Pop, Irony and Seriousness
Albert Oehlen in conversation with Thomas Groetz about Martin Kippenberger
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AO: It looks as though our strategy to create vehicles for orgies of interpretation really has borne fruit. I cannot imagine that he ever approached a picture with an idea like that. The original photo presumably shows Martin's mother. With the coloration of the hands and the face, he was reacting to my alleged involvement with a colour theory I was supposed to be pursuing at the time. The grey-tone table as a garden-fence supports this view. The title he gave it makes the picture a pretty good joke. He took the words "dead mother" from texts that Büttner and I had written for the Wahrheit ist Arbeit [Truth Is Work] catalogue for the Folkwang Museum. He contributed other things to the book, but took advantage of the supply of absurd-sounding terms. His mother meant a lot to him. I suppose that's normal. All the same, he could create a picture like this. But it isn't just a joke.
TG: Is the picture an artist-allegory, then, which, maybe, was, or is also valid for artistic application?
AO: I've no idea. I'm incapable of reading pictures in this way. I always see quite different things. I'm much more formalistic.
TG: What things, for example?
AO: I don't understand allegories. If I understand something, it mostly means I can understand the process through which the picture came about. Or I imagine I can. In the case of this picture, for example, I simply ask what it would be like without the coloured hands.
TG: A further alleged artist-allegory is of course the picture of the crucified artist with halo, hanging on a cross, and next to him a well with a winch. Do you find this alleged Kippenberger self-portrait full of pathos, or can you discover some truth in it?
AO: I think that if you're looking for irony, this is where you're most likely to find it. In other words, for Martin to have made fun of this artist picture is more likely than that he approached cowboys and East Germans ironically.
TG: Then there's the sculpture of the crucified frog. Did Kippenberger really see himself like this? Did he suffer from his role as an artist because it came across to him as somehow impossible?
AO: No, he defined his artist existence himself. In very risky fashion, he insisted on things having to look as they did look. He provoked all sorts of hostility, and accepted this as part of the job; not however with explicit sexual depictions and Nazi symbols, but only by providing material for not being taken seriously. "How low can you go?" Mike Kelley once put it. Many people thought Martin was a big-mouth. And there were others who in contrast to him were taken very seriously. He was concerned with this contrast. He - and I include myself in this - attacked certain artistic practices very violently. He made a shallow picture of seriousness look quite ludicrous. He couldn't suffer because he had great success with his work. On the other hand, he would have liked to have had more recognition, and more money. That was down to his sense of justice - a lot of money for Martin and nice museum exhibitions. He's getting them now.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
AO: It looks as though our strategy to create vehicles for orgies of interpretation really has borne fruit. I cannot imagine that he ever approached a picture with an idea like that. The original photo presumably shows Martin's mother. With the coloration of the hands and the face, he was reacting to my alleged involvement with a colour theory I was supposed to be pursuing at the time. The grey-tone table as a garden-fence supports this view. The title he gave it makes the picture a pretty good joke. He took the words "dead mother" from texts that Büttner and I had written for the Wahrheit ist Arbeit [Truth Is Work] catalogue for the Folkwang Museum. He contributed other things to the book, but took advantage of the supply of absurd-sounding terms. His mother meant a lot to him. I suppose that's normal. All the same, he could create a picture like this. But it isn't just a joke.
TG: Is the picture an artist-allegory, then, which, maybe, was, or is also valid for artistic application?
AO: I've no idea. I'm incapable of reading pictures in this way. I always see quite different things. I'm much more formalistic.
TG: What things, for example?
AO: I don't understand allegories. If I understand something, it mostly means I can understand the process through which the picture came about. Or I imagine I can. In the case of this picture, for example, I simply ask what it would be like without the coloured hands.
TG: A further alleged artist-allegory is of course the picture of the crucified artist with halo, hanging on a cross, and next to him a well with a winch. Do you find this alleged Kippenberger self-portrait full of pathos, or can you discover some truth in it?
AO: I think that if you're looking for irony, this is where you're most likely to find it. In other words, for Martin to have made fun of this artist picture is more likely than that he approached cowboys and East Germans ironically.
TG: Then there's the sculpture of the crucified frog. Did Kippenberger really see himself like this? Did he suffer from his role as an artist because it came across to him as somehow impossible?
AO: No, he defined his artist existence himself. In very risky fashion, he insisted on things having to look as they did look. He provoked all sorts of hostility, and accepted this as part of the job; not however with explicit sexual depictions and Nazi symbols, but only by providing material for not being taken seriously. "How low can you go?" Mike Kelley once put it. Many people thought Martin was a big-mouth. And there were others who in contrast to him were taken very seriously. He was concerned with this contrast. He - and I include myself in this - attacked certain artistic practices very violently. He made a shallow picture of seriousness look quite ludicrous. He couldn't suffer because he had great success with his work. On the other hand, he would have liked to have had more recognition, and more money. That was down to his sense of justice - a lot of money for Martin and nice museum exhibitions. He's getting them now.
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Kippenberger
Hardcover, 29.7 x 42 cm (11.7 x 16.5 in.), 212 pages
$ 70.00
$ 70.00
A total of one hundred paintings, sculptures and drawings from two of the finest collections of the artist`s work in the world
