Martin Kippenberger

The German artist Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997) was undoubtedly a controversial yet stimulating person. Today he is considered to be one of the most important German artists of his generation. He was amazingly productive and worked in many styles and media, but he also had a reputation for being provocative, jocular and an alcoholic. In many respects he was the ringleader for a generation of German enfant terribles (along with Albert Oehlen and Günter Förg). His early demise put an end to an enormous production of paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings, publications and other artifacts.

Kippenberger had extensive international contacts, and through collecting art, curating shows and working as an art director, he demonstrated an indefatigable commitment to helping fellow artists. He once commissioned the budding artists Jeff Koons and Christopher Wool to design exhibition posters for him. Kippenberger entered the wider art scene in the 1980s. During that decade, artists in many countries turned their attention to figurative and narrative paintings. As such, Kippenberger’s rude, trivial motifs and chaotic compositions belong to a tradition shared not only by his compatriots Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, but also Francis Picabia and Andy Warhol. Yet Kippenberger was ‘wilder’ than most of his contemporaries, and it would be interesting to explore parallels between ‘the phenomenon Kippenberger’ and the role Bjarne Melgaard plays today.

Kippenberger’s pictures typically consist of expressive brushstrokes and several layers of images. Combined with textual references and titles, they are ‘collages’ of ideas and references. The title Die Frau ist die gefährlichste Waffe der Wohnung ('The woman is the most dangerous weapon in the home') (1984) is taken from a scrap of paper stapled to the picture’s left edge. Kippenberger illustrates this assertion in an explicit way. Against a background of broad vertical brushstrokes in camouflage colours, a weird woman looms before us with her 'weapon'. Her purple robe flaps open to reveal her nude body. With hands shaped like mittens, she is unable to grasp the vacuum cleaner properly. Her face is mask-like and a cigarette dangles from her mouth. Can we read this as an ironic comment on women’s liberation?

Untitled (Sick Egg Child) (1996)* is one of Kippenberger’s many egg paintings. Andy Warhol used a banana as his trademark, but Kippenberger saw it as a challenge to create colourful and interesting art based on a seemingly boring egg. His fascination for the egg was such that in 1996, it featured as a kind of protagonist in many of his paintings.

'The sick child' is a recurring motif in art, and even in Norway, Edvard Munch and Christian Krohg worked with the theme in the late 1800s. Kippenberger painted Untitled (Sick Egg Child) the year before he died, as a portrait of what some deem to be his self-reflective alter-ego – the egg, in a sick bed. Kippenberger’s health was declining, and if we read the work with his fate in mind, the amputated limbs reinforce an awareness of imminent death. The same idea is conveyed by the plaid pictorial room, which at times merges with the figure and puts the ‘egg child’ in danger of being erased…

GÅ

* The work is no longer a part of the exhibition.