Self-Portrait

A middle-class child in a post-war, guilt-ridden country, he made the burden of his own Germanness the primary target for his vicious brand of humorous troublemaking. While most of his compatriots infused their art with a sense of historical mea culpa, Kippenberger flaunted his identity, amplifying all its problematic connotations. It might be easy to dismiss Kippenberger's identity game as a punk gesture, simply reacting to societal taboos and the intelligentsia's adherence to political correctness. Instead, I see his practice as forwarding a series of strategies designed to multiply misunderstandings and create unstable meanings. His work undermines the conventional thinking about identity politics. Kippenberger offers a liberating, non-programmatic, anti-ideological brand of political art.
(Piotr Uklanski quoted in D. Krystof and J. Morgan, Martin Kippenberger, Tate Publishing, London, 2006.)