Martin Kippenberger
1953 in Dortmund – 1997 in Wien (AT)
Nieder mit dem Idealismus
Nicht beten – schreien
Die ionische Doris
Manche finden keinen Partner aber dafür sich selbst
Im Museum der geteilten Kräfte
Die Asexualtität in der Schuhpolitik
Schattenspiele im Zweitwerk
Dem geht´s nicht so gut
Eintreiben von Bestätigungen im kleinen Kreis
Der Doofälteste hat das Sagen
Im Alltag eines Chirurgen
Er versprach mir die Hälfte
Dem einsamen Kommunisten
Was mache ich mit einer Frau, wenn ich keine habe: Heimlich Alkohol ins Glas tun
And see I was born
A hustle here and a hustle there San Francisco is the place where
At first glance, Martin Kippenberger’s artistic gestures appear carefree, almost childlike, and playful. This is intentional because his artistic strategy and his work are characterized by irony, irritation, and provocation, both formally as well as in terms of content. At the beginning of the 1980s, he develops the concept of the open picture series which links concepts and images in an associative way. In Nieder mit dem Idealismus, a series of 15 individual images, Kippenberger questions conservative values and deliberately violates traditional conventions. Allusively, he revisits topics from the field of society, politics, and (pop) culture, and switches the painting style for each, from Greek antiquity to the Neue Wilde. In addition, his captions resist definite interpretations: The picture of the man who hatches out headfirst from an egg in a Baselitzʼian manner is entitled by the almost biblical exclamation: See I was born. Here ecclesiastical and secular views collide, are caricatured and rendered ironic.
