Martin Kippenberger’s Hotel Stationery

VISUAL DIARY: a few of the countless drawings
that the EXTRAVAGANT and LEGENDARY
German artist  MARTIN KIPPENBERGER(1953−1997) made on hotel stationery 

text by JEFF RIAN

In his short, immoderate life Martin Kippenberger managed to test and probe just about every conceivable style of art making — conceptual, performance, painting, sculpture, collage, video, drawing, and installation. His art parroted his discursive mind and excessive lifestyle, revealing him to be a copious improviser and a consumer of possibilities, rather than the creator of shtick or personal style his artistic persona implied. His most intimate works were his “Hotel Drawings.” He did hundreds of them, on whatever stationery these establishments provided, sketching and doodling, using common writing and drawing implements, expressing the ideas that occupied his mind at particular times. While the hotel drawings refract his rambling life — his globe-hopping exhibition schedule and the multifarious works he would…