.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Kippenberger's interest in the Schreber family was stimulated by a comment made by a friend of his who compared art of the early 90s to the idea of "Schrebergarten". Specifically a German phenomena, the Schrebergarten was named after Moritz Schreber (1808-1861), a doctor and educator for "people's health". With the rise of industrialization beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, very little gardens of the working class used for growing vegetables, fruits and flowers were created and were termed "Schrebergarten". They were usually situated in the outskirts of a city, close to the railways. Today, the term "Schrebergarten" represents a petit bourgeois way of thinking, feeling and behaving--a restricted territory in all means.
Kippenberger and his friend's critical thesis was that contemporary art can be compared with a "Schrebergarten" as every artist takes care of his little ground, and cultivates his or her ideas and "plants".
Besides this general idea, Kippenberger was extremely fascinated by the son of Moritz Schreber, Daniel Paul Schreber, who was raised by his father in the most authoritarian and supressive way. Daniel Paul, a Saxonian supreme judge and president of the Senate, had gone through two major psychological break-downs and as a consequence had been in a psychiatric clinic for about ten years. There he wrote what became his famous book, Denkwurdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken (Memories of my Nervous Illness), first published in 1903. Since then, Schreber has become the most quoted clinical case in psychiatry of the century beginning with Sigmund Freud who in 1911 described his illness as "sexual paranoia."
After seeing a sketch by Schreber in the aforementioned book, Kippenberger realized the painting Portrait of Paul Schreber (designed by himself) in 1994. The sketch showed how Schreber had imagined his brain with its nerve cords and activities, showing one healthy side and one ill side of the brain.
Kippenberger also selected sentences from Daniel Paul Schreber's book Phraseologie, a book that Schreber wrote during his schizophrenic period when he believed that he could communicate with nature, printed them on Plexiglas and attached them as stickers to another painting entitled Paul Schreber which he executed in 1994 (fig. 1). Besides Kippenberger's criticism of narrow-mindedness, both this painting and Portrait of Paul Schreber (designed by himself) contain complex ideas about the consequences of education, authority, schizophrenia, paranoia and self-defense.
Kippenberger and his friend's critical thesis was that contemporary art can be compared with a "Schrebergarten" as every artist takes care of his little ground, and cultivates his or her ideas and "plants".
Besides this general idea, Kippenberger was extremely fascinated by the son of Moritz Schreber, Daniel Paul Schreber, who was raised by his father in the most authoritarian and supressive way. Daniel Paul, a Saxonian supreme judge and president of the Senate, had gone through two major psychological break-downs and as a consequence had been in a psychiatric clinic for about ten years. There he wrote what became his famous book, Denkwurdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken (Memories of my Nervous Illness), first published in 1903. Since then, Schreber has become the most quoted clinical case in psychiatry of the century beginning with Sigmund Freud who in 1911 described his illness as "sexual paranoia."
After seeing a sketch by Schreber in the aforementioned book, Kippenberger realized the painting Portrait of Paul Schreber (designed by himself) in 1994. The sketch showed how Schreber had imagined his brain with its nerve cords and activities, showing one healthy side and one ill side of the brain.
Kippenberger also selected sentences from Daniel Paul Schreber's book Phraseologie, a book that Schreber wrote during his schizophrenic period when he believed that he could communicate with nature, printed them on Plexiglas and attached them as stickers to another painting entitled Paul Schreber which he executed in 1994 (fig. 1). Besides Kippenberger's criticism of narrow-mindedness, both this painting and Portrait of Paul Schreber (designed by himself) contain complex ideas about the consequences of education, authority, schizophrenia, paranoia and self-defense.