Pop, Irony and Seriousness
Albert Oehlen in conversation with Thomas Groetz about Martin Kippenberger
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TG: Was that then a manifestation of the ALMA band (ALbert and MArtin)?
AO: Indeed.
TG: How does one explain that the body of the guitar is filled with a collection of matchboxes? - the sort one brings back from holiday as a souvenir? Does this souvenir aspect - which is there also in the Capri and Sozialkisten complexes - have any significance in the association with music which can, after all, in its own way preserve and, then, release feelings from the past?
AO: I think it's more likely to refer to people who collect matchboxes.
TG: What sort of people are they?
AO: The sort that can afford cigarettes but don't want to pay for matches at home. They always have to have the thought of improving their lives in very small steps. On the other hand, Martin himself was dependent on searching for the material for his work in the street or on café tables; and he did this with great attention and meticulousness. To combine this world with the ponciness of Glam-Rock is pretty weird.
TG: A guitar is also to be seen in the picture Motörhead (Lemmy) 2, where we also see the already ugly, and, despite his youth, already pretty unhealthy leader of the band.
AO: I always found Lemmy pretty good looking. Martin wasn't so interested in music but I still think he recognized what was special about Lemmy - a man who came across in his public appearances as definitely positive.
TG: You mean because of the two warts that poke out of his beard?
AO: First that. But the man expresses something else like no other: he's crisisproof. He was always out of place; ten, twenty years older than the rest; accepted in punk though he's a rock 'n' roller, and in metal though he's a punk.
TG: I thought Motörhead stood for an anti-image of clean, healthy rock and pop music. And that transferred to art means one ought to think wholesome painting capable of ugliness, sleaziness and wrecks. Was that not one of Kippenberger's or both of your chief concerns?
AO: No. There have been all kinds of filth in art. Beuys, Vienna Actionism, Miserabilism, every kind of filthy painting, broken bodies, bits of flesh, violent spray orgies, and painters who listen to Tom Waits while they work. We didn't have anything to do with any of that.
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Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
TG: Was that then a manifestation of the ALMA band (ALbert and MArtin)?
AO: Indeed.
TG: How does one explain that the body of the guitar is filled with a collection of matchboxes? - the sort one brings back from holiday as a souvenir? Does this souvenir aspect - which is there also in the Capri and Sozialkisten complexes - have any significance in the association with music which can, after all, in its own way preserve and, then, release feelings from the past?
AO: I think it's more likely to refer to people who collect matchboxes.
TG: What sort of people are they?
AO: The sort that can afford cigarettes but don't want to pay for matches at home. They always have to have the thought of improving their lives in very small steps. On the other hand, Martin himself was dependent on searching for the material for his work in the street or on café tables; and he did this with great attention and meticulousness. To combine this world with the ponciness of Glam-Rock is pretty weird.
TG: A guitar is also to be seen in the picture Motörhead (Lemmy) 2, where we also see the already ugly, and, despite his youth, already pretty unhealthy leader of the band.
AO: I always found Lemmy pretty good looking. Martin wasn't so interested in music but I still think he recognized what was special about Lemmy - a man who came across in his public appearances as definitely positive.
TG: You mean because of the two warts that poke out of his beard?
AO: First that. But the man expresses something else like no other: he's crisisproof. He was always out of place; ten, twenty years older than the rest; accepted in punk though he's a rock 'n' roller, and in metal though he's a punk.
TG: I thought Motörhead stood for an anti-image of clean, healthy rock and pop music. And that transferred to art means one ought to think wholesome painting capable of ugliness, sleaziness and wrecks. Was that not one of Kippenberger's or both of your chief concerns?
AO: No. There have been all kinds of filth in art. Beuys, Vienna Actionism, Miserabilism, every kind of filthy painting, broken bodies, bits of flesh, violent spray orgies, and painters who listen to Tom Waits while they work. We didn't have anything to do with any of that.
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Invitation card Women in the life of my father, Gallery Erhard Klein, Bonn, 1983. Scene after Jean-Luc Godard's film Le mépris, 1963. Foto: Bernhard Schaub
Martin Kippenberger, But ducks need no cotton socks, 1977