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 project in them — the inherent quietness of the drawings shows a mind removed from the raucous polemics that defined him, and seems to have brought him back to portraiture, politics, and the reflective self. The drawings also reveal a skill and control that, because of his public brashness, perhaps, his large works never did. Their small scale encouraged the intimacy of the hand’s connection to thought.
Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective; moca, Los Angeles, 9 /21 /2008 — 1 /5 /2009; moma, new York, 3 /1 — 5 /11 /2009.
The show will include a panorama of his work including paintings and sculptures.
Untitled, pencil on paper, 11 3 /4 x 8 1 /2”, 1992, courtesy of Metro Pictures
Untitled, pencil, ink, marker on paper, 11 1 /2 x 8”, 1990, courtesy of Metro Pictures
Untitled, pencil on paper, 11 3 /4 x 8 1 /2”, 1991, courtesy of Metro Pictures
Untitled, pencil on paper, 11 3 /4 x 8 1 /2”, 1992, courtesy of Metro Pictures
Untitled (Don’t Wake Daddy), crayon on hotel stationery, 10 1 /2 x 7”, 1995, courtesy of Metro Pictures
Untitled, pencil on paper, 11 3 /4 x 8 1 /2”, 1992, courtesy of Metro Pictures
Untitled (Hotel California), crayon on paper, 11 3 /4 x 8 1 /4”, 1995, courtesy of Metro Pictures
Untitled, pastel on paper, 11 1 /2 x 8”, 1990, courtesy of Metro Pictures
Untitled (Tommy Lasorda), pencil, color pencil on paper, 11 1 /2 x 8 1 /4”, 1990, courtesy of Metro Pictures
Untitled (self-portrait), pencil, gold ink, colored pencil on paper, 11 1 /2 x 8 1 /4” 1990, courtesy of Metro Pictures
Untitled (shower instructions), crayon on hotel stationery, 11 3 /4 x 8 1 /4”, 1995, courtesy of Metro Pictures
[Table of contents]
by Olympia Le-Tan
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Bill Powers
by Glenn O'Brien
by Glen Luchford
by Chikashi Suzuki
by Olivier Zahm
by Richard Bush
By Terry Richardson
by Olivier Zahm
by Jeff Rian
by Takashi Homma
by Johnny Gembitsky and Skye Parrott
by Mark Borthwick