of the material, all this is part of a feeling of relief, a sunny period which comes along like a fresh and untainted breeze from the countryside, a mirror-within-a-mirror which liberates the beholder from the mirror image. The beholder steps in front of it and can, without disturbing himself in his gaze, look through an infinity of duplication and rejuvenation. Whether wall or picture, art or decoration ... these categories are no longer of any importance here.
Is this really me?
During the course of the 1980s, Martin Kippenberger appropriated numerous motifs and figures as his signs. Some were already there before he even started looking for them; others were deliberately selected and activated: the Capri, the lamp post, Father Christmas, the egg theme (fried egg, egg man or man with paunch), the canary, the man in the corner, Fred the Frog. They all came to be recognized as his self-willed companions, as figures in the ensemble of his thought. He only showed one thing time and again during these years that was not regarded as a member of his troupe, namely, the hand. Of course hands have significance in art willy-nilly, whether as a particular handwriting (or trademark), as sweet little hand, or as massive great paw ... no-one need be surprised therefore by the fact that they are thematized or turn up again and again unintentionally. Even so, this motif - its continuity or chance repetition - in the work of Martin Kippenberger has something of the more obsessive. Am Ort schwebende Feinde gilt es zu befestigen (p. 115) for example, painted in 1984, could be imagined as a variation and decisive detail of an oil painting painted four years later. In the 1988 picture (p. 161), the painter depicts himself at the so-called Worktimer, a Peter for the workhorses in the office, and his hands go at the appliance in the same blunt fashion as did the hand in the 1984 picture, where, incidentally, the happening was likewise integrated into an orange painted grid.
The 1984 picture Nieder mit der Inflation (p. 118/119) also develops a number of curious continuities for the tension between Peter and hand. On the right-hand side it depicts not a right or wrong Peter, but his possible model. The "curious chair" as an object interested Martin Kippenberger in the following years to such an extent that in 1994 he gave it the lead role in what was probably his largest installation. In the exhibition The Happy End of Franz Kafka's "Amerika" more than a hundred different chairs appeared in their typical individuality and fateful precision, among them of course a number of tables and chairs of the Peter variety. The Nieder mit der Inflation double stage is concerned with the moment in which the truth - in other words "trousers down" - must get up on the table. The hands try their hand, so to speak, move by move, near or far, on the complicatedly bent instruments of the seat. They wrestle with the graspability and the ungraspable aspect of this frame. They talk of the body, and it can be seen here in three different states: concrete male, artificial skeleton, and female invisible, all three stripped in unpleasant fashion.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]
For the exhibition Peter 2, Martin Kippenberger had N.G.B. Hellblau (p. 141) made; an enchanting mural object that gets all its charm from the simple and cheap appearance of its material. In an approach similar to the Prize Pictures, but more far-reaching, it picks a fight with the voice of art judgment in the modern movement, with the veneration of the subtle color and light value melodies of the likes of Joseph Albers. Just like the discipline of the muted triad from the Bauhaus, it unfolds in variants, resonances, echo and counter-movement, in the alternation from exterior to interior, the exquisitry of the surface in the small. The classical context is immediately present or, rather, it is immediately negated in all its seriousness and falls away from the beauty of the checked kitchen towel like superfluous expenditure on conventions. The worn-out white and the imperfections in the stretched cloth, the simple transparency through to the wall and the banality of the material, all this is part of a feeling of relief, a sunny period which comes along like a fresh and untainted breeze from the countryside, a mirror-within-a-mirror which liberates the beholder from the mirror image. The beholder steps in front of it and can, without disturbing himself in his gaze, look through an infinity of duplication and rejuvenation. Whether wall or picture, art or decoration ... these categories are no longer of any importance here.
Is this really me?
During the course of the 1980s, Martin Kippenberger appropriated numerous motifs and figures as his signs. Some were already there before he even started looking for them; others were deliberately selected and activated: the Capri, the lamp post, Father Christmas, the egg theme (fried egg, egg man or man with paunch), the canary, the man in the corner, Fred the Frog. They all came to be recognized as his self-willed companions, as figures in the ensemble of his thought. He only showed one thing time and again during these years that was not regarded as a member of his troupe, namely, the hand. Of course hands have significance in art willy-nilly, whether as a particular handwriting (or trademark), as sweet little hand, or as massive great paw ... no-one need be surprised therefore by the fact that they are thematized or turn up again and again unintentionally. Even so, this motif - its continuity or chance repetition - in the work of Martin Kippenberger has something of the more obsessive. Am Ort schwebende Feinde gilt es zu befestigen (p. 115) for example, painted in 1984, could be imagined as a variation and decisive detail of an oil painting painted four years later. In the 1988 picture (p. 161), the painter depicts himself at the so-called Worktimer, a Peter for the workhorses in the office, and his hands go at the appliance in the same blunt fashion as did the hand in the 1984 picture, where, incidentally, the happening was likewise integrated into an orange painted grid.
The 1984 picture Nieder mit der Inflation (p. 118/119) also develops a number of curious continuities for the tension between Peter and hand. On the right-hand side it depicts not a right or wrong Peter, but his possible model. The "curious chair" as an object interested Martin Kippenberger in the following years to such an extent that in 1994 he gave it the lead role in what was probably his largest installation. In the exhibition The Happy End of Franz Kafka's "Amerika" more than a hundred different chairs appeared in their typical individuality and fateful precision, among them of course a number of tables and chairs of the Peter variety. The Nieder mit der Inflation double stage is concerned with the moment in which the truth - in other words "trousers down" - must get up on the table. The hands try their hand, so to speak, move by move, near or far, on the complicatedly bent instruments of the seat. They wrestle with the graspability and the ungraspable aspect of this frame. They talk of the body, and it can be seen here in three different states: concrete male, artificial skeleton, and female invisible, all three stripped in unpleasant fashion.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]
Kippenberger
Hardcover, 29.7 x 42 cm (11.7 x 16.5 in.), 212 pages
$ 69.99
$ 69.99
A total of one hundred paintings, sculptures and drawings from two of the finest collections of the artist`s work in the world
Albert Oehlen, Werner Büttner, Max Hetzler, Martin Kippenberger in front of the Kippenberger painting Untitled, Max Hetzler Gallery, Stuttgart, 1982. Foto: Wilhelm Schürmann
Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen in a bus after the opening of the show, Easily the applause vanishes, reading from their book Poetry, Gallery Grässlin-Erhardt, Frankfurt am Main, 1987