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Lot Essay
Martin Kippenberger might withstand the classification as a painter eager to mock the medium, but his lifelong efforts to rebel against the rules of engagement of artistic practice are a hallmark of his life and work. Facile in nearly every media, he produced great examples of sculpture, drawing, conceptual and installation works, but it is painting that always marked his artistic turns in the road. Having tried out nearly every trope utilized in painting in the Post-War years, he came to exemplify a promiscuous sense of experimentation and a courageous lack of regard for his own consistency or "style." Despite this suspicion of a signature style and a desire to obfuscate his own artistic practice, Kippenberger could not escape his own talent as a painter. The only theme he continued to revisit in his work, as if a nagging urge that was never fully satisfied, is the self-portrait.
In his first major body of paintings in 1981, Kippenberger hired sign painters to execute the Leiber Maler, male mir ('Dear Painter, Paint Me' or 'Dear Painter, Paint for Me') series. True to Andy Warhol's own methods of production, Kippenberger directed the making of twelve works, half of which are self-portraits. Later in 1988, he made a series of self-portraits where he appears to be having a mid-life crisis, seeing himself as a bloated, much older man with balloon motifs surrounding his thick, ungainly body. In 1993, he makes the Kasperle paintings, of which this work is among his more finely painted examples. The Kasperle character in German theatre and puppetry is the classic jester or buffoon. He is a clown, a goof ball, funny on the one hand, but perhaps pathetic in his lack of control on the other. The Kasperle paintings are self-portraits, where the artist is portrayed as silly yet baring the pathos of comedy and tragedy. Here, the clown figure has been given a Pop halo of the "New and Improved" burst. Superimposed on the clown is a continuous brushstroke that appears to form a man's profile, then dips downward, showing rudimentary evidence of male body parts below. The Kasperle paintings are emblems of Kippenberger's anti-heroic artistic stance, and perhaps a sign that his notorious bad boy antics and public drunkenness were a part of his personality he comfortably reconciled in these works.
In his first major body of paintings in 1981, Kippenberger hired sign painters to execute the Leiber Maler, male mir ('Dear Painter, Paint Me' or 'Dear Painter, Paint for Me') series. True to Andy Warhol's own methods of production, Kippenberger directed the making of twelve works, half of which are self-portraits. Later in 1988, he made a series of self-portraits where he appears to be having a mid-life crisis, seeing himself as a bloated, much older man with balloon motifs surrounding his thick, ungainly body. In 1993, he makes the Kasperle paintings, of which this work is among his more finely painted examples. The Kasperle character in German theatre and puppetry is the classic jester or buffoon. He is a clown, a goof ball, funny on the one hand, but perhaps pathetic in his lack of control on the other. The Kasperle paintings are self-portraits, where the artist is portrayed as silly yet baring the pathos of comedy and tragedy. Here, the clown figure has been given a Pop halo of the "New and Improved" burst. Superimposed on the clown is a continuous brushstroke that appears to form a man's profile, then dips downward, showing rudimentary evidence of male body parts below. The Kasperle paintings are emblems of Kippenberger's anti-heroic artistic stance, and perhaps a sign that his notorious bad boy antics and public drunkenness were a part of his personality he comfortably reconciled in these works.